On Celebrity Chefs and Nashville

There's a good Jim Myers piece in the daily today talking about the influx of so-called "celebrity chefs" in Nashville. The tone of the piece is this: Nashville's dining scene has graduated beyond just being dazzled by a name.

I think that's fair. His criticism of Adele's jibes with the Scene's review from September, where I found the food to be uneven and wondered about above-the-marquee chef Jonathan Waxman's role in the restaurant:

What then do we make of Adele's, a project with a big-name chef attached, but one who's not really involved on a day-to-day basis? What culpability does Waxman have in all of this? It's his name that will certainly draw many diners in, aware of his fantastic reputation at Barbuto in New York, his excellent cookbooks and his nomination as a James Beard award finalist. (A nomination in the competitive New York region is like winning anywhere else.) The chef clearly has an affection for Nashville, but after a couple of signature dishes and a somewhat nondescript style — seasonal, local, simple — what is he adding here beyond the name?

His seasonal style is actually de rigueur at most of the good restaurants in town, as is the emphasis on local ingredients. The recipes themselves are exercises in restraint: roast chicken with a bit of salsa verde on top; grilled fish over grilled vegetables; simple pasta accented with something fresh. Ten years ago, Adele's would have been hailed as a conquering hero. Today? The bar has been raised already.

Myers also mentions Sean Brock and Maneet Chauhan, whose

is reviewed in this week's print edition.

The question with all three of these chefs is not whether or not they're celebrities. They certainly are. The question is about absentee-ism and whether the chefs are overextended. With Chauhan, it remains to be seen, but the opening results are promising. In Brock's case, Myers points out (rightly) that the place is better when the Charleston-based chef is in the restaurant.

For the life of me, though, I don't get Dale Levitski's inclusion on the front page or in the slideshow online. The Top Chef finalist re-located here from Chicago and has immersed himself in the city. He's in the kitchen at Sinema every night. Putting him on a list with the others is kind of a guilt-by-association that he doesn't deserve.

In fact, there's a lot of name-dropping around the story and the single worst picture I've ever seen of Richard Blais. It has to be at least 10 years old. Including Flip Burger in here is not an apples-to-apples comparison because it's obviously a chain of burger places, not fine dining.

Andrew Zimmern, Aaron Sanchez and Bobby Flay are all mentioned, too, but they have been here to film shows, not open restaurants. Maybe all of those were added by what's left of the copy desk. If that's the case, it does a great disservice to Myers' overall piece.