Ember & Oak to Light Up Fontanel’s Backyard

Whites Creek is one of those little Nashville gems, a pastoral neighborhood with color-saturated sunsets, quiet nights and a quick 10-mile drive to downtown. And this month, Whites Creek residents are about to get a new restaurant — this time, one designed for them as well as for visitors.

“We really know and want to attract the good people of Whites Creek,” says Steve Swayne, managing partner and executive chef for Ember & Oak, a restaurant opening in the bucolic setting. “We have people come by every day to shake our hands and peek in the windows. There’s a lot of community interest. It’s kind of a food desert out here, and we really want to appeal to them.”

Nashvillian Allison Lanquist has built what Swayne calls “an urban resort” in Whites Creek, adjacent to the Whites Creek Greenway and the old Fontanel Mansion. In March, Lanquist opened The Grove at Whites Creek, which includes a luxury inn and a 220-seat event center. The existing hotel had been closed for six years, and she spent a year remodeling its six suites before reopening its doors. 

Lanquist has an extensive Nashville résumé, having launched East Nashville childcare space Music City Kids Club, owned and worked as general contractor for Castleridge Home Builders, and handled communications for Gaylord Hotels, the Metro Nashville Airport Authority, and Service Merchandise. Those last two jobs included some crisis communications — at the airport after 9/11 and Service Merchandise during Chapter 11 — so she feels prepared for anything. But she has a considerably more relaxing vibe planned for Whites Creek. Case in point, she notes the small pond stocked with koi from a neighbor and the “choir of frogs” that sings as dusk falls.

“I began hiking these trails with my dogs nearly a decade before purchasing the property and was always drawn to its beauty and serenity,” Lanquist tells the Scene.

Lanquist isn’t the first person to build a business in this section of Whites Creek. Even Nashvillians who don’t specifically remember 1970s and ’80s country music icon Barbara Mandrell may recall lines to some of her most famous songs, including: “I was country when country wasn’t cool.” In 1988, the star — who had a variety TV show with her sisters — built a log cabin for her family on this land. With 27,000 square feet, a swimming pool, its own soda fountain, an indoor shooting range and five fireplaces, it was thought to be the largest log cabin home in the nation at the time. 

Eventually Mandrell wanted to downsize, and she sold Fontanel Mansion (named for the soft spot on a baby’s head because she wanted a soft spot for her family to land). Between 2010 and 2019, Fontanel was run by music executives as a tourist attraction, with, at times, a live music amphitheater, a restaurant, ziplining and tours of the celebrity mansion (sometimes led by Mandrell’s daughter Jamie Dudney). Artists filmed music videos on the grounds and in the mansion — the great room still boasts many signatures on its columns. A number of things led to Fontanel being shuttered. After Ascend Amphitheater opened downtown in 2015, the similarly sized Woods Amphitheater at the site was less of a draw. The restaurant Café Fontanella closed, and by 2019 the main attraction was the 1.8-mile Trails at Fontanel, shaded, pet-friendly walking and hiking trails that connect to the paved 1.5-mile Whites Creek Greenway. Metro Parks has an agreement with the owners that allows use of the greenway and maintains its trails. Metro Parks hopes to expand the greenway to connect Hartman Community Center to Buena Vista Pike in the future. Locals continued to flock to the greenway even as the hotel and mansion closed.

The inn, mansion, restaurant and surrounding acreage went through several sales, mostly sitting vacant and unimproved for years, particularly during the pandemic. Lanquist bought the property on the west side of Whites Creek — including the inn, the former restaurant and private event space — and eventually developed her vision for an easy getaway on 16 acres.

Once the inn was up and running — and yoga classes, sound baths and other events were taking place in the great hall event space — Lanquist turned her attention to the restaurant, located in the space that used to house Café Fontanella. Swayne and Lanquist met through Swayne’s wife. He had retired from a career working in restaurants, which he began doing at age 14, and developing cooking appliances for Electrolux. After he met with Lanquist, he took just a few days to decide to come out of retirement. “I’m back in my element,” he says.

Later this month the duo will open Ember & Oak, a 128-seat restaurant with an outdoor patio and bar seating. It will serve dinner Wednesday through Sunday and brunch on the weekends. The menu is “upscale Southern with a twist,” Swayne says, with bison meatloaf and short ribs and gluten-free spaghetti squash and grain bowls. The starter menu includes an 11-inch, 2-pound burger, dressed tableside, that is a nod to a shareable burger Swayne and his friends ate in his youth. That burger was $5 four decades ago — this one is $39. That one was in a dive bar in Lewiston, Idaho, and this one uses high-end ingredients, but the idea to share a favorite food together remains the same. Seasonal desserts, including cobbler, are on the lineup. Swayne is planning an extensive full bar, with consultations from a sommelier who will offer wine education classes, plus mocktails and other nonalcoholic drinks. 

Service and safety are important to Swayne. If guests have leftovers to take home (which might be the case with that 11-inch burger), they’ll be kept in the walk-in cooler for the duration of the meal, and then guests can request them using a valet-type ticket.

The team doesn’t intend to stop at Ember & Oak. In October, they plan to open Whites Creek Mercantile, a coffee shop next to Ember & Oak. The coffee shop will offer baked goods, coffee and grab-and-go sandwiches, perfect for taking out for a hike, walk or picnic on the adjacent greenway. The Mercantile may also carry local produce and meats, giving residents an easy way to pick up local groceries, Lanquist says. They’ve already started hosting a farmers market on the third Thursday of the month to help connect locals to area farmers.

In a separate transaction, real estate developer Clinton Holcomb bought 118 acres on the east side of Whites Creek, which includes the former Woods Amphitheater and the mansion. Holcomb moved to Nashville from Buffalo, N.Y., and — as a fan of historic properties — he wanted to clean it up and reopen the mansion for weddings, corporate events and to the public. He started with Bridgerton-themed afternoon teas, which offered the opportunity to add on a tour of the mansion. He then expanded to stand-alone tours and plans themed mystery-dinner-type offerings in the future.

While the two projects are unrelated, together they help demonstrate the owners’ vision for Whites Creek as a place to get away from it all, without going very far. “We’re really excited to see it come back to life,” Lanquist says.