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Valencia Rice Bowl
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Owner Sarah Gavigan and Chef Daniel Herget
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Hamachi
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Sarah Gavigan has a knack for identifyingand fillingour city's culinary voids. Her first project, Otaku South, brought ramen, pop-up-style, into Nashville's collective conscious. Then she gave us POP, an event and restaurant space in East Nashville meant to house her and others' pop-up concepts. (One year in and POP has hosted some of the country's coolest chefs for guest dinners while also providing other budding restaurateurs a place to experiment, incubate new ideas, and play.) Gavigan also has announced plans to open a brick-and-mortar Otaku in The Gulch later this year. And in the meantimebecause this one likes a full plateshe decided to open Little Octopus, which is now the presiding restaurant inside POP.
'It's like one part California, one part Miami,” she says of the menu, which was developed by chef Daniel Herget. 'I missed that style of food from my days living in California. And we kept hearing from so many of our friends that they want to eat that way, too.”
So she brought the name and the idea to Herget and asked him to craft the menu. They call it 'clean eating,” meaning the emphasis is on super-fresh, simply prepared ingredients.
Herget, who grew up in Gainesville, Florida, before attending culinary school in Miami, has spent his career gathering those same sensibilitieshe's cooked in Latin fusion, Mediterranean, and French restaurants and even considered opening a ramen shop before Gavigan scooped him up and brought him to Nashville.
At Little Octopus, it all comes together with a list of dishes that speak to both the clean-eating mentality and Herget's wide-ranging influences. There's the crowd-pleaser of an avocado dish, which is simply mashed avocado that gets a kick from strands of crispy shallot plus sour orange, scallion ash, and cilantro leaves. Hamachi is sliced and served raw with bits of green apple and a hint of truffle. (Herget is sourcing all wild-caught fish in season, so his seafood offerings might change from week to week.) A charred eggplant dish radiates with umami, thanks to the addition of tahini.
Herget also updates classics, like in the lunchtime-only Valencia rice bowl, which is a play on a Brazilian fish stew but without the broth; massive shrimp sit atop a pile of coconut rice with blistered cherry tomatoes peeking out and palm oil rimming the bowl. The farro dish came from Gavigan's imagination: A take on bibimbap, it comes cold with the farro crisped for you and is accompanied by a pile of Herget's vegan kimchi. For all of this, the price is right, too, with dinner entrees topping out at $16another intentional decision for a team that's itching to fill Nashville's food gaps.
'We wanted to do technique-driven food that is not only simply prepared but affordable to everyone,” says Gavigan. 'You could eat here every day and still feel really good. And I do.”
604 Gallatin Ave, Nashville, TN 37206, 615-454-3946; littleoctopusnashville.com