The Catbird Seat

Two young chefs are reinvigorating The Catbird Seat, Nashville’s first and constantly evolving chef’s stage.

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A few courses into a recent meal at The Catbird Seat came a heavy, luminescent white dish.

It was like a sculpture, a curved rectangle set upright—a parabola cut in half. At its center, there was a narrow triangle of white. A fork and spoon arrived, hand-hammered like pieces of jewelry. Pushing the fork into the triangle, the contents were revealed: a smoked bay scallop spread like icing over a creamy center of rambutan (a spikey Southeast Asian fruit) and horseradish. Digging deeper, there were hints of pepper and more smoke.

Complex and multi-sensory in just a few bites, it revealed a lot about the newest iteration of The Catbird Seat. Chefs Will Aghajanian and Liz Johnson, who took their places as lead chefs in February, have put great effort into turning the restaurant into more than a dinner destination: It’s an immersive art installation where the tableware, utensils, music, and minimalist decor are all designed to collectively enhance their exceptional food.

Since 2011, The Catbird Seat has served as one of Nashville’s culinary calling cards—the 22-seat counter-service space has been an experimental launching pad for four extremely talented chefs: Josh Habiger, Erik Anderson, Trevor Moran, and Ryan Poli. (Most have spent time working at Noma, and other Michelin-recognized restaurants.) Aghajanian (27) and Johnson (28), who are engaged, have similar pedigree.

They met working at Noma, traveled to Japan together, and later opened the restaurant Mimi together in New York. In 2018, Johnson was named a Best New Chef by Food & Wine. Like each iteration before, the chefs put out a tasting menu of multiple courses and they themselves are at the center of the stage, cooking, serving, and engaging with guests throughout the meal.

The couple’s vision goes far beyond food.

“I think the size of the restaurant is crucial,” Johnson says. “It’s easy for us to control every aspect of everything. Whether that be the food, the steps of service and front of house, the design. It’s all small enough that we can get our hands into everything, which is cool.”

It starts at the entrance—just inside the main door and up the short elevator ride, there are light and sound installations. Off the elevator, there’s a long, dark hallway where guests wait until the curtain is pulled back on the dining room. These three stages of entry set the mood: Get ready for an experience.

The dining room décor has been stripped down. The countertop has been refinished with burnt red calves’ leather and no artwork clutters the walls. The plates and utensils, like that half parabola, feel like earth elements shaped into form—stone, clay, glass—designed for just one or two specific uses. Most were custom made for the chefs by Minnesota ceramist Mitch Iburg. The utensils were commissioned from producers around the world. And the soundtrack jumps around in genre and energy, from melodic chants to trance-y French hip hop to Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy.”

It's hard to pin down the vision for the menu, Aghajanian admits. He’s the generator of ideas for each dish; Johnson and the rest of the team help him tweak and evolve.

“It’s food that we think is kind of interesting. And where the main ingredient makes it taste better. So, if it’s artichoke we want it to taste like a really good artichoke but maybe in a way you haven’t had it before,” he says.

In most dishes, flavors are revealed in layers. A small bite named simply “avocado, gin, kiwi” arrives on shallow, greenish gray bowl, two slivers of kiwi covering a pile in the center. Underneath, there’s gin gelee and a bit of avocado, but once you pass your fork through, you find that the plate itself is coated lightly in a thin nori paste. Another dish named “banana, sea urchin, black truffle” arrives in a glass orb. Remove the top to discover a thin tuile covering a banana-based Bavarian cream layered with sea urchin. The truffle shows up a few bites later. It’s deeply intriguing and possibly the most polarizing bite the couple puts out.

What to Order

Each meal is a set menu of 14 courses for $125 per person.

Beverage pairings are optional.

The magic of the coursing is that it zigs and zags, so boundary pushing dishes like those are followed by simpler presentations. At one point, Aghajanian placed a large piece of marlin belly on a cutting board before us and carefully slivered off a few pieces, instructing us to eat with our fingers. The aroma was of aged country ham—the underutilized cut of fish had indeed been hanging in a ham barn, imparting a smoky lushness to the fish. It left us feeling we’d been at a pig roast by the sea, salt and smoke mingling on the lips.

Another zag and there’s the body of a stone crab with two pig head fritters perched like ears atop the shell, sitting on a block of ice. A bowl with frozen duck egg and smoked trout roe comes with a tiny, hand-carved wooden spoon that Aghajanian traveled deep into the reaches of Japan to procure from a woodworker.

A few desserts finish out the tasting menu, including an unforgettable baked potato-flavored ice cream drizzled with a burnt juniper resin. Inspired by a cheesy potato aligoté, it’s a head-scratching, sweet and savory combo. Another dessert of passionfruit gel is blanketed by golden strings of enoki mushroom, in a bowl that looks like it was shaped from volcanic rock.

From your first steps in to these last, memorable bites, it’s hard not to believe Johnson: They’ve got their hands on every obsessive detail. And the results are spectacular.

The Catbird Seat, 615-810-8200; thecatbirdseatrestaurant.com