A Deli Wave Is Hitting Nashville

Deli expansions and newly opened fine sandwich purveyors have finally brought Nashville into its bread, meat and cheese moment. Lunch rushes and expansions indicate booming business for anyone slinging fast, tasty, handheld lunch, particularly for the Italian-inclined palate. The sandwich wave — if it endures — also signals a taste shift for a city that has historically pledged its lunch hour to meat-and-threes, many of which have fought closure or morphed into novelty meals, rather than regular stops, in today’s Nashville. 

Both Little Hats Italian Market and 51st Deli have aggressively branched out from original spots in Germantown and The Nations, respectively, hoping to leverage neighborhood brands into city favorites. New entries All’Antico Vinaio (a small chain with locations on the East and West coasts, now expanded to Nashville) and Ingrassia & Sons put the heat lamp on Italy with menus full of chewy-crunchy focaccia and cured meats. Established counters like Bill’s Sandwich Palace and Mitchell Delicatessen have clearly won over dedicated crowds, frequently commanding lunch queues serviced by assembly-line service behind the counter.

A charcuterie craze in the early 2020s helped secure the place of specialty meats like salami, prosciutto, bresaola and mortadella in the American mainstream. Internationally beloved cheeses like Gouda and stracciatella expanded the dairy frontier for a country raised on cheddar and mozzarella. Spreads came too, adding pestos and aiolis to ketchups, mayos and mustards. It’s not hard to get hooked on salt and fats. Viewers have bonded with moody chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, played by Jeremy Allen White, as he made warm sandwiches hot at a fictional Chicago Italian beef shop on Hulu’s The Bear.

Sandwiches carry global appeal for their calorie-dense flexibility, customizability, portability and deliciousness. At a categorical level, they tuck food between bread, usually meat and cheese and often harmonized by a condiment or piqued with strategic vegetables. The city has several excellent vegetarian variations too, including an entirely vegan shop in the BE Hive Deli & Market on Gallatin Avenue in East Nashville. Combining classics with frequent specials and customization ensures variety, a surefire way for delis to build regular customer bases. From wide beverage arrays and fresh side items like salads or desserts, meals emerge. Customers do not all sit like at a cafe — though they can — and typically receive food that’s wrapped and packed, a practice convenient for lunch and foot traffic. Usually folded wax paper, or tinfoil for hot sandwiches, gets involved.

Nashville delis build brands around the sandwich but reach across cuisines in service of the genre’s essential value proposition: options. Beloved 51st Deli has a full Latin American menu and popular breakfast burrito. The busy all-day deli has been a community anchor at the corner of 51st Avenue and Centennial Boulevard and recently expanded to Brentwood, added a second West Nashville location down Charlotte Pike and nabbed a central West End location previously home to Hugh Baby’s and Which Wich. Spread Market & Larder in Germantown makes deli fare equally French and Southern, often selling out its limited sandwich inventory by the early afternoon.

Sandwich counter All’Antico Vinaio simultaneously plopped two Nashville shops this year in The Gulch and Midtown. It has veritable Florentine roots and a menu steeped in Italian sandwiches but offers little else — including no sides — testing the roundedness demanded by most “deli” definitions.

Italian delis like Little Hats and Ingrassia & Sons carry their own culinary cachet and expectations.

“There are three or four staples we had to have: chicken Parm, eggplant Parm,  meatball hero sub, for example,” says John Ingrassia, a music industry veteran who opened Ingrassia & Sons in Wedgewood-Houston four months ago. “We want people to come in and be reminded of an Italian American deli they might have had in their life, plus a few unique things, done as good as it can be. It’s a deli, but conceptually, it’s fine dining.” 

Ingrassia recruited his godson Jack Trooper back from Manhattan, where Trooper had worked with molecular chef Wylie Dufresne and in top-tier kitchens like Eleven Madison Park. Trooper applies the same attention to detail to sandwiches.

“ Most sandwich shops don’t bake their own bread, and we decided we were going to do that,” Trooper tells the Scene in the deli’s seating area. “We spend three days making the porchetta, which we chop more like barbecue rather than slice. We add stracciatella, pesto we make in-house and sundried tomatoes, because we didn’t want another boring turkey sandwich. All that back-end stuff to make it feel really special. We’ll slice our meats and cheese for you, plus the small Italian market, pastas, sauces —  we’re aiming to feel a little more like a part of the neighborhood.”