Frank Pullara
With the opening of a brand new outpost of his Franklin restaurant Culaccino in Nashville Yards, Frank Pullara is establishing himself as a restaurateur — however his ardour remains to be within the kitchen.
“Ever since I used to be 8 years previous, I used to be already cooking with my mother and my great-grandma and my nonna,” Pullara says. “I bear in mind like on Easter, my great-grandma was peeling potatoes, and [I was] getting up and watching or serving to. So I’ve all the time been occupied with meals.”
He opened the unique Culaccino in Franklin in 2021, and final 12 months he opened Culamar simply throughout the road, unveiling town’s first downtown rooftop bar and restaurant.
“I bear in mind rising up, although, on New Yr’s Eve and Christmas and stuff like that, my aunts and my nonna would make a bunch of seafood,” Pullara says. “I believed it could be an awesome alternative to deliver one thing new and thrilling to this nook and attempt to assist develop downtown Franklin and Predominant Avenue.”
Pullara says individuals usually assume seafood is for particular events, however he likes to say Culamar is simply “elevated informal,” and offering high-quality meals and repair whereas nonetheless being like “an on a regular basis restaurant for everyone” is what he goals for at each ideas. He picked up lots of his recipes from his household, although he has made them his personal. As for his private favorites from every restaurant, he’s acquired just a few.
“Pizza-wise, the Il Re Di Bologna — I like mortadella — has mortadella, ricotta, pistachios on it,” he says. “Pasta-wise, our ravioli. You don’t see too many double-stuffed raviolis with robiola cheese and veal shoulder, and butter sauce, and bone marrow. In order that one I like, too. Culamar, our cioppino or our trout are my two favourite entrées. It’s simply that broth alone. … They’re so soulful. There’s so many taste profiles.”
Pullara began out within the restaurant enterprise at round 15 years previous and has been working within the business ever since. He studied culinary arts in an apprenticeship on the American Culinary Federation in Milwaukee. After honing his craft at a family-run Italian restaurant in Wisconsin, he moved to Naples, Fla., and labored together with his cousin Vincenzo Betulia, chef and accomplice at Campagna Hospitality Group.
Frank Pullara
“I helped him open up three eating places, and we have been on our fourth once I was over there with him,” Pullara says. “Certainly one of my predominant enterprise companions right here, he really gave me my first alternative in Wisconsin as an govt chef. … Him and I have been all the time speaking and nonetheless getting collectively in any case these years, and he began speaking about eager to open a restaurant.”
That’s when Pullara and his household determined to maneuver to Franklin. In creating that first place of his personal, he needed to verify the love for the craft and family-oriented feeling got here by way of — not solely in every dish, however in the entire expertise for a buyer.
“I really need my workers to embrace what we’re doing within the meals and the wine program and the cocktails,” Pullara says. “So once they do go to a desk, they’re standing behind what we’re making an attempt to construct and develop right here. I simply need them to have that keenness and that vitality of what we’re making an attempt to do. … Anybody can put salt and pepper in a dish, however in the event you don’t put your all into it, it’s not going to indicate and style that good.”
Whereas Pullara has gotten good on the enterprise, he’s fast to level out what it’s all about for him.
“I’m one that also likes to prepare dinner and get soiled and seize a chef knife and get behind the reducing board,” he says. “That’s who I’m. That’s what I’m. I’m a prepare dinner. Sure, I’m an proprietor and I personal eating places now and have quite a lot of staff and stuff like that. However my first ardour and love is cooking.”
This Folks Problem profile is in partnership with our sister publication the Williamson Scene. Go to williamsonscene.com.
