The primary time Anna Watson Carl went to France, she was a school scholar in a study-abroad program. Nearly every single day, she headed to a crêperie referred to as Le Crépuscule within the Latin Quarter for lunch. She ordered the particular: a savory galette, a salad, a dessert crepe and an espresso for 10 euros.
She acquired to know the house owners, and as she was getting ready to return to Nashville, she requested them to share their candy crepe recipe so she might make the sunshine pancake on her personal at dwelling.
“That’s when the primary seed of the concept was born,” Carl says. “I needed to deliver one thing much like Nashville.”
Carl was then 21 years previous and had conversations with the proprietor of the now-shuttered Davis Cookware and Cutlery Shoppe in Hillsboro Village about opening a crepe window at their kitchen provide retailer.
“It was too quickly, too early,” she says now, with hindsight. Life took Carl in different instructions. After faculty, she labored in New York and Pittsburgh. She went to France, the place she studied at culinary college and labored. She wrote a cookbook.
In January of this 12 months, a long time after these conversations with Ted Davis, Carl lastly opened a crêperie in Nashville.
Anna Watson Carl
The Yellow Desk Café & Crêperie is a considerably extra substantial eatery than a window in Hillsboro Village would have been, however with simply 12 seats inside and 12 outdoors (climate allowing), the Eastwood Village restaurant is a small, cozy area.
“I’ve at all times been a fan of small areas, as a result of I really feel like that brings this diploma of intimacy that you simply don’t really feel in an enormous, sprawling restaurant,” Carl says.
Carl and her husband Brandon Carl moved again to Nashville in 2018 with a toddler and a brand new child. Carl spent many months pushing a stroller by means of East Nashville, strolling to the grocery retailer, in search of an area that will be proper for her future restaurant. The dream went on pause, like many did through the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, when issues opened up and her children had been each at school, Carl determined it was time. She had seen an out there area in Eastwood Village, dwelling to Kinda Collected and the Switchyards coworking area. Whereas there have been just a few different empty storefronts in Eastwood Village — a mixed-use growth in a former chapel — Carl noticed the potential for a buzzy neighborhood gathering place.
“It was walkable,” Carl says. “I cherished it. It had that patio area. It simply — it felt actually proper.”
However one other restaurant claimed the spot. Then just a few months later, that deal fell by means of, and the owner got here again to Carl to ask if she was nonetheless . Lease negotiations took six months, then architectural drawings and planning commenced. Carl labored from Switchyards and drew on her expertise working in eating places and as a personal chef. “I’ve by no means performed something like this earlier than,” she says. “It was an enormous studying curve.”
The Carls opened the restaurant with out the assistance of out of doors traders. Designers and contractors helped with the “Tetris sport” of becoming every little thing right into a less-than-800-square-foot area and constructing a kitchen from scratch. However when it got here to decor, there was one aspect Carl had dealt with on her personal, and it was non-negotiable — an eponymous yellow desk.
Carl grew up consuming round a yellow desk. It was a cheery, welcoming aspect in her life — greater than a chunk of furnishings, it was a sense. She named her 2015 cookbook after it. So when the crêperie grew to become a actuality, Carl’s mother (who lives in Brentwood) helped discover a desk that would supply the identical vibes for the restaurant. They drove to South Carolina, paid $200 for one they each cherished, and introduced it again to city to color it yellow. (Mother colored-matched with the unique.)
The Yellow Desk serves breakfast and lunch 5 days per week, and is closed Sundays and Mondays. The menu contains candy crepes with choices reminiscent of salted caramel, jam or Nutella fillings, all topped with powdered sugar. These breakfast or dessert treats are possible what most individuals consider after they hear “crepes.” However Carl’s signature is the galette (“They’re really my coronary heart,” she says), which is a savory buckwheat crepe. The buckwheat makes them naturally gluten-free — the dessert crepes, made with a special batter, aren’t — and so they’re folded right into a sq.. They’re cooked a little bit crispier than the dessert crepe. Fillings are within the center, surrounded by crispy edges, not rolled like a burrito. Choices embody goat cheese and leek, smoked salmon, ham and different specials, or build-your-own decisions. All galettes are served with a salad with a Dijon French dressing, identical to those Carl ate for lunch as a school scholar. The menu contains different baked items, espresso, matcha, espresso, tea, soups in season, salads and bread from close by Butterlamp Bread & Beverage.
For each new restaurant that opens after months of fanfare and anticipation and social media sneak peeks, there are lots of extra that go for the soft-launch method, flying below the radar, meaning to troubleshoot earlier than the crowds present up. That was Carl’s plan by opening in January, sometimes the slowest month within the restaurant trade.
“I needed to open throughout a time the place we might simply do a comfortable opening, not do quite a lot of promoting, simply open our doorways and work out the kinks,” she says.
But it surely’s been busy because the get-go, notably on Saturdays. Eastwood Village is booming, with different retailers together with Desert + Vine Botanical Provide and Novelette Booksellers. Switchyards has a rule you could’t eat at your coworking desk, so people who toil there are in search of someplace for a close-by espresso or lunch break.
Carl has employed an skilled workers, however the restaurant can be a household affair. On a busy Saturday, you may even see her daughter clearing plates or her husband and brother washing dishes.
On good days, the entrance patio has develop into that gathering area she imagined.
“It has been so enjoyable on fairly days to see the patio simply full and other people bringing out their canine and their infants … so many canine and infants,” she says. Carl has famous the multigenerational enchantment of the cafe, with clients together with 6-day-old infants and their mother and father, senior residents and everybody in between. Conversations amongst strangers begin on the indoor communal desk.
“Given this political local weather proper now, which could be so discouraging and laborious, it has given me quite a lot of religion in humanity, simply seeing the kindness of the individuals which might be coming and simply the connections being made,” she says. “It actually appears like a candy neighborhood has fashioned on the cafe.”
