Smothered and Covered in Love

This delicious love story comes to us via Gwinnett Daily Post in Lawrenceville, Ga. Don't miss the slideshow at the bottom of the page.

Downtown Food Court Opening Soon

You may remember an item from January about speculative plans for a food court near the burgeoning Rutledge Hill area. Peabody Corner, located at the intersection of Peabody Street and Fourth Avenue South, will house Apollo's Grill, Blue Nile Cafe, Hunt Brothers pizza, Quizno's and Sushi Q. The restaurants are slated to open between August and October, with some of them offering delivery service in the downtown area. (Click here to see pictures of the space, including its potty and urinals. Neat.)

Pie in the (Midtown) Sky

Pie in the Sky Pizza is coming to midtown, with plans to renovate the former Longhorn Steakhouse at 110 Lyle Ave.

The store represents a return to Music Row for songwriter Kelly Black. As a former staff writer for Sony, Black used royalties from his songs recorded by Diamond Rio, Joe Diffie and Neal McCoy to open his first family-friendly pizza restaurant in 2001 at 1770 Galleria Blvd. in Cool Springs. He and wife Caroline now have a second store at 6917 Lenox Village Drive.

The Blacks plan to remodel the interior of the former roadhouse-style building and add a patio with garage doors. The third Pie in the Sky will have the signature menu of pizza, wings, sandwiches, pasta and salads and will possibly extend its hours and beer list to accommodate the midtown crowd. The new restaurant is projected to open this fall.

Bound'ry Reopens

As of Monday, Bound'ry restaurant is open for business as usual. Last week, owner Jay Pennington closed the restaurant temporarily for repairs and cosmetic work. He added that, while there had been problems with the lease, he did not expect them to result in a permanent closure. The lease is still being negotiated.

Located at 911 20th Ave. S., the Bound'ry opens for dinner at 5 p.m. daily. Bar opens at 4 p.m.

A Whole New Kettle

Copper Kettle Cafe & Catering, the beloved meat-and-three on Granny White, is opening a second store in SoBro. Owners Lana and Jon Robb, who co-founded the restaurant six years ago, are renovating the building that formerly housed Sole Mio.

Copper Kettle will help bring critical mass to the expanding restaurant universe around Rutledge Hill, which recently added Andrew Chadwick's and Crema coffeehouse to the culinary mix. The new larger location will also house Copper Kettle's catering operation.

The Robbs will add garage doors to the building and extend the deck. They will also attempt to rusticize the interior to create a feel similar to that of the Lipscomb-area store. The new Copper Kettle will serve the same menu of Southern gourmet cuisine and will serve lunch and dinner Monday through Friday and Sunday brunch. Right now, the Robbs are considering opening on Saturday, as well as offering beer.

Located at 94 Peabody St., Copper Kettle is slated to open as early as mid-August.

Water Won't Drown Fish Restaurant

After months of wrangling, businessman Matt Charette and Metro have struck a deal that will allow Charette to start work on his East Nashville sushi restaurant without plonking down $42 grand for access to water and sewer.

Charette, founder of Batter'd & Fried and Beyond the Edge restaurants at Five Points, will now proceed with construction on Watanabe sushi restaurant in the burgeoning retail strip of Riverside Village. Charette had previously hoped to open his new venture in May, but was delayed when Metro's water department required a single up-front fee for converting the space from a retail store to a restaurant, which would presumably use more water and sewer capacity.

With the help of the mayor's office, Charette has reached a detente with the water lords that will allow him to pay the hefty change-of-use fee over time. Meanwhile, he hopes the mayor and Metro Council will find a way to amend the prohibitive water tariffs with the goal of fostering restaurant business development in transitional neighborhoods like Riverside Village.

Located at 1400 McGavock—next to Mitchell Delicatessen and Sip coffee house—Watanabe is named for chef Hide Watanabe, who launched Wave Sushi inside Batter'd & Fried two years ago. With a menu of sushi and other Asian cuisine, the 150-seat restaurant is slated to open this fall.

Urban Flats Coming to The Gulch

Urban Flats Flatbread & Wine Co., the Florida-based chain of restaurant-wine bars, is coming to The Gulch. Local restaurant veteran Henry Hillenmeyer is bringing the brand to the Icon, the $100 million, 22-story mixed-use project at the intersection of 12th Avenue South and Division. The restaurant is slated to open by the end of the year.

With a menu of whole-wheat gourmet flatbreads baked in a stone-hearth oven, Urban Flats will serve lunch and dinner and feature live music performances.

The 4-year-old Urban Flats company operates about a dozen stores, mostly in Florida. The menu lists appetizers, salads, sandwiches and small plates such as lamb lollipops, citrus-parmesan-crusted salmon and crab cakes. The signature flatbreads—a twist on the theme of pizzas—includes combinations such as turkey, pear and brie; fig and prosciutto; and steak and Portobello.

Barn Raising

Loveless Cafe is building a barn in its backyard, adding 6,000 square feet of flexible event space for weddings, concerts and other large events. The structure will open onto covered patios and lawns and will be available year-round. As part of the building project, the Loveless will add parking spaces and a new entrance from McCrory Lane.

“One of the challenges we have is putting events into the cafe without damaging the experience of people who are dining in the restaurant,” said Jesse Goldstein, president of TomKats, Inc., which owns the Loveless Cafe. The 20-year-old TomKats, which provides on-set food service for film shoots (most recently the hotly anticipated Hannah Montana movie), purchased the beloved and disheveled Loveless Cafe in 2003 from the McCabe family. TomKats founder Tom Morales led a renovation and expansion of the restaurant and built an annex of shops in the former motel structure.

The new event barn will include a full kitchen and will serve as the central catering facility for the Loveless. Wendy Felts, who formerly worked in catering at Vanderbilt University, has joined Loveless as catering manager. While many events will feature the traditional Loveless repertoire of family-style fried chicken, the expanded facilities will accommodate more contemporary menus. “It's fried chicken to foie gras,” Goldstein said.

Located at 8400 Highway 100, The Loveless Barn is expected to open as early as December 2008. For more information, contact Jesse Goldstein at Jesse(at)lovelesscafe.com.

Bound’ry Closed Temporarily

If you are headed to Bound’ry restaurant in the next couple of days, you might want to call ahead (phone: 321-3043) to confirm that the restaurant is open. As of Sunday, the restaurant was closed. Owner Jay Pennington said he shut the doors temporarily for remodeling and cleaning while he finalizes negotiations to extend the lease on the property at 911 20th Ave. S.

“It looked like we were going to have to close due to the lease,” Pennington says, adding that he expects to work out a deal in the next few days, at which point he hopes to reopen.

The lease negotiation is the latest complication at the popular midtown restaurant, which has been arguing for months with neighbors about the noise levels. With the opening of the new Adelicia highrise condominium tower just across the street, new residents have been complaining about late-night music at Bound’ry and its sister restaurant South Street.

It's So Edisto

The Music Row house that formerly housed Patrick’s will reopen next month as Edisto Restaurant and Sweetgrass Smokerie.

In the main house, the full-service Edisto will feature Southern-inspired delicacies such as fried green tomatoes, shrimp and grits, and pomegranate-molasses-braised short ribs. It’s a formula that owner David Conn describes as “Country meets Low Country.”

On the back porch, the uber-casual Sweetgrass Smokerie will serve beef brisket with sweet chili-garlic sauce, turkey with cranberry barbecue sauce and pork barbecue with a blend of tomato-based and North Carolina vinegar-style sauces. With a decidedly low-brow atmosphere—and a kitschy beverage menu that includes South Paw, PBR and Boone’s Farm—Sweetgrass will have walk-up service during the day and full service at night.

The full-service Edisto will have a wine list and imported beers, but will slum it at Sunday brunch with Conn’s signature Redneck’s Benedict—corned beef hash on a grits knish with a sloppy fried egg draped over the top and a slather of shrimp gravy.

Conn is a former Ivy League professor of music. He spent three years of culinary training in Savannah, Ga., where he developed a repertoire rich in the flavors of the Low Country. Most recently, Conn served as executive chef at Pint restaurant in Chicago before returning to his hometown Nashville.

Located at 1711 Division Street, Edisto and Sweetgrass Smokerie will serve lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday and Sunday brunch. The grand opening is scheduled for July 24, with a soft opening sometime before then. As always, if you get there before us, please report back on Bites.

Green Hills Grille Closed

The following typed sign hangs on the glass front door of Green Hills Grille:

To all the family and friends of the Green Hills Grille,

It is a with a heavy heart that we must inform you that after 18 years of service we will be closing as of today. Over the past two decades, we have loved participating and serving this area. You have all been like family to us. Thank you all so much for the memories.

Sincerely, the Green Hills Grille Family

Located at 3805 Green Hills Village Drive, near Regal Cinemas, Green Hills Grille was founded in 1990 by Phil Hickey, a co-founder of Cooker restaurants. The original Santa Fe-style restaurant was located in the building that now houses Nero's Grille. In 1994, the restaurant was acquired by Applebee's International, along with Rio Bravo Cantinas.

Four years later, Abe Gustin Jr. and sons Greg Gustin and Guy Taylor acquired the brand under their Florida-based firm, Specialty Restaurant Development, which operated GHGs in Nashville and Knoxville. Both locations closed today.

No one could be reached at the Green Hills location, but an employee answering the phone in Knoxville said that he came into work this morning and learned that Specialty Restaurant Development had filed bankruptcy and closed both stores.

Haus Blend

To go along with its new pasta boutique, hot dog store and burgeoning restaurant scene, Germantown is getting a new coffee shop. Kat Roos has begun construction on a 600-sq.-ft. space in the ground floor of the Summer Street Lofts, where she will launch DrinkHaus Espresso & Tea later this summer.

Roos and her husband purchased the tiny apartment a year ago when it was a residence. In the meantime, the homeowners' association of the Summer Street Lofts voted to allow commercial enterprise throughout the development. (As far as Metro was concerned, the building was already zoned for mixed-use development.) So far, Roos, who lives in the nearby Morgan Park development, is the first property owner to take advantage of the zoning change.

DrinkHaus will offer Batdorf & Bronson coffee, organic teas from The Art of Tea and local Bravo Gelato. Roos will produce a few pastries in house and will bring in others from Sydney Trading Company, including a vegetarian panini with fig jam made by STC's queen of tarts, Sydney Garrett-Hayes.

Located at 500 Madison St. #103, across from Germantown Cafe, DrinkHaus is now accepting applications for baristas.

Plumgood Offers Free Delivery

Online grocer Plumgood Food has finally 86'ed its delivery charge. The purple trucks will now deliver groceries—including 5,000 brand-name products—without nickel-and-diming you at the online checkout.

The free delivery goes into effect today and replaces the existing $4 fee, which was recently reduced from $8. The change means that, for the first time, you can compare Plumgood prices to supermarket prices apples to apples.

Speaking of which, Plumgood is selling Fuji and Granny Smith apples for 99 cents apiece (and organic Fujis are on sale for 89 cents right now), while Kroger charges $1.99 a pound. Rule of thumb says that one pound of apples equals either two large apples, three medium apples or four small apples. So, depending on the size of Kroger’s produce, that’s just about apple parity.

How do you like them apples?

OutFoxed

Our inimitable Scene food scribe, Carrington Fox, has outdone most of her culinary critic cohorts, taking home the second-place prize for food criticism in our division of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Awards. These winners represent the best of the best in our industry, so don't be takin' your girl for granted.

We'll probably celebrate with some combination of Mentos, Diet Coke and hood-fried egg.

Great work, Fox. We're lucky to have you.

And Now You Otter Go to Louisiana

No sooner did we learn that Otter's Chicken Tenders is opening in East Nashville's 5th & Main development than we picked up this tasty morsel about the fledgling chicken finger chain expanding to Louisiana.

Italian Market Reopens Under New Management

If you drove past the shuttered Italian Market this weekend and feared the worst in this era of frequent restaurant closings, don't panic yet. As of today, the doors are open again, with new management at the helm and a new sign on the way.

Cafe Coco owner Chuck Cinneli recently took over from co-owner Ernesto Schiratti, who had been operating the business alone since business partner Ken Petersen and chef Lee Guidry pulled out in January. Cinneli is in the process of reconfiguring and renaming the store, which reopened today as Cafe Coco's Italian Market & Kitchen.

Chef Paul Nadeau, who most recently worked at Past Perfect downtown, is taking over the kitchen, where he will introduce a new menu of pastas, pizzas and paninis, many of which will be familiar to fans of the 24-hour Cafe Coco on Louise Street.

Long a gathering place for the Amerigo Vespucci Society, whose Italophile members recreated the mother country on the bocce ball courts out back, the reinvented Italian Market will not have the bocce courts. The real estate has been annexed for parking by the neighboring union building. Cinneli said he will move the patio dining to the front of the market. The market will continue to sell imported groceries. Wine, beer and liquor licenses are in the works.

Meanwhile, former Italian Market don Ken Petersen is concentrating on his automotive business, working as a consultant to Ultimate Tire & Car Care as he contemplates his next restaurant venture. Guidry, a former intern of Emeril Lagasse's who breathed culinary life into the Italian Market when he arrived in early 2007, has been working at The Bound'ry for the last month.

Located at 411 51st Ave. N. (Phone: 783-0114), Cafe Coco's Italian Market & Kitchen serves lunch and dinner daily. As always, if you get there before we do, please report back on Bites.

Nick & Rudy's Closes

Nick & Rudy's Steakhouse, the clubby eatery owned by restaurant veterans Rudy Caduff and Nick Nikolaiczyk, closed last Saturday after operating for seven-and-a-half years. “The economy got us,” said Caduff. He said the decision to close came as food and flour prices are putting the squeeze on the dining industry and his longtime friend and business partner Nickolaiczyk is battling cancer.

Caduff, a culinary alumnus of the Opryland Hotel (he served as director of catering for the complex, and Nikolaiczyk was general manager of the hotel's Old Hickory Steakhouse) is now looking for a job. He does not know what will fill the location at 204 21st Ave., which formerly housed Ireland's.

You Otter Go to East Nashville

Otter’s Chicken Tenders, which currently has family-friendly restaurants on Demonbreun near the Music Row Roundabout and in Cool Springs, will open a third location in East Nashville’s 5th & Main mixed-use development in September.

The East Nashville location will be a smoke-free sports-themed restaurant with plasma televisions, a beer-only bar area, indoor and outdoor seating and underground parking.

5th & Main, developed by The Home Company, is a mixed-use development featuring lofts, flats and townhouses. Germantown Café team Chris Lowry and Jay Luther previously announced they will open Allium restaurant in the development.

Founded in 2003 by Talbott Ottinger, Otter’s currently seeks to expand throughout Tennessee and the Southeast through franchising.

Photo swiped from the International Otter Survival Fund site. Relax—the little guy's not on the menu.

Enter Ent

Chef Paul Ent has accepted the position of executive chef at the Pineapple Room at Cheekwood. He begins work in the wooded sanctuary of arts and gardens this week and will be fully on board by June 4.

Ent is a former Marine and self-taught chef whose tours of culinary duty include Mount Vernon Inn in Virginia; Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.; Sunset Grill and Midtown Cafe in Nashville; Pearl’s Café in Sewanee; B. McNeel’s in Murfreesboro, The Riverfront Plantation Inn in Dover, Tenn., and most recently Bridges Café. He fills the position left vacant last fall when chef Darrell Manhold left the Pineapple Room after a brief stint and headed to Wildwood Oak-Fired Kitchen.

Located inside the domain of Cheekwood, The Pineapple Room serves lunch 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. There is a $10 entrance fee for non-members.

Fox Rocks

Just because the lovely and talented Carrington Fox is too modest, I thought I'd pass along the news that the Bitesmistress has been nominated for a 2008 AltWeekly Award from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN). It's a big deal—an annual skimming of the cream (including our sister blog, Nashville Cream) of the nation's alternative press. Carrington was nominated in the Food Writing category for papers with circulation under 55,000.

This gem, cited in the nomination, may have sealed the deal: it's gentle, fair and funny, yet as thorough an evisceration as I've ever read. Her writing looks effortless, but it's anything but: try describing chicken for the 150th time, or finding new adjectives for taste without resorting to the dreaded "scrumptious." In short: heckuva job, Fox.