Should you miss the colorful mural painted on the wall below the patio of iggy’s, or the glass-enclosed room occupying an entire corner of valuable seating space in one of the two dining rooms, the succinct menu confirms that at this small Italian restaurant, it’s all about the pasta. Fresh pasta, to be clear.
The mural depicts ribbons of dough unfurling from tricolored rollers, and inside that room are a bright-red Arcobaleno pasta machine, wood-topped prep tables, tabletop machines and tools for rolling, cutting and crimping pasta. What you won’t see there during service hours are chef/co-owner Ryan Poli and his No. 1 pasta guy Josh Gonzalez. The pasta magic happens in the morning, making the dough and crafting the tortellini, spaghetti, rigatoni, fusilli, orecchiette, mafaldine, lumache, agnolotti … the possibilities are practically endless, as anyone who Googles “Italian pasta shapes” can attest.
The short videos of Gonzalez at work posted on iggy’s Instagram account (@iggys_nashville) are so entertaining that eventually Poli and his brother/partner/sommelier/director of operations Matthew Poli will move the show to the front of the restaurant. That way passersby on this fully transformed block in Wedgewood-Houston can watch Gonzalez operate.
Garlic bread
At dinner, you can watch chefs and cooks at work in the open kitchen, fronted by a counter with seating that the Chicago brothers grew fond of in their three-year post at The Catbird Seat. That restaurant brought them to Nashville but didn’t keep them — both went on to travel and work in other locales.
The deeply held desire to have their own place and the availability of the vacant lower floor of a former industrial building lured them to consider this address. Luckily, their upstairs neighbor is Schumacher Nashville, a design center and showroom of furnishings, accessories, lighting and all things visual that reached out to the Polis and proposed their services. The result is a modern, minimalist bar/restaurant where Don Draper might hang out had Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency opened a satellite office in Rome.
A large double-arched divider acts as bar back in the front room and storage space for the rear. Streamlined tables and chairs are golden polished wood; the fabric-upholstered banquette and bar stools provide texture and pops of color, and lighting is soft and warm. Polished concrete floors, high unfinished ceilings and a glass wall on the street side amplify the noise inherent to the fun and lively restaurant iggy’s unabashedly is. If noise is an issue for you, reserve on the early side — patio seating if weather permits, the front bar or on the banquette. The seats at the chef’s counter are in high demand, so plan accordingly.
Sweet corn agnolotti
In my experience, multipage wine lists divided by region or varietals with lofty tasting notes are not only intimidating but provide great job security for the sommelier. I’m all for the latter, but my appreciation for Matthew Poli’s (large font!) one-pager — divided into sections like “Light & Crisp,” “Round & Modest” and “Full & Rich” on the “White” side or “Light & Fruity,” “Medium & Plush” and “Bold & Robust” on the “Red” — knows no bounds. In each category (including a “Bubbles” and a “Blush”) are four to five choices with at least one by the modestly priced glass. Cocktails are on the other side of the same page, which also includes beer and cider, a quartet of nonalcoholic beverages and a recently added NA beer. Cheers to you, Matthew Poli!
Ironically, the most famous item on iggy’s menu is not a pasta dish, but the garlic bread — chronicled in that bible of aspirational Southern high life, Garden & Gun. In the magazine’s “Anatomy of a Classic” section, the piece tells the origin story of Ryan Poli discovering a savory-sweet-salty and garlicky South Korean street snack built on white bread. He tucked it away until thinking out the menu for iggy’s and developed a recipe based on his memory of that snack. It leads the short section of non-pasta items. Iggy’s version begins with brioche buns made by Village Bakery’s resident bread genius Sam Tucker, split into six sections, piped with sweet cream cheese, dunked in a bath of butter, eggs and garlic, sprinkled with parsley and Maldon salt, then put in the oven on a sheet pan until it’s crispy and the cream cheese oozes out of the soft interior.
Cacio e pepe
It’s pretty damned spectacular, and it’s no wonder that by 8:30 p.m. or so, servers are often in the unenviable position of telling diners there are no more. Don’t shoot the messenger, particularly if it’s Landon Edwards — who performs a dual role as bartender, and patiently and informatively rolled through the menu for us.
With all that bread and pasta to come, dip into something green and crunchy; the lightly dressed Gem Lettuce salad with thinly sliced apple is a good bet. If “too much cheese” is not in your vocabulary, the toasted slice of Dozen Bakery’s sourdough slathered with burrata, sweet onion jam and crunchy sunflower seeds is a winner. Should bluefin tuna crudo be on the menu — as it was the night we visited, pink medallions on a plate with segments of pink grapefruit, bright-green shiso leaves and white flower buds — by all means pounce on it.
Ryan Poli has eaten and cooked all over the world, in multiple types of restaurants and cuisines, yet pasta powers his passion, incites his curiosity, and is the vessel for his creativity and the foundation for his menu. Typically, there are nine selections nightly, but with few exceptions — the classic, meaty Bolognese with beef and pork spooned atop a pile of rigatoni, and spaghetti aglio e olio — when it comes to Poli’s interpretations, expect the unexpected.
Cacio e pepe, for example, is almost always built with bucatini and can tend to dryness; on our trip to iggy’s it was ridged tubes of pepper-infused garganelli in a light broth, showered with more pepper and cheese. Ryan serves Roman-style gnocchi, subbing potato for semolina, cooking and cutting it almost like polenta, then pan-frying the squares for a crisped exterior and creamy interior.
iggy's
No need to dig through the lobster risotto seeking bits of the sweet meat — bite-sized, perfectly poached chunks perch atop the creamy rice, also chock-full of sugar snap peas, crunchy pods, pea shoots, brightened with lemon and mint. That was spring; summer has passed the peas to fennel. The star of the pastarama for me was the agnolotti — sheets of thinly rolled dough piped with sweet-corn puree, folded, cut with a pasta wheel into individual pieces, boiled to silken consistency, drained and settled into a bowl of rich chive-butter sauce strewn with slices of earthy morel mushrooms.
Soft-serve ice cream is having a moment on dessert menus, and I’m all for it; I fought gold spoon to gold spoon for the last bite of vanilla-lemon curd, drizzled with olive oil and set atop a bed of salty-sweet cookie crumbs.
Since its opening in July 2023, iggy’s has received kudos from national media, and placement on several best-of lists. That’s great, says Ryan Poli, but nothing compares to the joy of working with his brother at the restaurant they own. [Cue Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci’s 1996 film Big Night.] “I’ve worked at incredible restaurants with amazing chefs all over the world, but nothing is better than walking into this restaurant every day and sitting down with my brother for coffee before we get to work,” says Ryan. “We’re two guys from the South Side of Chicago. This is not about awards or money, it’s about giving Nashville good food, wine, hospitality, ambiance and service. We did it. Nothing tops that.”
