Chef Brian Baxter to Take Over The Catbird Seat

When The Catbird Seat opened in 2011, it was a first-of-its-kind restaurant for Nashville: ticketed seating, limited space and long tasting menus prepared in front of diners who sat around an open kitchen. The chefs for the first four Catbird iterations were imported from some of the best restaurants in the world, with the Midtown space acting as a showcase for talented sous chefs to run their own place. For the fifth version, however, the restaurant will be led by someone familiar to locals.

Brian Baxter, the former chef de cuisine at Husk and Bastion, debuts this week as chef, taking the helm previously held first by the duo of Erik Anderson and Josh Habiger, followed by Trevor Moran, then Ryan Poli, and finally the pair of Will Aghajanian and Liz Johnson. He arrives at an uncertain time for restaurants, but not without an impressive pedigree — which includes stints under Todd English and Sean Brock, both in Charleston and Nashville. The Culinary Institute of America-trained chef has been running Cold Beer in Atlanta under Top Chef All-Stars finalist Kevin Gillespie for the past year.

The Catbird job came open following the abrupt departure of Aghajanian and Johnson earlier this spring. They left the restaurant in March, shortly before the duo was nominated for a James Beard Award. Neither could be reached for comment, and representatives from Strategic Hospitality declined to comment.

Baxter is the first chef with a significant background in Southern food to take over Catbird. He sat down with the Scene ahead of a first week of meals to talk influences, watercolors and returning to Nashville.

Do you have a style?

I don’t know. Maybe? I feel like everything I do has a classic French background, as far as technique. And then from there, my grandmother cooked dinner for us most nights, because my mom had three kids at that point. Maybe every once in a while something that’s nostalgic, I’ll play with that, and definitely Southern. I’m probably the first person that’s really done or will do Southern food in here. I don’t want to say it’s going to be Southern, but you’ll see some of that. And then I really like just the balance you can get through some of the Asian cuisine — which I feel like everybody uses some Japanese influence now and then, but I also really like toying with some of the more Thai flavors and stuff eventually too, so it just depends. Some of it depends on the season too. It doesn’t always go well with everything. So if I had to say, I don’t know, it’s tough. I think that’s part of what this restaurant’s going to be all about.

So the future’s an interesting question too. I don’t want to say you’ve got a clock on you, but this is not a five-year gig. What does that do for how you approach it?

I think for me, coming in knowing how this restaurant works, it’s an opportunity to finally do what I want to do without any restrictions. Max [Goldberg, Strategic Hospitality partner] says, “It’s your restaurant, you can do whatever you want with it.” So if I wanted to cook for eight people a night and charge $500 a person, I could do that. If I want to cook for 50 people a night and do a few courses, it’s literally up to me. But I think the goal is in the next two years, because this restaurant has — I don’t want to say a magnifying glass over it, but a lot of people know about it, no matter what chef comes in. It’s your opportunity to show what you can do, and then hopefully by the time you’re leaving you’ll have some option to go into, you know what I mean?

So I think my goal would be, most importantly, just to have people be able to come in and maybe not have the best meal in your life, but at least eat something that they’ll remember for a long time, and have an experience. Especially with everything going on now, that they can come in here and forget about maybe what’s going on in three hours when they leave.

I was peeking over your menu here. It’s 13 courses beginning with two plays on tomatoes. Is it an advantage to start in June as opposed to starting in February?

I would say yes. However we’ve written the menu, obviously the food’s going to highlight [seasonality], because that’s just how I’ve always been trained to cook. I mean, that’s how bluezoo cooked in Orlando; it’s definitely how Sean cooked. And then [I learned] from Sean really supporting local farmers the best he can. It doesn’t make sense to cook any other way to me. To keep a dish on the menu just because it’s a fan favorite, but you’re having to buy fava beans from Mexico or something — why would I? I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense to me. So I can’t promise that anything will be on the menu longer than it’s in season.

Thankfully you can chase the seasons up a little bit. So if we have, let’s say, a bunch of rhubarb still preserved, and we have to chase strawberries up a couple states, then we’ll do that. They’re a few weeks behind where I was in Georgia, and they’re a few weeks behind where they normally are at this time of the year because of the weather.  

But we’ve been able to source most of what we need, so I think the menu honestly will highlight as much seasonal produce as possible, and you might see it multiple times throughout the menu. Which, back in the day I feel like [you’d say], “Oh, you never want to serve someone the same ingredient twice.” But if you can make it taste completely different using a completely different application, if it’s in season, why not utilize it? So that’s how we’ve built this menu. 

So I think if you count them in here, I think we have 13 courses, but a couple courses will have multiple preparations of an item. So the first course is a tomato course, so we start you out with a little plant tomato sandwich, and that’s going to be served in the style of the Japanese, the egg sando. So we push some hard-boiled egg into it, finish that with some yuzu, make the milk bread and serve it with some caviar. Then we do a little tomato pie and a fermented potato bread with

There’s the Southern. 

Tomato nduja, yeah. So the tomato sandwich, we just did a little twist on the classic tomato sandwich. I’m trying to think of another good interpretation of something.

And then you take diners straight into seafood.

So the crab, it’s crab and courgette, so it’s a sunflower miso on the bottom and just a literally raw, shaved courgette seasoned with a little bit of olive oil. Just sea salt and lime zest. But then we make a really flavorful sauce with a Japanese curry spice that we’re making with magnolia leaf toasted and ground into it. Warm the crab up in that, and that’s going to be finished with a little bonito as well. So it’s smoky and you have all this flavor, and then we just pour warm butter over it, and let it just soften the courgette enough that it has just a little texture. And then we’re going to take the blossoms from the squash, and those are getting beer-battered, but really light, like a tempura, and served with a Japanese seven-spice that we’re making with just a little garlic mayo and a little squeeze of lemon.

I saw the “straight edge” line on your Instagram, meaning no drugs or alcohol.

So when I had [ankle] surgery a few years back, I hadn’t done anything in years, and the drugs messed with me. They already messed with me, but I had trouble eating and sleeping, and you’re just in pain constantly. The only thing that would calm me down, just throw Bob Ross on and eventually fall asleep a few episodes in. So then I was like, “Fine, I have all this time.” Once I could start standing I was like, “I’m just going to buy an oil set.” I started painting with oils, but then winter came once I was already working again. You can’t paint outside anymore, because they’re messy, so messy, so I had some watercolors that came with an art set, “I’m just going to play with these.” Then I ended up really just enjoying it.

You’re quite good, actually.

I’m not happy with them, but I think that’s just me always wanting to try to be better. But the guy who I take lessons with, [painter] Todd Saal, he’s originally from New York, and he and his wife, she works for BMI so he’s relocated here. So I met him a few years ago, and did a one-on-one workshop with him, and went out and painted with him en plein air a couple times, and we’ve just become friends and kept in touch. I didn’t paint for almost a year when I was [in Georgia] and with the new kid and everything, so we just started with the basics and working our way back through. And we went out to Harlinsdale Farm last Saturday. But he did the artwork for the menu. I would have loved to have been able to do it myself, but he’s just so much better. But I painted the logo that we’re going to use, so I got that. But he’s going to do four seasonal paintings that will change. This room will change a little bit, and we’ll have some banquettes and stuff.

Color instead of the infamous stark white? What are you thinking?

[Laughs] I know. I think since Josh has left it’s just been a couple things jammed in [the lobby], so it’ll be more like a lobby-slash — I don’t want to call it the hallway anymore. I’ll call it the gallery type of thing, so a place where people can wait if someone’s not up, they don’t have to go. ... Since Patterson House will be reservations-only for a while, we don’t have to worry about them not having a seat down there. We can bring them into the gallery and offer them a drink, and just have them relax in there. So it’ll be nice. I just want to get his artwork in here. So it will be for sale if anybody ever wanted to buy it. It’ll be cool, and it’ll be like some places that are maybe Nashville staples or landmarks. Or one thing he’s doing, one of his first paintings is going to be under the pedestrian bridge with just the horizon in the background, and then just a real light, the Nashville skyline.

Straight edge usually means hardcore music too. What can you slip onto a Catbird Seat playlist?

I think whatever I want. I mean, Trevor used to play Slayer at the end of the night. [Laughs]

Ha.

No, this band Turnstile out of Baltimore, somebody remixed a couple of their songs, so they’re a little more intense than the other two, but they still fit with the playlist. I mean, obviously it’s a fancy restaurant, all right, but I want it to be casual. People can come in with a tank top and flip-flops on, I don’t care what they eat in. Just want it to be, like I said, a fun escape from the real world, so hopefully for the food and everything. It’s not going to be crazy food, it’ll be more focused on flavors. But hopefully we’ll have a little bit of whimsy in there. I don’t know. We’ll just have to see. I feel like if you can hit some nostalgia, that makes it a little more playful, even if it doesn’t seem so.