Sunday Supper Rules at City House

For some, Sunday evening is merely a school night. The weekend has wound down, Monday looms, and a twinge of anxiety sets in. But there’s a flip side. Sunday offers a final chance to spend relaxing time with friends and family. To savor the remaining sweet moments together. To gather around the table for a casual, convivial and utterly delicious meal: Sunday supper. After all, thoughts about Monday can wait — until Monday.

Here’s the truth: Sunday supper rules.

At City House, chef Tandy Wilson and his team have taken this axiom to heart. For over 17 years, they’ve treated guests to their own version of Sunday supper. A warm sense of community pervades the Germantown restaurant (which, in a former life, was an artist’s studio home). It feels homey — neighborly. It’s not uncommon to see someone you know. The vibe is laid-back, but the service is polished — keys to its enduring success. And at its core is delectable Italian-Southern fare, conceived by the 2016 James Beard Best Chef: Southeast. 

City House’s Sunday Supper menu is distinctly separate from the rest of the week’s fare. Seasonality and sustainability are ever at the forefront, but with a family-style focus on plates to share. Creativity is part of the equation too, employing a “use what you’ve got” approach. The chefs take inventory of ingredients — all the bits of produce and proteins on hand — and start the conversation: What would we like to cook?

Sunday Supper Origins

“In the beginning, it was simpler and more meat-heavy,” Tandy recalls. “Pork snacks, other snacks and pizzas.” But as he established relationships with more local farms (and as more local farms cropped up), the Sunday Supper menu expanded and became more vegetable-driven.

Always a mentor, Tandy has long valued the opportunity Sunday Supper provides for collaboration, giving the young cooks the chance to participate in the creation of dishes. 

“Each week is a new menu,” he says. “We talk about what we have to work with and how to build a dish, layer by layer. It’s the chance to learn something new. I want us to think about an ingredient in all its forms, see the seasonality.”

“Sunday is what I love about City House,” says Bradley Midgett, whom Tandy recently appointed executive chef. “It was my school.” 

Bradley has been a force in the City House kitchen since joining the team in 2013. Over this span of time, he and Tandy have formed a close rapport: how to use ingredients on hand in ways that are creative, whimsical, delicious — and represent the Italian-American-South meld that has been City House’s hallmark. 

For many years, Bradley was in charge of writing the Sunday Supper menus. It’s like a puzzle, he’ll attest, and as it has evolved, it’s become a combination of trial-and-error and tried-and-true. 

The spaghetti and meatballs has become one of those core offerings. Years of fine tuning the butchery, grinding, mixing and sauce-making resulted in a soulful comfort that found its forever home on the Sunday menu. There will always be wood-fired pizzas, but the selection will reflect experimentation. For example, take the buffalo chicken pizza — a test that hit in a big way.

“It’s good to force ourselves outside the City House norm,” says Tandy. “Push ourselves to do more.”

“And we always like to have a couple of surprises,” Bradley adds. 

Creative Collaboration 

City House turns 18 in December. As Tandy has stepped back to give Bradley the lead, he’s still very involved in the restaurant. Foremost, he’s been reenvisioning Sunday Supper by expanding the restaurant’s collaborative network.

“Once a month, we want to feature people who have talent, but are not necessarily chefs,” says Tandy. “I also want to explore the connection of music and food.”

The first of such collaborations occurred in July, with Alice Randall and her daughter Caroline Randall Williams as Sunday Supper co-hosts to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their award-winning cookbook, Soul Food Love. As guests arrived for the meal, the restaurant took on a festive house party feel. 

For the evening’s fare, the pair worked closely with Tandy to create the menu — a mix of City House seasonal favorites and their own recipes, taken from both their current cookbook and their next one, in the works. 

Caroline requested a pizza topped with peaches, country ham, sweet onion and fresh mozzarella. Tandy created one in honor of the First Family of Black Country Music, a marvel that included sweet potatoes, kale, jalapeño crema, peanuts and buttermilk cheddar. Alice’s contribution was a spicy eggplant pizza, balanced with roasted onion, pecorino, goat’s milk ricotta salata, and a drizzle of honey.

Familiar Favorites

One Sunday Supper mainstay is the cornmeal-crusted catfish, which often gets its changeups with accompaniments. During the Soul Food Love collaboration, Alice’s recipe for broccoli slaw, enhanced with raisins and peanuts, was the complement.

You shouldn’t pass up dessert. Pastry chef Rebekah Turshen creates a brilliant array of confections to please anyone. Buttermilk panna cotta with macerated peaches. Lemon almond ricotta skillet cake with sour lemon marmalade. And she offers a sorbet sundae that is gluten-free, dairy-free, and absolutely gorgeous. If you’d prefer something more shareable — and fitting — for Sunday Supper, her cookie plates (buttermilk cornmeal-sorghum marshmallow sandwiches!) are the stuff of dreams.

At the July collaboration, music added yet another dimension to the Sunday gathering, as Alice introduced Tristan McIntosh to the dining crowd. Tristan, who grew up in Clarksville, was the youngest-ever finalist on American Idol, placing sixth on season 15. She has since grown in her career as a country singer, and she performed several songs throughout the evening. Her rendition of Dolly Parton’s iconic song, “Jolene,” was especially stirring.

It’s remarkable to consider the changes our city has undergone since Tandy first opened City House in 2007. As Nashville continues its dramatic growth, City House is still a constant in our culinary landscape, accepting the challenges of staying current, while remaining true to its ethos of responsible sourcing, seasonality and flavor. And the value of community: Sunday Supper rules.