After centering his empire in Nashville and then waiting out the pandemic, Sean Brock opened his new place at the Grand Hyatt, The Continental, earlier this summer with an emphasis on classic service and technique. If Joyland is Brock’s take on casual and the newly opened Audrey is a modern look at Appalachian food, The Continental is intended to pay tribute to the grand hotel restaurants of yesterday, with smartly dressed servers pushing carts of food inside a soaring, luxurious space. We based this review upon multiple visits.
Ashley: Let’s start with the atmosphere. It’s fairly impeccable: upscale yet comfortable, modern with retro roots, a killer bar that feels far from Broadway despite being at the head of it. And it avoids the problems that plague many Nashville hotel restaurants: 1. It doesn’t feel like it’s been plopped in a lobby (see: Decker & Dyer in The Westin, or Yolan in The Joseph, which seems to have spent more money on art and fixtures than most hotels do in their whole buildings); and 2. it’s not so hidden away that guests may miss it, like the also stunning, Mad Men-chic Ellington’s at Fairlane Hotel. Other than the valet setup — which comps two hours despite it taking a full three to dine there — I think the vibe is pretty flawless. How did it strike you?
Steve: I won’t dwell on the valet situation except to say after standing there 20 minutes after you left, a kid informed me that he “was trying to find your car.” We made it home eventually. Other than that, the setting is pretty wonderful. It’s clear Sean Brock and his hotel partners very much want you to feel like you’re in a different era of dining service — one where carts roll out food tableside while you luxuriate on crushed-velvet banquettes, sipping on something smart from the bar. I kept waiting for it all to feel very twee, but it never did. My calibrations are so out of whack from the pandemic — and 18 months of takeout and fast-casual — that I may be incapable of processing what high-end fine dining is supposed to be anymore. It’s a testament to the staff’s general graciousness that I never felt out of place.
Ashley: Graciousness is spot-on. The staff is on it. And with the tone they’re setting and prices they’re charging (which are completely in line with Nashville fine dining), they should be. My guess is that 95 percent of diners and pretty much every out-of-towner leaves wowed. That’s key considering that hospitality director Sarah Hong says tourists make up half of their bookings, and many people travel to Nashville specifically to dine there (which I’m sure pleases Grand Hyatt mightily).
The one thing I will say is that, while I love the white-glove vibe and tableside pomp, there is no room for deviation from the script. The servers can tell you which local farm the meat or produce came from, and why this forgotten technique is so important to Chef Brock, but it can feel a bit rote, especially on a return visit. One thing I love about Bastion or The Catbird Seat (both on par with this price and experience level) is that you get to engage with the chefs, who are more than happy to get into a story about how they stumbled on this whiskey or why this bologna sandwich changed their lives. At Tailor, which is also necessarily scripted, chef-owner Vivek Surti’s stories change with each season and menu. So that’s the one drawback of the more formal, server-driven world for me. But I imagine most diners won’t give that a second thought.
Steve: The menu is a prix-fixe affair. Basically, you choose a main and a dessert and then settle in for the three-hour show. Comically, I almost made 8:30 reservations, at which point my bride would have slept through the second half of dinner on that very plush banquette. Now there are a number of, shall we say, enhancements, which may be made at various points in the meal: Imperial golden Russian osetra caviar for $175 per ounce, anyone? Burgundy truffles shaved tableside for $45 per half-ounce? If I hit the Powerball, I may return for those fish eggs, but on the Scene’s dime, we passed. [Editor’s note: THANKS.]
The opening salvo is a perfect oyster bite, a single shellfish loaded with accoutrements, including some non-Russian caviar that was nevertheless delicious. This was followed by a tuna terrine and a small mushroom course featuring hen-of-the-woods that might have been my favorite thing all night — it was just layers of subtle complexity.
Ashley: I enthusiastically cosign that mushroom course — it was somewhere between soup and chawanmushi, hitting all the earthy, salty, umami notes that mushroom soup brings to mind, but much more nuanced. The terrine was a miss for me, which is a bummer because the presentation and description were enticing: sweet potato — in confit and chip form, dusted with lime powder — and bluefin tuna during the short season they gorge themselves on sardines as they swim north, so they’ve got extra minerality and a deep-red color. But the dish lacked flavor and was room temperature, which is a choice, but not one I’d make with raw fish of that caliber. I did enjoy their signature salad — pickled onions, grassy greens, buttermilk dressing, everything-crusted “alligator pear,” which is a hilarious term for an avocado that I was delighted to learn. But the second real showstopper behind that mushroom course was the pâté en croûte cart.
Now, I am not a girl for whom any old pâté does the trick, but The Continental’s braised beef, venison and root veggie version was a meat orgy inside a pastry party, and it left me sat-is-fied. Part of that comes from how it’s made: Chef de cuisine Colin Shane explained (later via email, not tableside) that they bake the shell first and then fill it with the warm meat mixture. That allows the natural juices to help seal the crevices, binding everything without making the pastry soggy. Then they finish the plate with onion compote, fruit catsup, and a port wine gelée I’d like to mix with a COVID booster and inject everyone with — it was all outstanding, down to the darkly adorable deer plate it’s served on.
Roasted chocolate with banana and maple
Steve: The different catsups with the pâté en croûte was the only part of the service that made me roll my eyes a little. Yes, by all means, please bake all of this delicious organ meat inside of a flaky crust, but the whole bit about catsups of yore being different than the monopoly the Heinz corporation has on things today was a little much. You had me at “onion compote.” I will slather that on a piece of cardboard and be content, there’s no need to gild the lily with narrative about old-world hotel service. You’ve already got me! I’m here!
My complaining aside, the pâté en croûte, the terrine and even the salad were wonderful displays of technique. I’m sorry some sous chef has carpal tunnel from individually studding all of the seeds on that avocado, but their pain is definitely our gain. The same with whoever was responsible for the delicate knife cuts for the carrots on top of the pâté slices. My guess is that there are more than a few sets of tweezers at work in the kitchen.
Ashley: There was a catsups-of-yore section?! I totally missed that, which is good since I believe Heinz is flawless, Hunt’s is garbage, and all “house-made ketchups” can kick rocks. Condiment detour done, let’s talk mains. After a couple visits, I’ve ordered two entrées and tasted all four, so I know where my loyalties lie. What was your top choice after tasting them all?
Steve: So, the four mains in rotation currently are the prime rib — sliced tableside and smothered in a luscious au jus — a roasted chicken with sunchokes, venison medallions with sauce Roanne (a super French preparation) and wild halibut with potato scales. Shockingly, I preferred the fish above all of them. The potato scales are just beautiful little rounds that have been torched crisp on top of a truly wonderful piece of fish. I enticed my wife to join us by promising her the prime rib, and I would have bet good money that it would be my favorite. But the fish on a bed of lentil puree and ras el hanout was just subtly magnificent. The only reason I ordered it was because the rest of the table took all of my other options, and yet I was rewarded with greatness. And you?
Ashley: That is a surprise! But I did snag a bite of your fish, and I agree the dish was excellent: crispy, juicy, creamy, light. It was a nice surprise, because my husband got the fish last time we were there, and it wasn’t as successful (which I think was a one-off). The most recent time I had the chicken, it was served with luscious roasted sunchoke, tart green mandarins, and Belgian endive that got slightly over-charred. The pan sauce was everything it should be — the rich, salty essence of a bird on the plate — but I think the ballotine-ish presentation of the chicken (deboned but reconstructed) was a lot of trouble for little payoff. Still, the flavor was good.
I guess that leaves me carrying the red-meat mantle, which I do gladly. The prime rib is simply perfect. I got it on my first visit, and I ate every morsel of fat, dragging each bit of marbled meat through every drop of jus. It was a primitive, vanity-free performance that should’ve gotten my public-dining privileges revoked. But on this visit, I have to say, I think my husband’s venison held its own. Contributor Chris Chamberlain got an early description of the dish for the Scene back in May: “a venison dish with deer sourced from the same Broken Arrow Ranch in Texas that was on Brock’s opening menu way back when at the Hermitage. The deer meat is larded with Iberico ham and served with white asparagus and a sauce Roanne, one of Paul Bocuse’s specialties made with butter and foie gras.”
A sauce that’s made with butter and foie gras? You might as well take a caulk gun to your arteries, but it is worth it. Obscene idea, flawlessly executed. The sauce work at The Continental smacks of old-school decadence, and I am all in.
Steve: The prime rib is indeed great. It was more mellow than I was expecting, as a lot of prime rib tends to have a strong flavor on the front end (because of overly salty jus) with a mellow flavor to finish. This just kind of melts in your mouth in a close-your-eyes-and-savor-it kind of way. We haven’t even mentioned the bread, a cubed take on Parker House rolls that were stellar. The temptation is to slather them with the butter that’s provided and consume them in the conventional way. But at The Continental, I think the better strategy is to use them as a delivery vehicle for each of the expert sauces on the main courses. Soaked in that sauce Roanne from the venison, every bite turns into a complete umami bomb. When my wife got up for a minute, I stole about half of the jus from her prime rib (along with half of her roll). They were so expertly made — a little crust on the outside, pillowy soft inside — that I would pay the prix-fixe price for a half-dozen or so rolls and each of the sauces as a main course. Ridiculous? Tell me you wouldn’t do the same.
Ashley: Agreed. And I think the fact that you were dragging your wife’s bread through my husband’s sauce after he got up for a minute just proves how The Continental breeds and breaks down propriety at once. A final note before we move to sweets: Savor the sides. On my first visit I had summer squash in sweet Leysa pepper sauce with aromatic vadouvan that was one of my favorite bites of that night. This time around, we got roasted honeynut squash (a varietal of butternut that’s bred to have less water and a stronger flavor) with sauces of black walnut and smoked squash, zaatar and praline leaf-shaped garnishes. You can keep your PSL; this is my kind of fall food.
Next up is the “cream ice cart intermezzo,” which is a fancy way to say a simple, perfect palate cleanser. Vanilla custard is frozen tableside, in some way that’s true to how ice cream was first served during the 19th century but looks a lot like liquid nitrogen to bozos like me. It’s topped with tart cranberry ice and a juicy pear sauce, and the rich, sweet mix of flavors is clear and balanced. The confidence on display is no surprise if you’re familiar with Brock’s pastry directors: Keaton Vasek and Michael Werrell, who are both graduates of the Culinary Institute of America and veterans of Eleven Madison Park.
Steve: For those of you keeping track, I think that’s four different carts that rolled up to our table. I enjoyed the ice cream as a palate cleanser and I was surprised at how much I loved the pear sauce — it was sweet, but not cloying like some pear desserts. The real stars were Vasek and Werrell’s next course. What looked like just a quenelle of ice cream in a bowl of white fluff turned out to be my favorite chocolate-and-banana combo ever. The chocolate was rich and smooth and sat in a pile of banana foam with frozen yuzu granita. For every bad foam I’ve ever tried in the past 20 years, this is the one I’ve been waiting for. Light enough to be a contrast with the thick ice cream, but still with enough heft that it didn’t just float away. My gosh it was good.
It’s funny that you use the word “confidence,” because so much plated pastry work at high-end restaurants requires a minor in studio art to pull off. Swirls of sauce become improvised modern art on a plate when, really, all I want is a couple of perfect sweet bites without the gold leaf making something shiny. To put this bowl in front of customers who have come to expect these over-the-top presentations shows real maturity. This was a bowl of eyes-rolling-backwards pleasure. I know you loved the “apple cider” more, but this was just heaven.
Prime rib cart
Ashley: I actually loved both! My dessert looked more avant-garde — perfect circular apple-butter beignets, vanilla-mousse and apple-sherbet spheres, clarified apple cider. But it played up classic tastes — warm fried dough, fresh sharp apples. Pure comfort food. My husband eventually tasted mine and declared he liked it better, at which point I tasted his chocolate-and-banana dish and declared I liked it better. But what our flip-floppery actually shows is that Vasek and Werrell are so damn good they give themselves a run for their money. Best desserts in town right now.
Steve: So who is going to The Continental? The bill for the four of us, including gratuity, was north of $700. Because it’s in a luxury hotel, I get that more than half the clientele will be from outside Nashville. I feel like there’s a small-scale arms race among Nashville hotels to put star chefs on their marquees to attract destination diners: Jean-Georges Vongerichten at the Hermitage, Tony Mantuano in The Joseph, Michael Mina in the JW Marriott. Putting Sean Brock’s name on The Continental is sure to bring some folks in, although I have to admit that this meal struck me as less Brock-ish than other restaurants he has launched. What would make you come back?
Ashley: That’s the big question. To me, it feels like a place most locals will go once for the experience, then return to a year or two later, likely when they’ve got guests in town. And that’s fine. I can see myself taking my in-laws there precisely because dining there is an event, and the bar for entry isn’t as high as, say, the snail eggs I’ve had at Catbird (though you could possibly eat at Catbird cheaper at this point). And I agree with you: The meal isn’t as obviously Brock-ian as his other ventures, which is ironic considering his name has probably never been pushed quite so hard as a selling point. But you can still feel his attention to detail, commitment to Southern products and history, and desire to create a specific experience, which I think will set The Continental apart.
Steve: I think, ultimately, Brock groupies are going to seek out Audrey reservations over The Continental if they’re looking for more of the chef’s vision, but The Continental is an interesting piece of restauranting. It would have been really easy (and probably more profitable) for the Grand Hyatt to opt for some kind of steakhouse in this space. I’m grateful that they didn’t, and Brock’s take on classic dining is really interesting and pleasurable. Having a menu this locked down — four mains, limited choices — has given the staff license to push great technique, and it absolutely shows. I’d like to return in a year and see if the vision and execution are still as laser focused, but The Continental, to me, is a unique experience that everyone should try at least once.
