"A Plate of Southern Vegetables"
One of the most anticipated Nashville restaurants of all time opened three weeks ago, and because reservations got snapped up so quickly, some of us with avid interest in Husk Nashville are only now squeezing in. (It helps with the reservation search that Husk added lunch and brunch last week.)
Much has been written about Husk Nashville — chef Sean Brock's sister outpost to his acclaimed Charleston, S.C., restaurant — and we can expect more. (I'm sure a full-fledged restaurant review will appear before too long.) But as longtime Bites readers know, a First Bite is an initial impression of a restaurant, data gathered in the early weeks before a restaurant can be expected to have its full repertoire in place.
I've visited Husk twice, once for dinner on a Tuesday and once for lunch on a Wednesday, so here's my report. The evening vibe was bright and a bit hectic. (We heard from another diner that both Zac Brown and Darius Rucker were in the house.) Lunch was quieter though still lively, with plenty of sunlight streaming into the dining rooms of the graceful renovated Victorian house and brightening the already anticipatory mood.
Speaking of sunlight, my favorite part of the interior is the large downstairs dining room, with a bank of windows overlooking Husk's garden, which helps supply the ingredients on the locally sourced menu. The decor of the other, smaller rooms was more eclectic, with rustic tables, mirrored walls and modern-art chandeliers cohabiting in a way that seemed to make more sense in daylight than at night.
It's worth describing the structure of the menus I encountered, although both the lunch and dinner menus change daily.
The evening menu is divided between first courses and "supper." On our visit the starters ranged between $9 and $14, and supper entrées were $25 to $28. A table of four, we took the advice of a friend and ordered five first courses to share, and just two entrées, which we also shared. It was plenty of food and allowed us to try a lot of different things.
