- [Julia] We certainly play
with southern flavors here and there,
but even being born and raised here in Nashville,
I just don't consider myself a southern chef.
In the way that we cook, I almost think it influences us
in the opposite way.
Like, we're not gonna put pork
in every dish
almost as a rule.
And so we sort of challenge ourselves
not to be anti-Nashville or anti-southern,
but just to approach food the way we approach food
versus falling into a particular frame of mind.
Henrietta is my paternal grandmother
and then Red was her husband, my grandfather.
They were just really a super sweet,
hospitable, southern couple,
and I really, really looked up to them growing up.
A friend of mine has a bar in New York
that's named after his grandparents and I thought,
that's such a nice gesture, it's such a nice way
to carry on that hospitable spirit.
I was very lucky growing up.
My mother and my stepmother and my dad all cooked at home,
so I grew up eating home-cooked meals.
It definitely wasn't a hobby of mine until ...
I went to France
for a summer, and this family I lived with was growing food
in their backyard and cooking meals at home,
and it changed my perspective a little bit
on where everything comes from and, wow, this is so easy
that they're just doing that this way
and it makes such a difference in the taste.
And so it really got my attention for the first time
in terms of food.
So growing up, any time we would have people
over to the house, my dad would make a dish for parties
where he would take sour cream and dump it on a plate
and then cover it in a green onion vinaigrette
that he made off the cuff,
and then top if with some really, really inexpensive
grocery-store fish roe
and serve it with some crackers
and I think because it hit all parts of your palate,
the creamy fattiness, the saltiness of the fish roe,
the acid of the vinaigrette and all those herbs,
it was just totally addictive.
My sister and I, even as kids, would just sit there
and eat and eat and eat.
And I always have this really strong taste memory
of what that was like.
When we were opening this restaurant,
Tennessee has this great paddlefish caviar.
I really wanted to put that on the menu,
and I really wanted it to ...
sort of fit into the theme of family.
It's been on the menu since we opened,
it's one of our favorite dishes.
We are in a landlocked state
and so we do try to make seafood choices
that are gonna have a good shelf-life.
Oysters are really important to me.
I just find them fascinating and I love eating it.
I wanna start my night at, like, an oyster happy hour.
That's something that you couldn't
really do here previously.
There are places that serve them
but I don't think the quality or the selection
or the attention to detail is really there.
We wanted to bring purveyors
who weren't being represented here yet
and so I think we achieved those things. (laughs)
Clams, like oysters, are one of those,
if you get them harvested really fresh,
they'll last a few days.
We like to do mussels and clams
on the menu pretty frequently.
This particular dish is a red curry
which I got when I went to
a little cooking school
on a trip abroad to Thailand in college
and just held onto these recipes from there.
It's just garlic and shallots
wet in some oil,
then we add the clams to that and steam them
in some fish fumet that we make from snapper bones,
and then we fry up some of the red curry paste
in coconut milk, and then once the clams are open,
we combine the two and garnish that with lots of herbs
and sunflower sprouts to give it a real fresh appearance,
and flavor, and crunch.
But really letting the clams stand out
with all these sort of fresh, contrasting flavors.
We try to really keep up with the seasonal vegetables.
In the summer, we're always trying
to change one or two things a week.
So as new things become available, we can tweak garnishes,
we can tweak dishes and put new salads on,
and get it changing as often as possible.
One of the varieties we're using
is called the Badger Flame Beet.
It is a long, round, golden beet
that one of our farmers named Julie at Rocky Glade Farm
in Eagleville, Tennessee is growing for us,
and we are roasting those and slicing them into coins,
and then spreading them out onto a plate
with some Calabrian chili yogurt,
it's a really nice and spicy counterpoint
to the sort of earthy-sweet beet flavors.
And then on top of that we have some diced plums,
chiffonade of mint, and a pistachio crumble
with some garlic and lemon zest.
So it's a fairly straightforward presentation,
but it, for us, really showcases these vegetables
that we're experimenting with this summer.
I think that the variety,
the quality,
the depth of dining experience that has been grown here
over the last 15, 10, even 5 years is pretty astounding.
And I think for the most part, it's all for good.
I think some of it feels
a little bit crazy and opportunistic and maybe won't last.
But I think the people who are here for the right reasons
and care about Nashville and its economy
are doing good things and people are really enjoying it.