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Sam Angel Photography
Living in a city like Nashville, where fried chicken, pulled pork, ribs, and biscuits get so much play, it’s hard not to crave other styles of food.
The light, citrus-flecked flavors of the Mediterranean. The charred, pepper-flavored heat of Mexican. One that’s been too-long underrepresented in town is Middle Eastern, an aromatic, spice-forward cuisine that emphasizes grains and vegetables.
Chef Hrant Arakelian was born in Lebanon, but his family moved to Nashville when he was about 8 or 9. Growing up, and in the time since, most of the Middle Eastern food Arakelian had access to was eaten at home with his family—he fondly remembers huge Lebanese feasts around every holiday, his father and grandmother both talented cooks. His love of Middle Eastern food and Arab flavors, he says, is what prompted him to open his new restaurant Lyra, where he serves modern Middle Eastern food.
“I don’t think Nashville really had anything like it,” he says.
As a chef, Arakelian has done the rounds in Nashville—from Sunset Grill and Flyte to Holland House and Butchertown Hall, plus a few integral stints working under chef Deb Paquette, most recently at Etch. At every stop along the way, he says, he wanted to play with those flavors he remembered and loved. So, he tested Middle Eastern dishes, inserting them into the menus where they fit. Over the years, all of it became research and development for Lyra. Finally, when the former Holland House space opened up last fall, the timing was right.
Arakelian runs Lyra with his wife, Liz Endicott, a long-time bartender and manager who worked for years at both Lockeland Tables and F. Scott’s. With the help of East Nashville’s Lyne Interiors, they revamped the cozy East Nashville space, removing the middle bar and risers to open up the room, and added an extension to the kitchen that includes a wood-fired oven framed in tiling. Now, with comforting green hues, concrete floors, and ornate tiling around the bar, it’s welcoming and well suited to its cuisine.
Arakelian’s interpretation of modern Middle Eastern food means that he’s taking the flavors and concepts of very classic Middle Eastern dishes but updating them with local ingredients and presenting in elegant ways. Broken down by breads, snacks, and dishes, much of the menu is snack-sized and meant-to-be-shared, with the exception of about four main dishes, which are modestly sized. Many of Lyra’s dishes involve the wood-fired oven, including the breads, like the cauliflower lahmachun, which is like a flattened pita spread with a puree of cauliflower, red onion, and loads of lemon. Of the main dishes, a sumac-scented half chicken is roasted with red onions in the oven; under the snack list, the baba ganoush, or eggplant, gets charred in its skin prior to service.
WHAT TO ORDER:
- Cauliflower lahmachun, $7
- Hummus with lamb merguez, $9
- Carrot kibbeh, $8
- Baba ganoush, $12
- Half chicken musakhan, $24
You’ll see familiar items, like an addictive hummus (it’s so good you will ask him to package it for you), that arrives with puffy pillows of pita that steam aromatically when you tear off a piece. Try it with the lamb merguez for some lip-tingling spice. Lamb kefta are skewered, oblong meatballs, a riff on Middle Eastern street food that’s served over a leafy salad with slivers of red onion.
On the more modern end is the carrot kibbeh, a vegan version of the traditional raw beef dish, with carrots gently cooked and finely diced, then shaped into a small pile and dusted with spices. Long leaves of romaine are served with it for a refreshingly aromatic twist on the lettuce wrap.
Main plates to zero in on are the market fish, which Arakelian dusts in chickpea flour and fries to create a puffy, crisped crust. Served with a citrus fennel salad, it’s like the fried fish and slaw you ate this summer at the beach. Grilled hanger steak gets a side of chopped cauliflower, yellowed by the African berbere spice.
Endicott’s beverage list allows for even more discovery. The wine list includes a few delightful Middle Eastern wines, including a $9 Turkish red blend; Endicott hopes to bring in more options from the region in time. For the cocktails, she gently incorporates like-minded flavors to complement the food, like dashing za’atar-infused simple syrup with vodka and vermouth in the Ursula cocktail. Behind the scenes, Endicott is also making some of the desserts, like the summer’s hit, a pistachio ice cream sandwich on sesame tahini cookies.
Pulling from the food and traditions Arakelian remembers from his own childhood, he and Endicott have given Lyra a sense of familiarity—from the service to the heart in each dish, you can feel that it’s a family-run restaurant. The fact that it’s also bringing some much-needed Middle Eastern flavor to our city’s food scene is just the icing on the honeyed cake.
935 West Eastland Ave, 615-928-8040; lyranashville.com