New Orleans has at all times been identified for its hospitality — it’s a metropolis the place the get together by no means stops and the great occasions are at all times rollin’. Likewise, Nashville has lengthy drawn artistic varieties to city for good music and — extra just lately, for good or sick — a Decrease Broadway bar scene that’s begun to rival that of Bourbon Avenue.
Now a trickle of New Orleans eating places and their individuals has become a much bigger stream, bringing Nashville a few of its most fun new delicacies, from funky, spicy dishes at Little Miss Mao to towering bologna sandwiches topped with potato chips at Turkey and the Wolf Ice Home. It’s a welcome break from what can really feel like a stream of revenue-driven selections made for a metropolis that’s nonetheless experiencing an “It Metropolis” hangover. A lot of Nashville’s new companies are fueled by builders — huge resorts are being constructed, and they should feed individuals at breakfast, lunch and dinner. However what’s it that’s drawing critically acclaimed cooks from New Orleans to Nashville?
4 distinct seasons, easy accessibility between the 2 cities, and respite from the growing menace of hurricanes and different coastal disasters are a part of the reply. However based on current transplants, it’s the welcoming members of Nashville’s restaurant and bar scene that finally lured them right here.
Turkey and the Wolf Ice Home
Sitting on the breezy patio at Turkey and the Wolf Ice Home in East Nashville’s McFerrin Park neighborhood, James Beard Award semifinalist chef Mason Hereford and his spouse and enterprise accomplice Lauren Agudo say they’re settling in properly. They opened a Nashville model of their hit restaurant in March — in a newly constructed cement-block kitchen on what was a former canine park — providing out of doors seating (lined and non) solely. A gentle stream of lunch company stops in for burgers, collard melts and the aforementioned bologna sandwich, all of which helped launch the duo’s mini empire of eating places throughout New Orleans.
For Agudo and Hereford, it took a number of years of visiting Nashville, attending to know and like it, earlier than deciding to make the leap to their nook lot in McFerrin Park. “I believe that Nashville has plenty of the shared values that New Orleans does, between the music scene and a laid-back tradition, that Southern, gradual and intentional means of doing issues,” says Agudo. “A special taste of it, however plenty of overlap,” Hereford chimes in. “And individuals are eating out [in Nashville], that’s for positive.”
Little Miss Mao
Over on Gallatin Pike, New Orleans-based chef Sophina Uong is bringing a menu of daring flavors to Skinny Dennis, a newly opened honky-tonk with nation Western dive-bar vibes. Uong was nominated as a James Beard semifinalist for Finest Chef: South in 2024 for Mister Mao, the restaurant she co-owns together with her husband in New Orleans. The flavors at Little Miss Mao inside Skinny Dennis pull from cuisines across the globe — together with Uong’s personal Cambodian background — and supply Music Metropolis diners a step away from the standard honky-tonk fare, sizzling hen particularly.
“We may have made a sizzling hen, we may have made the identical hen,” says Uong. “However Nashville is filled with sizzling hen.” As a substitute, Uong encrusts her hen in cheese rinds earlier than it’s fried and dipped in za’atar oil, then served with a refreshing Turkish salad. Elsewhere on the menu is prahok ktiss, a Cambodian dip of curried pork, fish and shrimp, served with shrimp chips and crudites.
Little Miss Mao and Skinny Dennis have turned out to be a wonderful if unlikely pairing for the East Nashville music venue, which leans closely right into a hipster nation vibe. Chilly beer and pictures go effectively with Ethiopian beef tartare and garlic noodles with Alabama crab, it seems. “It’s a visit, as a result of I didn’t develop up on nation music — I like West Coast hip-hop,” Uong says with fun. “It’s an journey.”
LeBlanc + Smith is the restaurant group behind Barrel Proof and The Chloe, a boutique resort that’s slated to open its first location exterior of New Orleans in Nashville’s Hillsboro Village neighborhood this yr. The mission will embody 19 visitor rooms, plus a restaurant, bar and pool in an area as soon as house to 2 craftsman-style homes. In part of town that’s turn out to be nearly unrecognizable in its new, developed type, the crew determined to maintain as a lot of the neighborhood’s model as attainable whereas present process a transform. ”Nashville is a city of craftsmen and artisans, and the way in which that we method our tasks just isn’t big-development-driven,” says LeBlanc + Smith’s Robert LeBlanc. “It’s a way more artisanal method to how we create our locations.”
Barrel Proof opened in Germantown slightly over a yr in the past, delivering a Nashville model of the unique New Orleans bar heavy on whiskey and hospitality. Nestled up alongside Brooklyn Bowl and the Nashville Sounds’ First Horizon Park, it’s meant to be a neighborhood spot the place basic cocktails, frozen margaritas and high-end whiskeys mingle on one menu. “Culturally, Nashville and New Orleans have lots in widespread,” says Barrel Proof co-owner Jason Sorbet. “New Orleans’ [food and drink scene] was very underappreciated for a really very long time, and Nashville was the identical means.”
Nobody is ignoring Nashville’s booming restaurant scene today. And a minimum of so far as the New Orleans transplants are involved, they’re not attempting to vary what’s already a definite culinary neighborhood by bringing New Orleans delicacies to Nashville — you gained’t discover gumbo on these menus.
Turkey and the Wolf Ice Home
Regardless of Nashville’s progress, all these restaurateurs agree that the culinary scene nonetheless has a small-town feeling of camaraderie. “Some hospitality markets are hypercompetitive, and everybody’s attempting to undercut everyone else,” says LeBlanc. Right here, a minimum of for now, it’s a sense of “rising tides elevate all ships” amongst cooks and restaurateurs. “The quantity of various cooks or bar leads giving us their purveyor listing has been touching,” says Turkey and the Wolf’s Agudo.
Hereford and Agudo aren’t taking their heat welcome with no consideration. “We’ve a neighborhood dinner tonight — like 50 individuals from the neighborhood are popping out so we will get to know them, and we will thank them for being so welcoming,” says Hereford.
Because the Scene speaks with Hereford and Agudo, a crowd of younger guys holding brown paper baggage steps onto the patio — clearly a bunch of line cooks from one other restaurant, despatched to supply household meal for the crew at Turkey and the Wolf Ice Home. Hereford greets them jovially, briefly disappearing and reappearing with handfuls of icy PBRs and alluring the group to seize a seat on the patio. It looks like Previous Nashville, a melting pot of artistic people whose paths crossed in pursuit of their very own goals — whether or not meaning music, hospitality or in any other case.
“It’s only a Nashville factor,” says Hereford.
