My appreciation for eating out on Hanukkah has been well-documented — significantly since 2016 by way of my annual love letter to Butcher & Bee’s Hanukkah dinner. Effectively this 12 months, not solely is Butcher & Bee increasing its dinner from two nights to 3 (with two seats nightly), however there are additionally a pair different eating places on the town providing Hanukkah dishes.
Fast reminder that within the Jewish religion, Hanukkah isn’t a very vital vacation — no less than by way of spiritual observance. However as a result of it falls round Christmas (this 12 months from Dec. 14 by way of 22), it tends to get extra consideration than it in any other case would.
At its most simple, the story of Hanukkah is {that a} sure amount of oil that was imagined to be sufficient to maintain a ceremonial temple lamp lit for one night time as a substitute lasted for eight nights. To honor that miracle (apocryphal or not), virtually all the vacation’s conventional meals are fried in oil, foremost amongst them potato pancakes known as latkes and jelly-filled doughnuts known as sufganiyot. This 12 months in Nashville, there are no less than three eating places the place you possibly can take pleasure in such a fried competition.
At Sadie’s in Edgehill Village, the Hanukkah menu is offered for eating or takeout, and every thing is offered à la carte. Choices embrace candy potato latkes with apple butter and herbed bitter cream and matzoh ball soup with duck confit and inexperienced onion (a particular glow-up from conventional takes on the basic soup).
Sadie’s Hanukkah candy potato latkes
The braised brisket with caramelized onions, rainbow carrots and potato kugel is served in parts designed to be eaten by two (or with leftovers for the remainder of the week). The sufganiyot are full of strawberry preserves. You may add to your meal with one among two licensed kosher wines for the vacations, both a merlot from Golan Vineyard “Yardon” or a chardonnay from Gilgal Vineyard, each from Galilee-Golan Heights, Israel. Place takeout orders or make reservations on-line.
The Butcher & Bee dinner is as soon as once more held in The Rose Room, the restaurant’s non-public occasion area. This 12 months, there will likely be one massive U-shaped desk seating 24, so visitors can simply speak with one another and share a family-style communal feast.
Govt chef Scott Littman (no relation, I simply love his meals) all the time gives trendy takes on conventional recipes, and this 12 months isn’t any exception. He’s already began making lamb bacon to make use of in a Reuben-style hash with sauerkraut. The menu may also embrace a roasted hen with fennel and citrus, a winter salad, mushroom pilaf for vegans and brisket. And naturally, no Hanukkah at Butcher & Bee can be full with out the signature whipped feta on a latke. The dinners are prix fixe — $75 for adults, $25 for youths. There are two seats every night time — Dec. 20, 21 and 22 — and reservations must be made on-line.
“Folks look ahead to it, they usually’re excited to have or not it’s a factor on their to-do checklist,” Littman says of the now-annual dinner. “We get a whole lot of repeat visitors.”
In September this 12 months, Chicago’s Lettuce Entertain You Eating places opened their first Nashville restaurant, Aba. (They’ve since opened one other, Sushi-san.) Aba means “father” in Hebrew, and in only a few months the Wedgewood-Houston location has turn out to be a patriarch in native Mediterranean eating. Between Dec. 14 and 22, Aba is including Hanukkah potato, parmesan and Brussels sprout latkes to the dine-in menu. They’re served with garlic labneh and apple chutney and could be ordered with the restaurant’s different Mediterranean-inspired dishes, together with Aba’s tackle whipped feta. (Chef/accomplice CJ Jacobson was shocked by how a lot whipped feta Aba has been promoting in Nashville.) Tables at Aba are in demand, even when it isn’t Hanukkah, so reservations are really useful.
Aba’s potato, parmesan and Brussels sprout latkes
