Ana Aguilar and Josh Cook dinner have been cooking collectively on the town for years. First at Husk Nashville, the place they first met, and because the pandemic, serving their Latin American pastries and breakfast meals at farmers markets and on the now-shuttered Henry James bar.
On April 29, the pair will soft-launch Tantísimo’s brick-and-mortar restaurant, which they are saying is town’s first farm-to-table Latin American restaurant. The identify means “a lot,” as Aguilar notes that in Spanish the “-isimo” suffix is an enthusiastic superlative, like including further exclamation marks in English. Aguilar’s enterprise was initially known as Tantito Pastelito, which interprets to “little cake,” and the change is apt — Tantísimo shall be a lot greater than that.
Aguilar’s household is from Guadalajara, Mexico. She grew up in California and has lived in Nashville for 13 years. Cook dinner is a Nashville native. Collectively they draw on delicacies from throughout Latin America to create a “Spanglish” strategy to eating.
Ana Aguilar and Josh Cook dinner
The restaurant, within the outdated Vegan Vee location in Sylvan Park, shall be open 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. for breakfast and lunch, and 5 to 10 p.m. for dinner, Tuesday by Sunday. The restaurant has 82 seats, together with a bar and a non-public room, plus a patio is within the works.
Whereas the vibe within the mornings is likely to be coffee-shop-like, it is a table-service spot, with a menu of dishes that could be recognizable to present clients in addition to dishes that weren’t attainable to serve earlier than that they had a kitchen of their very own. Dinner shall be desk service, and reservations are advisable (by Resy), with a collection of dishes each new and acquainted to Tantísimo followers.
These new objects embody besos — jam-filled coconut pastry that Aguilar has by no means bought to the general public however has been engaged on — and empanadas, which have been obtainable on and off due to restricted entry to a fryer. They’ll be making bread for dinner. Chuleta Kan Kan shall be on the dinner menu too. That’s a bone-in pork chop with stomach and pores and skin nonetheless hooked up. (The pores and skin puffs up on the grill, so it’s an actual show-stopper.) It’s a Puerto Rican specialty that Aguilar hasn’t seen regionally in years. All of that’s along with their common breakfast tacos and quesadillas, which embody chorizo that they make.
The couple is working to make their restaurant as sustainable as they will, encouraging the kitchen and bar to collaborate to make use of each a part of produce and herbs to cut back waste. Within the kitchen, each a part of the animal is used. They’re sourcing from native farms as a lot as attainable. The bar includes a full wine program fully made up of Latin American wines.
On Might 5, Tantísimo is internet hosting a $50 ticketed kickoff get together, with varied stations to pattern the dishes, after which a grand opening on Might 6. You’ll be able to guide dinner reservations now at this hyperlink.
The couple are followers of Sylvan Park and know among the neighbors as a result of they’re clients from the close by Richland Park Farmers Market. They’ve gotten to know others as they’ve been constructing out the restaurant. (It was arduous labor, grinding down concrete flooring themselves.) They’ve participated in river clean-ups with their new neighbors and appreciated how concerned everyone seems to be in the neighborhood.
“I’ve felt extra a part of a neighborhood right here than wherever else since I lived in Nashville,” Aguilar says. “We’re not technically in Sylvan Park as residents, however we’re not far, and we’re simply making that our residence base. I imply, we’re just about going to dwell on the restaurant for some time.”
