Don Hernandez has helped open a lot of restaurants and bars. A food and beverage industry veteran, he’s worked at The Patterson House, for 21c Museum Hotels, and at both B1281 and The Hart, outlets at the BentoLiving hotel in Wedgewood-Houston. In October, he turned the key on a first: the first restaurant he has owned. Not only that, it was also the first restaurant he’d opened since becoming sober.
Several months ago, Hernandez, a career bartender who served as vice president of the local chapter of the U.S. Bartenders’ Guild, stopped drinking. These personal and professional firsts are framing his vision for Pinky Ring Pizza, his new restaurant in Madison. He wants Pinky Ring to be a fun linchpin to the Madison community, a place where people can hang out after work or school, or grab a slice and a nonalcoholic beer before heading to the soon-to-open Timberhawk Hall or the farmers market at Amqui Station.
To achieve his vision, using local ingredients when possible and always mixing things up with new menus and fresh approaches, Hernandez tapped Wes Scoggins, aka the Jewish Cowboy, to run the culinary program as executive chef. Scoggins has been doing pop-ups around town — at Rosemary & Beauty Queen, Culture + Co. and elsewhere — and he and Hernandez struck up a friendship. Scoggins hopes to open his own restaurant in Nashville in the future, and working at Pinky Ring is allowing him to stretch his creative wings. There’s a stack of cookbooks near the front door, and if you get a few minutes with Scoggins he’ll share thoughts on everything from the best flour for pizza dough (King Arthur) to vegan alternatives and how to get the perfect char on a crust. Working side by side with Hernandez is also giving him a master class in opening a restaurant and all that entails, from finding investors to working with landlords to hiring and training staff.
One of Scoggins’ first acts was to convince his brother Kameron, also a chef, to move to Nashville from Texas to work in the kitchen. He’s not the only family member who is pitching in at Pinky Ring. Hernandez’s partner Karen Kops, who also owns Poppy & Monroe — the Germantown nail salon that is a favorite of Best of Nashville voters — has been instrumental with the aesthetic and branding of the restaurant, not to mention working behind the counter on friends-and-family night.
Hernandez’s dad helped him with a complete renovation of what was once a modest Sir Pizza location. Now there’s a deck out front, with six picnic tables surrounded by planter boxes that Scoggins plans to fill with herbs, microgreens and produce he can use in the kitchen; lettuces will be coming in soon. From the deck you can look through a window and watch dough being made with the restaurant’s carefully cultivated starters (named Miriam and Delgado). A walk-up window allows you to grab a slice to go. Inside is a row of counter seating, with live plants hanging from above, light-pink walls and modern dark-green tiles Hernandez rescued from overage from a project at the BentoLiving hotel. There’s also a matching green sidewalk out front. Posters from local printer Boss Construction hang on the walls.
Pinky Ring doesn’t look like a pizza joint of the past, and its menu won’t look conventional either, particularly when it comes to nonalcoholic drinks. When Hernandez got sober he started to notice how few options there were at his favorite haunts.
“I’d be offered a strawberry soda,” he says. “I wasn’t drinking strawberry soda before, and I’m not going to drink it now.” Pinky Ring’s coolers are filled with nonalcoholic beers, and Proxies nonalcoholic wines should arrive soon. A tap has been installed to serve other nonalcoholic options from a keg. Once Pinky Ring gets its liquor license, there will be both craft cocktails and craft mocktails on the menu. As someone who has spent much of his career mixing drinks, Hernandez says, he wants to create an environment for both drinkers and non-drinkers to socialize together with ease. “Sometimes you may feel uncomfortable around drinkers because you don’t have a drink in your hand. So we’re looking at how we can meet in the middle and bring everyone together.” He’s also considering programming with a nearby recovery center.
Scoggins is at work on a menu that will also foster connections. As he, Hernandez and their team have been opening Pinky Ring, folks have stopped by to share their memories from Sir Pizza as an after-school hangout and community gathering place. Hernandez and Scoggins feel they can build on that. Pizzas will run the gamut from a traditional vodka sauce to a spicy red and a white sauce with mushrooms. Look for lamb on a Mediterranean pie and seasonal vegetarian slices. (Think asparagus or squash roasted in miso butter.) Scoggins plans to set up his smoker in the alley, which will allow him to make brisket pizza. At Rosemary & Beauty Queen in Five Points, Scoggins was known for his vegan dishes, so there may be some plant-based choices too.
The team in the kitchen is making 20-inch pies from which Pinky Ring will sell large individual slices. If you order a whole pie, those will come as 18-inch pizzas. On Sundays, Scoggins says, it’ll be like going to your grandma’s house. “We’re going to have a special menu with an Italian American dish,” he says. Pizzas are cooked in a specialty pizza oven (designed by a Swedish firm with an eye toward Old World Italian pizza ovens), which gets the right char on the pizzas.
Pinky Ring serves lunch and dinner six days a week (closed Mondays) and will not offer the traditional delivery of most pizza spots. You can order pies to go, however, and they’ll be setting up to sell at bars around town, including the nearby Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge. Hernandez knows how hard — and important — it is for bars to keep customers in house, even when they get hungry.
As for the name? “A lot of pizza places have Mafia names, and we’re not into that,” Hernandez says. “This is wholesome, good food. We’re not nostalgic for gangsters, but this is nostalgia for what the gangsters would have had nostalgia for — basically, their nonna’s cooking.”
