Ever since the announcement that chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten will bring a new restaurant named Drusie & Darr to the Hermitage Hotel, people have been bandying about the term “Michelin-starred chef” — so a point of clarification is in order. Chefs aren’t actually given Michelin stars; restaurants are. Even if a chef leaves the restaurant, the stars stay with the establishment until the next rating by the persnickety French dining guide.
That isn’t to say having a chef who has run a restaurant that has earned this vaunted recognition from Michelin’s anonymous so-called inspectors isn’t a big deal. It is a big deal, and in fact, there are three new and impending hotel restaurants in Nashville featuring these sorts of chefs at the helm. One is courtesy of Jean-Georges, but two are part of NYC-based chef Andrew Carmellini’s empire of more than a dozen restaurants.
Carmellini has already opened The Dutch at the W Hotel in the Gulch, and his second spot, Carne Mare, is set to begin welcoming guests Nov. 12. After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, Carmellini worked in kitchens across Europe and in New York City, including several Michelin-starred establishments. As the opening chef de cuisine at Café Boulud under the guidance of legendary chef Daniel Boulud, Carmellini was at the helm when that restaurant earned its own star, and the James Beard Foundation named him Best New Chef and Best Chef: New York City for his achievements in the kitchen. This is to say, he’s kind of a big deal.
So what brought a chef of his status to Nashville to open outposts of his casual neighborhood hang The Dutch and upscale Italian ristorante Carne Mare? Well, it’s no surprise that money was a part of it — the developers behind the W invited him to set up shop in Music City about six years ago. But that wasn’t his first inkling that he might want to come to town.
“Before I opened the first Dutch in New York, I went on a monthlong American food road trip,” Carmellini tells the Scene. “I grew up in Ohio, and love the regionalism of American food. We randomly ended up in Nashville one night and assumed we could just roll in without any hotel reservations. It turns out there was a Sprinsgteen concert in town that night, so we ended up at a hotel out by the airport. I thought, ‘Wow, this town’s really got something going on!’ Rolf and Daughters had just opened, and I realized that I wanted to be a part of this scene.”
Carmellini is also a musician (“I had to decide whether I was going to cooking school or Berklee,” he says) and has a $100,000 studio in his house where he records hip-hop and rock. That makes Nashville a natural destination. “A lot has changed here in Nashville over the past 12 years since I first visited. There are so many more hotels in the luxury segment, and there’s so much great food here already. I’m taking a humble approach to entering the market.”
Although The Dutch is indeed attached to the W lobby, Carmellini doesn’t view it as a hotel restaurant, per se. “I want it to be a neighborhood restaurant first, with a clientele mix of hotel guests, neighborhood residents and people from across the city.”
With The Dutch, Carmellini has indeed created a welcoming vibe, with a large fireplace as the centerpiece for the main dining room, lots of warm wood and a plethora of ferns hanging over the bar that make the vibe reminiscent of a mid-’90s Nashville watering hole/pickup bar. The menu is filled with comfort-food items that Carmellini describes as falling into three “overlapping rings.”
Grilled pork chop, left, and Gripper’s carrot cake
The first is what he calls Classic Americana, like a quintessential double cheeseburger made with locally sourced beef from Bear Creek Farm. In the second ring is New American Food made using seasonal and local ingredients whenever possible. Think grilled hanger steak with an accompaniment of kimchi fried rice. Carmellini sneaks international influences into lots of his dishes, inspired by his own global travel and the contributions of talented international staff members who have worked in his many kitchens. “It’s not ‘fusion food,’ ” he explains. “I call it ‘melting pot soul food’ because it represents what people cook at home all over the world.”
This brings us to his third ring, which he calls New American Soul Food. “It’s what your grandma cooked and my grandma cooked, but with my own touches,” says Carmellini. His ancestors immigrated from the Friuli region of Italy to Miami in the 1930s, and the history of Italian food also inspires his menu choices. “Italy is also extremely regional,” he says, “with the influence of centuries of various conquerors. Its history combines into what we call ‘Italian food,’ but there’s so much variety across the country.”
While Carmellini does prefer to use local and seasonal ingredients whenever possible, he’s not fanatical about it. “Local is important, but flavor is most important,” he says. “You have to make sure you have the right sources.” He spent a lot of time choosing vendors while his restaurants were under construction, but he admits that sometimes a commitment to sourcing locally and organically can be like shouting into the wind.
“When [pioneering farm-to-table chef] Alice Waters buys a couple cases of organic vegetables from a farm, it doesn’t mean shit!” says Carmellini. “People don’t realize that Costco is the largest purveyor of organic foods in the world. When McDonald’s starts ordering organic, that’s what will move the needle. Chefs can really lead the change in purchasing habits.”
As Carne Mare readies for opening, Carmellini is confident that he can manage both restaurants from afar with quarterly visits to Nashville. His second restaurant will be quite distinct from The Dutch. He describes the experience this way: “It’s a dark, sexy Italian chophouse with a high-touch, elevated-service attitude with lots of tableside presentations. The menu won’t change nearly as often, but it will be a special-occasion restaurant for a nice night out.” It will also have a much higher check average than meals at The Dutch.
Carmellini can excel at his many different styles of restaurant because of his strict dedication to three constituencies. “You can’t forget it’s a very human business. I run my restaurants with three different groups in mind. Number one is the customer, two are my employees and third are our purveyors. You have to take care of all three to have a successful operation.”
It sounds like Andrew Carmellini will fit in just fine with the Nashville restaurant scene.
