Margot Café and Bar
1017 Woodland St. 227-4668
Open Tues.-Sat. 6-10 p.m., reservations recommended
Outside of Margot Café and Bar on a recent midweek afternoon, a steady rain was falling from a heavy gray sky, typical early fall weather in Nashville. Inside the warm restaurant—abundantly textured with exposed brick, rough wood, large windows, copper cookware, rustic pottery, and cheerful splashes of color from sundry sources—Margot McCormack, Fred Grgich, and Jay Frein hardly noticed. Seated at a banquette in the eatery’s ground-level dining room, with the clatter of pans and the rhythmic thud of knives coming from the open kitchen just behind them, the three partners were talking about the restaurant they opened four months ago at the Five Points intersection of Woodland Street in East Nashville.
“I was looking to do my own thing,” explains McCormack, who this February ended a five-year stint as executive chef at F. Scott’s. “Fred was also looking to do something, so he and I talked and decided to try to do something together. Fred had already been looking around for a space, and one day we had coffee over here at Bongo Java [around the corner on 11th Street]. This building had just come up for lease. It looked too small from the outside, but when we saw the second floor, we knew it could work.”
Considering the condition of the dilapidated building—which had once housed a service station before sitting vacant for nearly a decade—and considering that the neighborhood is still uncharted territory for many West Nashvillians, their assessment may have been regarded as optimistic, if not downright foolhardy. But both know a little bit about challenges. With Ben Robichaux and Allen Fiuzat, McCormack was a vital part of the trio that revamped and reenergized F. Scott’s in Green Hills. And Grgich was one of the three original partners of Caffe Nonna when it opened in Sylvan Park. To shore up the team for their new venture, Grgich brought in his neighbor Jay Frein, who had previously labored in investment sales. They signed the lease, and as McCormack finished up her kitchen duty at F. Scott’s, construction and rehab began on the East Nashville building—a do-it-yourself project, to say the least.
“From the minute we took over the building, people started dropping in from the neighborhood; they were totally curious and supportive and enthusiastic about what we were doing,” Grgich remembers. At the very moment he says this, the restaurant door opens, and in walks living testimony to his statement: a man carrying a large paper sack with Ziploc bags of herbs and vegetables from his garden. “This is about the last of it all,” he says, “I just wanted you to have some.”
McCormack pops a cherry tomato in her mouth. “That’s the great thing about this neighborhood and our customers; they are always bringing us gifts! We love it here.” The neighborhood seems equally smitten. On Tuesday, June 5, the night Margot Café and Bar opened, the restaurant served 120 dinners in the 75-seat space (which holds additional seating on the patio). Business has been brisk ever since, and for countless good reasons.
When it comes to restaurants, my pleasure points include cozy spaces in recycled, urban buildings; a small, welcoming bar; dining rooms filled with an exuberant energy that sets the stage for convivial dinner parties; quiet nooks and crannies for more intimate couplings; a friendly, professional staff who take pride in their work; an open kitchen that fosters the sense of communion between cook and diner; a menu that leans toward brevity and does not provoke choice paralysis; simple, well-prepared food that takes the most direct route from land and water to table, with a commitment to regional and seasonal ingredients; and portion sizes that satisfy but do not overwhelm.
If those kinds of things also appeal to you, there is no place that will inspire love at first sight more instantaneously than Margot. On a recent Saturday night, our vivacious party of six felt right at home downstairs, snugly seated at a comfortable banquette within sight, sound, and scent of the kitchen. On another, weeknight evening, my companion and I snagged a table on the quieter mezzanine level. Our aerial view of the entire first floor reminded her of her first trip to Italy years before, and how enamored she had been of the village restaurants there. “Nothing too small to be beautiful,” is how she put it.
Frein, who put together the affordably priced wine list, reports that Margot hosts a crowd of regulars at the bar who stop by for an after-work cocktail, a solitary meal, or a quick bite on the way to the theater downtown. He also notes that all but one of the bar and wait staff have been on duty since the doors opened, forming a sense of connection that no doubt contributes to the unpretentious but nearly flawless ease with which they service their tables.
McCormack’s mission when creating the menu was pretty straightforward: to cook food that appealed to her. “I wanted food that matched the atmosphere here, which I think is pretty casual and simple. I thought about what I would want to eat, and I am not a fancy eater,” she says. “When I traveled to France and Italy, I was impressed by the simplicity of their food, by its affordability, and by the reliance on what is fresh and available that day.”
That translates to a succinct but by no means unimaginative selection that changes every single day—something that will quickly become apparent to regular diners. Refreshing in their simplicity, each day’s offerings reflect what was available at the market or from a purveyor that morning.
Thus appetizers on June 9 included artichoke soup and a bleu cheese terrine with port wine syrup and walnuts; on Sept. 22, lamb and eggplant soup and house-cured duck prosciutto with marinated olives and Parmesan; and on Oct. 3, asparagus and crimini mushroom soup and lump crab risotto with corn and sweet potatoes. On corresponding evenings, the entrées included pan-roasted grouper with mashed potatoes, beet vinaigrette, and sautéed spinach; pan-roasted Magret duck with green peppercorn sauce and butternut squash risotto; and veal Marsala with baked new potatoes and green beans. The desserts change nightly as well, lemon pound cake with strawberries, apple and dried cherry crisp, and puff pastry apple tarts being among the selections.
The process of creating each day’s menu begins the night before, when McCormack takes an inventory of what’s in the kitchen, then continues the next day with calls to her purveyors, trips to the market, and conversations with her two other cooks, both of whom came with her from F. Scott’s. “We don’t have much room in the kitchen or a walk-in cooler, so what comes in has to go out.” There are, she says, some guidelines: Among the half-dozen apps, there is always a soup, a salad, and a pizza of the day; the six or seven entrées always include a pasta, a couple of fish or shellfish dishes, a beef dish, an “alternative” meat (i.e., pork, venison, or duck), and nearly always roast chicken. The sides I have sampled could hardly be considered supporting players, particularly the lusciously creamy polenta, the perfectly cooked risotto, and the mouthwatering caramelized-onion bread pudding. Later in the evening, Margot may run out of a particular dish, but it is very reassuring to know that Tuesday’s fish will not be Thursday’s soup.
This constant flux makes it impossible to recommend a particular dish, but based on the more than 20 different dishes I’ve sampled, I can say with complete confidence that there simply is no wrong choice. Within its small space, out of its compact kitchen, and from its modest menu, Margot Café and Bar is remarkably generous, offering nightly a bounteous helping of unmitigated pleasures.
In the past month, I have been plied with requests—from East Nashvillians zealously protecting their backyard treasure, and from other local diners guarding their culinary discovery—not to write about Margot. I understand, really I do. But far be it from me to keep such a secret that is begging to be shared.
Let them eat bread
Provence Breads & Cafe’s new bread-baking facility in The Gulch should be up and fully functioning within a week. An oven from France with a stone hearth has been built into the new building, and the rest of the baking ovens will be moved soon from the 21st Avenue store, which will probably close for a day to facilitate the changes. All baking operations will relocate to The Gulch, which will also eventually have some retail space; the food kitchen will stay in the Hillsboro Village store, where it will be overseen by food director Jacque Shye. General manager is Richard Van Etten.
