The following four articles were published over the 2008 – 2009 time period. I was sole author on all but the wine article at the bottom.
Randy Rayburn – Lessons from Nashville’s Impresario of Casual Fine Dining
Impresario – one who organizes public entertainments; esp. the manager of an operatic or concert company.
Oxford English Dictionary
As I munch my way through my new home of Nashville, I keep encountering people who have worked for or trained with Randy Rayburn, so that I’ve attached the term impresario to him. But Rayburn gracefully recasts it as “survival … it’s own reward.” Yet as our interview progressed I found the moniker apt for Rayburn does produce daily entertainment at his restaurants – Sunset Grill, Midtown Café and Cabana – as fully sense-satisfying as any other. He names it “eater-tainment”: delighting eye, ear, hearts and heads with good food in a pleasant setting served by skilled wait staff; as nourishing to body and soul as any film, theatre, opera, or symphony.
Rayburn shared some milestones and anecdotes about Nashville’s fine dining which began in 1969 with liquor-by-the-drink and then further stimulated by the growing immigration of music industry talent. That fueled the elegant, Mobil 4-star rated Julian’s, founded by John Haggard and Julian (Jerry) Baxter on July 4th 1974. Rayburn tells a story from former Julian’s bartender, Barry Finley; when usually absent Mr. Haggard was running the door. Two patrons arrived whom Mr. Haggard tried to ignore until Finley showed them to their usual table. To Mr. Haggard’s inquiry about the “long-haired hippies” Finley replied that they were Dan Fogelberg and Norbert Putnam, Fogelberg’s producer and the restaurant’s largest client.
Rayburn’s own culinary career began in 1975 when, while going to night law school, he quit his day job. His roommate Rick Sanjek got him into Restaurant de la Renaissance at the Continental Condominiums. A formal French restaurant including tableside cooking, Rayburn was befriended by a young Basque man named Jose who taught him everything about the front room business. In return Rayburn taught Jose Liar’s Poker and took him to bars after their shifts.
Then in 1977 Rayburn “got the bug” when he helped open Café Ritz (a second reincarnation of Mary Walton Caldwell’s 1971 original). “The food, the pace, the people – they were the fun part”.
After formal restaurant management training at TGIF’s, Rayburn then went to Opryland first as banquet waiter and then beverage manager; opening the Jack Daniel’s saloon in 1982 he was then asked to turn around Rhett’s. Serving breakfast, lunch and dinner Rhett’s grossed $10million/year but couldn’t get the food out. Rayburn knew that serving 1000 covers for lunch required the right logistics and staff temperament; things turned around when he hired a calm sous chef.
The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, was next. Once finished there he had offers but at 34 he wanted to be his own boss. He also began following the “best advice I ever got … from [a CIA] instructor named Tom Schmitter …‘make ever decision as though it were your restaurant and it will be’.”
Rayburn has always focused on providing customers his version of a Broadway experience. So he’s distinguished himself as an innovator; for example seeking to harness the popularity of “Urban Cowboy” and it’s focus on country music culture, Rayburn convinced the owners of a nightclub he was opening, Cactus Jack’s, to install Nashville’s first mechanical bull.
Then in 1985 Rayburn brought wine by the glass to Nashville, breaking the $3/glass ceiling at Third Coast which is now Boundary. Offering over 40 wines by the glass he transformed Nashville’s Chianti and box wine mentality; by that Christmas selling flute after flute of Dom Pérignon.
Periodically a successful business person approaches Rayburn expressing a desire to open a sports bar or cafe. Rayburn always tells them to first work at an existing bar to learn the business. But they never do it thinking they already know it – a testament to Rayburn’s skill at making a crazy, high-risk enterprise look effortless. The wannabe’s don’t understand that if they don’t know how to fix a dishwasher; or run a bar when an employee is sick; or any other part of the business, then “they’re a hostage not an owner”.
He gives this advice because he did this himself when he returned from CIA working at Mario’s. They had a great maître‘d and waiter team and the owner really knew his customers. After Mario’s Rayburn worked at Tavern on the Row and then went on a streak opening 11 restaurants before finally launching his own first effort, Sunset Grill, on November 19th 1990. He was 40 years old.
The 2200 sq ft of the National Bicycle Shop gave Rayburn a tabula rasa for his own restaurant, so he sold his house and used the net proceeds as start-up capital. If the venture failed he’d only be looking for a job and paying rent, a liberating perspective to Rayburn.
Rayburn chose his old pal Rick Sanjek, who was now conveniently based in New York, as his partner. Working with architect Manuel Zeitlin and acclaimed painter Paul Harmon (Rayburn has the largest collection of Harmon’s art) Sunset Grill opened in 42 days. Rayburn wanted his restaurant to operate at standards comparable to New York or Los Angeles, yet because they opened during a recession, half the menu was priced under $10 and the other half ranged from $10 to $20. His attitude then and now is “if you can survive during the bad times you’ll rise in the good times”.
Sunset Grill thrived; Rayburn bought the property in 1993 and gained full control in 1995. In 1997 he bought Mid-Town Café and then in 2006 he opened Cabana, a more casual spot across the street from Sunset Grill.
But like everyone else, Rayburn’s domain is feeling the current pinch so he’s adapted, restructuring the menu back to classic Sunset: daily specials with lots of local produce and lowered prices. Sunset Grill recently won the Tennessee Department of Agriculture’s first award for using locally grown product.
After the recent spate of chef-owned restaurants Rayburn now sees more ethnic cuisine coming (as in New York and California). And more fractionalization and smaller restaurants is good for consumers and Nashville’s continuing cosmopolitan-ization.
Longer term though he sees the continued, insidious arrival of national chains driven by the suburbanization of restaurant locations as people stay closer to home due to traffic and DUI laws. He told me “fifteen years ago Cool Springs didn’t exist and now there are 200 restaurants … so [suburban] eater-tainment is closer to home.”
Rayburn is optimistic because as the visual and audio arts continue to evolve in Nashville Rayburn sees Nashville diners to expect food quality to rise as well.
He says that
We’re [Nashville food] evolving as an art form and we’re no longer just meat ‘n’ 2 or 3; as Gourmet has attempted to portray. Like most evolving cities we’re pulling disparate elements from everywhere… So the future is diversity not homogenization.
Although he’s working more now, his 16.5 months-old son Duke has tamped down his proclivity for workaholism. He has an exit strategy in mind, hoping to retire eventually and become a customer with his own table.
When I meet talented and hard-working people like Rayburn – who’ve been around the Horn and are still connected to joy – I have to ask them what they would do if they could wave a magic wand. His answer was to be financially independent enough to open a restaurant in a magnificent, renovated old home, sitting on the Cumberland with a sunset view. It would hold a baker’s-dozen tables; a menu that changed daily, prepared by a classically trained chef filled with American innovation; and the Wine Spectator would envy the wine list. A labor of love not profit.
As a diner, I wished that this dream was a reality now, but wondered: would it satisfy the talented, charismatic Rayburn who became addicted to the adrenaline rush of the “high wire act of fine dining”? I can’t imagine working daily in the passion and intensity of a stage like Sunset Grill but Rayburn loves it; “we’re the prelude, the main event … or the dessert (but hopefully not the Quaalude) to an evening out.” Because time is the most important commodity in people’s lives – and time for nourishment, relaxation and entertainment is time very well spent.
Published July 2009
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Country Cooking in the City House: Locally Farmed, Italian Inspired
“Select prime raw materials from the two kingdoms of nature and respect their integrity in the kitchen.”
Pellegrino Artusi from L’Arte di mangiar bene.
When I moved from San Francisco to Nashville lo these 6 months ago my friends gnashed their teeth and wailed that I was being sent into the culinary desert of “Southern food”. But fueled by my Italian American upbringing, where greens, beans, corn meal and pork were as much staples in my family’s kitchens as macaroni, red gravy and calamari, I was (and still am) very excited at the prospect of eating real Southern country cooking. Yet I never realized the close affinity of classic Italian cuisine to that of the American South until I walked into City House this past summer to discover these two culinary worlds harmonically joined. Here I found delicious Italian classics like the pork, white bean and greens soup southerned up by using turnip greens (instead of escarole) and topped with crumbled cornbread; and a southern tradition like baked trout stuffed with Italian standbys of bread crumb, lemon and parsley. It was celestially inspired and comfy all at once.
Just a year ago Tandy Wilson, owner and chef of City House, opened this luscious love letter to the home cooking of his youth; when he would sit in his mom’s kitchen watching her prepare dinner and be roused at 4am on a Saturday to help his father in his food brokerage business. Wilson even credits his parents with knowing his calling before he did; offering him culinary school after he’d worked at a restaurant all through college in Knoxville. Although he now says that “culinary school is like driver’s ed,” calling it “a giant waste of money” the school’s career placement office dispatched him to the world-famous Tra Vigne in St. Helena, California.
Founded by the notoriously tough Michael Chiarello, Wilson worked at Tra Vigne for almost three years (with a six-month interruption at the legendary Terra in Calistoga). One Saturday afternoon a new sous chef was to start and as Wilson tells it “this guy with a shaved head and covered with tattoos walked up to me and, being a good old Southern boy, I stuck out my hand and introduced myself. And he just looked at me like he wanted to punch me.” Wilson’s geniality and professionalism won over the new guy, Nate Appleman, who became executive sous chef at Tra Vigne and is now the culinary force behind A16 and SPQR in San Francisco. Now best friends, Wilson credits Appleman with being the third major influence in his culinary education (after his mother and before Margot McCormack of Café Margot).
Burned out from the 7am to midnight grind at Tra Vigne Wilson traveled all over Italy looking for work and learning all that he could. Eventually he was hired at Café Margot spending two and a half years there and where, in his mind, he really learned how to work with whatever was fresh; how to “bring things together and let me polish myself to where I could walk in here [City House] and make a go of it.”
As much as he loved Café Margot by then Wilson knew that he wanted to open his own place. In early 2007 he was looking at real estate and found the old Alan LeQuire studio/residence in historic Germantown. In his typical openness to whatever the world brings Wilson said “the spot tells you as much about what would go in there as what you had in your mind,” and so he purchased the property and began the eight months of hard work that transformed the place into the stylish yet unpretentious restaurant it is today.
When I first visited City House, I expected an Italian experience but that’s not what Wilson is really doing. He spoke at great length and energy about how the Italian and Southern traditions worship many of the same ingredients and techniques (especially the pig). And he’s adept at rendering the classics of both of these traditions. But like any true artist he then pushes into those two traditions and, with his guardian angels “fresh” and “local” sitting on his shoulders, he crafts an entirely wonderful and new gastronomy.
So for Wilson City House is not about being ignorant of what goes on in the culinary world or rigidly repeating the same recipes over and over like an Ozymandias of the kitchen. It’s about exploring and adapting the archetypal dishes of the American South and Italy in a vital manner using techniques validated over hundreds of years. It’s about cooking meat and greens slowly (his roasted chicken takes 20 – 25 minutes but it is the BEST) and knowing that soup is better the day after it’s made; that leftovers with cornbread make delectable casserole sides for the entrees; that sausages made in your own kitchen will always outshine charcuterie from across the country.
For Wilson eating whatever is fresh and ripe means that it must be farmed or made locally. Of the local farmers he deals with Wilson claims that one in particular, Tana Comer of Eaton’s Creek Organics, is the best he’s ever worked with including all the vaunted boutiques of Northern California. He currently sources everything but onions, celery, garlic and citrus from local growers.
In addition to purveyors who are close to home there is also an emphasis on sustainability. He refuses to be part of the “fishing the oceans dry” movement. Consequently City House offers catfish and trout (and a short season of day boat, line caught swordfish from the Carolina coast), and squid, octopus, mackerel and Gulf shrimp, with preparations varying depending on what else is in season. I was overjoyed to hear this – when you read about whole fish stocks collapsing and yet still see Chilean sea bass (aka Patagonian Sawtoothfish) on menus, it begs the question: What are those restaurants going to serve when the ocean becomes a big blue desert?
Wilson loves Nashville and the traditional foodways of the South and that translates into the professional but laid back atmosphere of the place. It always feels like he and his staff are having a good time themselves and I find that easy lightness a welcome change from the self-impressed cool that most new chic restaurants offer.
Yet what keeps me returning to City House is the food: the tenderest pork meatballs encircled with a velvety and deliciously balanced red sauce (these delighted my mother, an venerable meatball hand who vowed to try her recipe with only pork); a delicious chickpea salad made absolutely bright with mint and slivered onions; and a true Carbonara sauce (no cream or butter) with local Smiley’s country ham and the most beautiful golden over-easy egg yolk on top. I have detested that sauce since I was a child because it is usually a turbid mess with tooth-chipping bits of bland ham. But in Wilson’s hands that delicately cooked yolk becomes the delectable binder of all the other ingredients, coating the pasta so that every bite is full of flavor. That’s Carbonara!
If you haven’t been to City House you must go. There is nothing else like it in Nashville.
Published November/December 2008
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Miel: the Ongoing Evolution of Jimmy Phillips
“Food is the ultimate art. It uses all five senses and goes from the tangible to a memory in an instant.”
With that simple and elegant truth, Jimmy Phillips underscores what he accomplishes five nights a week as chef/owner of the new bistro Miel (mee-el). Appropriately named for honey, Miel seems to represent the sweet culmination of years of thorough and thoughtful preparation. Yet the way Jimmy tells it, he’s just intuitively surfed whatever reality has presented, always on the lookout to learn new skills, and always through the lens of his complete devotion to food.
The only thing Jimmy ever wanted to do was cook. At 14 the Nashville native began cooking at JC’s Jazz Club on Bandywood Drive; a young boy spending his days in the kitchen with owner Sylvia Ciccatelli and her assistant Bertha. They made everything from scratch, down to the mayonnaise. Soon high school became “irrelevant,” he says, “once I could drive and was getting regular paychecks.”
Culinary school, however, was another matter. He loved food and watched all the food television then available: Julia Child and Jeff Smith. After much research he decided to go to Johnson & Wales University’s Culinary School. But his exit from high school left Jimmy’s father pressing him to join the Army instead. This was the late 1980s when “chef” was neither a standard career option nor even in the lexicon for many Nashville diners.
Meeting with the head of the Johnson & Wales program, a retired colonel, swayed Jimmy’s father, and they cut a deal: he’d join the Army if he could get a slot in their culinary program in Fort Lee, Virginia. He scored very high in the aptitude test—too high, in the Army’s estimation, to be “just a cook.” So Jimmy had to train first to pack parachutes before he was admitted to the culinary program.
Graduating top of his Army class while also working in two other kitchens, Jimmy matriculated on scholarship into Johnson & Wales. But he soon realized there was nothing they could teach him. “I’d learned to feed 1,200 people in battlefield conditions,” he said. He left, and while he was working full time for the esteemed Louis Osteen, chef/owner of Louis’s Charleston Grill, he was activated for the first Gulf War.
“That changed my whole outlook,” he said. “Life just became more meaningful.” A young man serious about food became serious about all the other aspects of his life.
When he returned from active duty, his then-girlfriend was at art school in Chicago, and so he called his mentor Osteen who referred Jimmy to the famed Gordon St. Clair of the eponymous restaurant. Jimmy’s start in that kitchen began his long run in some of the best restaurants in America: Charlie Trotter’s, Le Parroquet, Marché, Park Avenue Café and others. His skills and sensibilities made a quantum leap. He learned the exacting preparations of haute cuisine from a short, belligerent Frenchman with whom Jimmy never got along. But that didn’t matter—he worked all the time, in as many cooking styles and disciplines as possible. He even carved ice sculptures for three months—if it was about food he wanted to learn it.
He became enraptured by all aspects of Chicago, especially the art scene, feeling particular affinity for the Surrealist genius René Magritte. Now Jimmy was a food artist, at the top of his game, and could have gone anywhere. But in 1997 his family needed him. Returning to Nashville he dove into constant work: cooking for high-volume locations, banquet halls and casual restaurants. Dreaming of his own restaurant, Jimmy didn’t feel educated enough about the business side of such a venture. Then his prayers were answered when he met Seema Persad, “literally the woman I had prayed for and, I would say, the only prayer that’s ever been answered directly for me.”
A knowledgeable oenophile, Seema had sold her own group of successful restaurants in Seattle and moved to Nashville in 2001. She understood cost structures, staffing strategies and, most importantly, shared Jimmy’s passion for food, having grown up in a food-oriented household of both eastern and western influences. She would also immerse herself in pursuit of her profession, waiting tables at The Tin Angel to learn what she could offer Nashville in a new restaurant. Her abilities and devotion to food perfectly complemented Jimmy’s, and in 2003 a new personal and professional venture was born: 2 Peas in a Pod.
For the next five years they looked for a location, but with the real estate bubble in full swing they worked and traveled. Jimmy did a few stints at some very high-end kitchens, notably the Fat Duck—Michelin’s top restaurant of 2007. Seema worked in real estate and continued to consult with wine collectors. Together they founded a private chef business (chefphillips.com), which they still operate, providing exquisite dining experiences in private homes. This gave Jimmy a chance to actually meet his clientele and resulted in Miel’s open kitchen where diners and chef can watch each other.
Miel opened approximately four weeks ago in the lovely remodel of the historic Johnson’s Meat Market on 53rd Street, complete with a delightful outdoor patio. Jimmy says, “Right now I’m developing more as a craftsman; I want this to be a sustainable business.” Judging by the response of the community and my meal, he has nothing to worry about: classic French and Mediterranean presentations with bright, light preparations using locally provisioned meats and produce.
The night I was there everything was vitally fresh and as much a feast for the eyes as the nose and mouth. For example, the amuse-bouche was a lovely nod to the Southern habit of salting watermelon—three petite cubes of luscious red melon topped with a tiny scoop of American caviar (Tennessee paddlefish). The diaphanous film of buttermilk herb dressing on the greens provided a sparkly hint of tartness. My main course of red snapper was a melting blend of East and West flavors: the fish crisply sautéed yet still sweet and moist, in a delicate saffron buerre blanc, was refreshingly perfumed by its basil garnish. Jimmy’s inverted crème brûlée is a must for any visit to the restaurant—a happy and satisfying reinvention of a classic dessert that is as exquisitely delicious as it is unique.
Seema has assembled a really remarkable wine list, highlighting her assiduous study of and regard for wine as a food, essential to enjoying the food with which it is paired. Her selection is chosen specifically for what is being served that evening, without the artificial concern of having a “balanced” selection of chardonnay, cabernet, etc. She is focused on value, however, and their list displays her talent for finding fabulous yet reasonably priced wines.
Jimmy and Seema are developing a number of expansion plans even as they continue with the private chef business and establish Miel as a key contribution to the Nashville gustatory scene. They are another measure of Nashville’s continuing evolution—into a community that nurtures and sustains the arts, whether you consume that art with your eyes, your nose, your hands or, as in the case of Miel, with all of you.
Published October 2008
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For Thanksgiving Day … a Beaujolais? No way. Way!
Nothing conjures curled sneers faster among American wine drinkers than the invocation of the dreaded, kitschy Beaujolais wine – especially that darling of mass marketing: Beaujolais Nouveau. But what do Americans really KNOW about Beaujolais? For the curious and value-minded wine lover there is plenty to learn and savor from this misunderstood and maligned wine.
Tucked between Burgundy and Rhone, the Beaujolais region has supported vineyards since Roman times. There artisanal winemakers tend the gamay grape, bred from the Pinot Noir and an ancient white variety, Gouais, and use a unique process called semi-carbonic maceration to ferment their juice. In this process grapes in their skins are loaded into cement or stainless steel tanks that hold thousands of gallons. The weight causes the fruit at the bottom to burst their skins and undergo regular fermentation but the bulk of the grapes undergo fermentation with their skins intact due to the high levels of carbon dioxide in the enclosed environment. This causes rapid fermentation, with some wines maturing in months not years, and with very low tannins. The result, in better hands, is a wine that drinks well early, where the character of the fruit and its terroir is distinctly tasted.
Quality Beaujolais wine however can benefit from bottle aging like any Zinfandel or Cabernet (15 – 20 years). In fact certain Beaujolais aren’t really ready to drink for at least 3 years after bottling. And its bad rap in America didn’t begin until the 1980’s when large wine exporters, notably Georges Duboeuf, began to import the first bottling every fall in a festival of marketing; pushing large quantities of Beaujolais Nouveau in artsy packaging amid much hoopla. This wine is very light, quite fruity and sweet, and lacks the body and finish that over the years American palates have come to expect from a red wine.
On my first trip to France about six years ago I visited all the hot spots in Burgundy and Bordeaux which are great. But nowhere in France did I see how much the earth itself influenced the grapes and ultimately the wine as in Beaujolais. Standing among the beautiful hills there was so much pink quartz crystal in the earth that it looked like fresh snowfall. Then in another direction I’d see dark, inky streaks of earth running like lines of black marker across a slope. I learned that those were magnesium rich veins and grapes from that soil would yield smokier wines than their brethren vines in the lighter soils.
Tasting these wines filled my mouth with the resonances of fresh strawberries, cut plums, violets. There was a calm and a little chill in the wine that warmed in my mouth to a full lingering finish. I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough Beaujolais on that trip and it remains the only time I’ve ever drunk a wine more than three or four times after being introduced to it.
So here are some suggestions for great Beaujolais’s to accompany your turkey, cranberry and stuffing. In these bottles you’ll find fruits and berries sure, but also smoky meatiness, pungent herbs like oregano and sage, and a salinity that refreshes the nose and piques the appetite; perfect for the astringence of roasted turkey and the bitter sweetness of cranberries.
2006 Joseph Drouhin Moulin-a-Vent
2007 Domaine Dupeuble Pere & Fils Beaujolais
2007 Georges Duboeuf Moulin-a-Vent, Cru du Beaujolais
2006 Domaine Pral Cuvée Terroir (Au Pays des Pierres Dorées)
2005 Potel-Aviron Julienas
2003 Potel-Aviron Moulin-a-Vent
And remember don’t settle for anything but good Beaujolais – stay away from Nouveau and satisfy your curiosity and your wallet with great, well-priced, delicious Beaujolais.
by Ed Fryer, with Valerie S. Hart
Published October 2008
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