By many metrics, we should be living in the most successful era ever when it comes to Nashville restaurants. Dozens of new spots have opened in the first quarter of this year alone, and diners can now choose among new outposts from world-renowned chefs like José Andrés and Philippe Chow, or from our own locally grown, Michelin-star-bestowed talents. Heck, Nashville now has so many luxury steakhouses that the primary difference between two of them is substituting the apostrophe in Hal’s for the second L in Halls.
Bastion, Locust and The Catbird Seat each earned a coveted star at last month’s ceremony in South Carolina
While these developments are great for tourists and conventioneers, will these new dining destinations possess staying power? I contend that the influx of “Ocean Prime + Proper & Beignets & Brews” matters less to the city’s identity than seven specific restaurants that opened in 2012 — establishments that remain vital to Nashville’s culinary history.
Ahh, 2012 … when we were all playing Angry Birds on our iPhone 5s and watching a funny new show called Veep, thinking it was more absurd than reality. The farm-to-table movement was beginning to reshape the industry — a bonus for Nashville restaurants, since we live in such an agriculturally rich region. It was also the year that seven pivotal local restaurants served their first meals: Etch, Rolf and Daughters, Lockeland Table, Hattie B’s, The Southern Steak & Oyster, Urban Grub and Biscuit Love. Each of these new enterprises was a culinary pioneer in the neighborhoods where they settled.
Biscuit Love
Few knew where Germantown’s Taylor Street was before chef Philip Krajeck started serving his outrageous pork ragu, which has never left the menu at Rolf and Daughters. The Southern and Etch both bet that the Schermerhorn Symphony Center would continue to draw diners downtown after its post-flood reopening in 2011. Hattie B’s brought hot chicken to the masses by using deep fryers instead of individual skillets and thrived despite the lack of — gasp — parking in Midtown. Hal Holden-Bache and Cara Graham converted a former grocery/salon/photography studio into Lockeland Table, an East Nashville gathering spot that feels like a timeless part of the neighborhood. Jay Pennington combined the cuisine of his three previous ventures — South Street, Local Taco and Bound’ry — to create Urban Grub on the former site of a 12South car wash. And wherever Karl and Sarah Worley parked their first Biscuit Love truck for the day, outstanding food and great kindness followed.
But why 2012? How was the city blessed by so many important restaurants that are still surviving and thriving today?
The easiest answer is that the owners/operators of these spots were extremely shrewd and fanatically focused on success. Doug Hogrefe — a partner at 4Top Hospitality, which owns Etch — hedged his bets through clever negotiation.
Rolf and Daughters
“When we were negotiating the lease for Etch, I was so worried about the location being a flop that I backloaded the rent to get the first few years of occupancy costs as low as I could,” says Hogrefe. “So we opened paying less than $15 a square foot in base rent. We are still paying a number that would be laughed out of the room in 2026.”
The Southern owner Tom Morales was smart enough to realize that Etch chef Deb Paquette would bring fans from her former stops at Cakewalk Cafe and Zola to SoBro, a neighborhood that was unaccustomed to fine dining.
“We saw a culinary desert downtown,” Morales explains. “Plenty of meat-and-threes, but nothing that could rival Charleston, S.C., or New Orleans. As one of the first new restaurants to open, our main issue was educating locals about our location. What we thought would be an issue of not being on Broadway turned into an advantage. With Deb and Etch next door, we really bookended the corner well. Our different styles complemented each other, and we have had a great relationship.”
Etch
Krajeck had recently arrived in Nashville from a successful stint in the kitchen at Fish Out of Water at the WaterColor Inn & Resort on Florida’s scenic 30A. He discovered an atmosphere that was primed for success.
“In 2012, Nashville still felt pretty small from a restaurant perspective,” says Krajeck. “There were a few places like City House, Margot and Catbird Seat that were locally rooted and had strong opinions about food. You could feel the city starting to open up. Farmers were getting more ambitious, chefs were building closer relationships with producers, and diners were becoming more curious. It felt [like] if you worked hard and believed in what you were doing, there was room to carve out something new.”
Nick Bishop Jr. had already dipped his toe in the Nashville hot chicken arena with his father Nick Sr. by adding the fiery fowl as a daily special at their Franklin meat-and-three, Bishop’s — but that didn’t guarantee success for Hattie B’s.
Hattie B’s
“While the first six months of our Midtown opening were pretty lean — serving family and friends and hitting the streets to bring people in — it allowed us to truly connect,” says the younger Bishop. “We fed the neighborhood in those early days: Vandy students, the dudes at Fly South, the bartenders at Broadway Brewhouse, and the nurses at Baptist Hospital.”
Even as the Bishops beat the streets to attract new customers, Nick Jr. liked what he saw in the local restaurant environment. “2012 was a cool time to open in Nashville,” he says. “The scene was friendly, not competitive; we were all supporting each other. You could pick up the phone and call Josh [Habiger, then chef at The Catbird Seat] just as easy as you could call Karl [Worley]. Nashville is an entertainment city, but it’s a hospitality city at its root.”
Krajeck echoes this sentiment. “When we opened Rolf and Daughters, it immediately felt collaborative. We were all eating at each other’s restaurants, sending guests across town, sharing staff, and figuring things out together. It didn’t feel competitive. It felt like everyone was invested in the idea that Nashville could become a stronger dining city.”
Urban Grub
Another advantage that Hogrefe saw was a slower restaurant news cycle that allowed restaurants to build a foundation before the next “shiny object” arrived. “After we opened, it was quite a while until there was another big downtown restaurant opening — maybe Husk?” he says. “So we had months and months of being written about locally, nationally and internationally. Now? You have about five days of getting press until seven more restaurants open. It’s tough out there.”
Hogrefe is aware of how fortunate Etch was to open when it did and where it did. “I just read an article about buildout costs for a lot of the new restaurants, particularly in Wedgewood-Houston, [which] are close to $1,500 per square foot,” he says. “That would have put Etch, even before our 1,200-square-foot expansion, at $6 million. We spent $650,000 in 2012. And that number raised a lot of eyebrows!”
While The Southern remains a cornerstone of Morales’ legacy — now managed by his daughters Kendall and Lauren Morales — he remains vocal about the threats facing independent eateries.
The Southern Steak & Oyster
“The major changes I have witnessed are the corporate chain invasion and COVID,” he says. “The demographic of people coming downtown has changed; locals stay away unless an event draws them in. Parking prices have escalated, further discouraging travel downtown. COVID emptied the buildings, devastating your lunch business due to work-from-home. Occupancy has still not returned to pre-COVID normal levels. As the huge money players have entered the market, our property taxes have increased disproportionately, eroding our profitability.”
The taxman still cometh, but no coordinated action has taken place surrounding significant tax increases
Restaurant owners are petitioning state and local leaders to investigate fundamental tax reforms to protect these essential businesses. Ultimately, however, the choice rests with the consumer. If we want to maintain these and other crucial independent restaurants in Nashville, we must support them with more than just social media posts. We must put our money where our mouths are.
