Bad Idea Welcomes an American Revival

Wine and chicken nuggets for dinner usually signal dire circumstances.

Nuggets, a distinctly American comfort food made famous by microwavable food trays and McDonald’s, come with caviar at East Nashville’s Bad Idea, where a new menu re-creates the mystery snack’s internal congealment with unsettling precision. It happens that a cloudy Portuguese pét-nat — short for the French pétillant-naturel, and fizzy like a fountain drink with an inscrutable fruity bouquet akin to Dr. Pepper — can work with that potato-starch crisp. 

Bad Idea is now nine months into a new era after parting ways with Colby Rasavong, who helped put the East Nashville restaurant on The New York Times’ coveted top 50 “Restaurant List” in 2024 and attract a Michelin sommelier award for owner Alex Burch in 2025. For a time, Bad Idea was one of Nashville’s buzziest restaurants. Burch’s wine expertise complemented a menu from Rasavong, who was raised in Murfreesboro and collected a star-studded kitchen résumé around the Southeast, centered on Lao cuisine that experimented with technique and palate. Every dish was a curiosity for the unacquainted diner. Spice, heat and strong flavors also presented pairing challenges, according to Burch, who has welcomed Bad Idea’s new direction as approachable and accessible.

The restaurant’s name itself was the founders’ tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of the ambitious, optimistic folly that was opening an upscale wine bar built on Lao menu. By October 2025 — two years after opening in East Nashville’s Five Points neighborhood — Bad Idea settled just outside the city’s tip-top kitchens while not quite cementing itself as a neighborhood staple. When Rasavong departed in November of that year, Bad Idea’s unique culinary identity suddenly lost its flag.

When Burch handed the kitchen keys to David Breeden, who brought a decades-long career atop national landmarks The French Laundry and Per Se, the heavy-hitter veteran had a great wine cellar and a blank slate to work with. Breeden charted a course toward iconic American dishes based around steak and seafood, with particular predilection toward Southern favorites. In July, chef Logan King took over after spending years under towering American chef Thomas Keller in kitchens like the French Laundry, Bouchon and Surf Club. 

A new menu leading with pimento cheese, caviar and chicken nuggets looks at first like an overcorrection pandering to the provincial American. While modern Lao cuisine attracted the curious, strip steak and Atlantic scallops now feed the bottom line. But any path through the familiar menu will no doubt encounter pleasant surprises and a satisfying attention to the season.

The nuggets start and end with novelty, which may be worth the modest starter price tag. The inside is a mysterious mix of chicken meat and poultry parts, just like the original fast food staple. A full table will struggle to split them without a smile or a story, especially alongside a first stop on the excellent wine list. Bad Idea’s pimento cheese is an herbed creamy blend topped with reduced chiles served with a hidden star: a sleeve of buttery, crunchy saltines that both honor and shame the iconic club cracker.

Onions, leeks and cheese help frame squash, root vegetables and crucifers across many small and tasty plates. Small riffs, like a light ribbon of “kimchi bubbles” and herb labneh, liven dishes without wandering too far afield from expectations. Germantown pasta powerhouse Rolf and Daughters put agnolotti on Nashville’s dining map, but Bad Idea offers up its own crowd-pleasing pillows simply dressed and touched with miso.

Hamachi and head-on prawns mirror macrotrends that dominate today’s fine-dining menus. All are executed well and helped by the kitchen’s bias for open-flame cooking. The undersized kitchen, a compromise on the otherwise exceptionally excellent church space, is prone to pacing challenges. There’s another reason to focus on sipping.

Bad Idea’s highest returns come by fully embracing wine. Burch built the restaurant on it after all, and has curated real hits. Take recommendations from Burch or his informed staff and tour four continents with the half-glass option, unless you have a compelling reason not to. Like a well-catered wedding, the menu’s entrées offer an option each for those seeking steak, fish, chicken or vegetarian, surrounded by comforts like butter emulsions, peas, carrots and turnips. These simple American staples get treated with French techniques, giving Burch a wide berth to build wine pairings.

But stay on track — three or four half-pours across 90 minutes, or thereabout — to arrive happily buzzing in time for dessert. A meal that started with chicken nuggets ends with a dense s’mores torte topped with toasted marshmallow fluff. Simple can be satisfying. It is also stabilizing, in this case, as Bad Idea finds its niche in Nashville’s saturated restaurant scene.

The quietly luxurious space is airy and trendy and cozy at the same time, and there is still no better place to drink wine. Burch’s selection and guidance immediately make a meal at Bad Idea memorable. A table can enjoy four courses, plus a diverse wine tour, for under $90 a head — a sweet spot that ends as an appropriately priced celebratory dinner rather than a sticker-shock splurge.