Q-and-A With Brendan Sodikoff

Brendan Sodikoff, the nationally acclaimed chef, entrepreneur and founder of the Chicago-based Hogsalt restaurant group, is bringing his talents to Nashville.

After training in Paris and working in establishments such as The French Laundry in Napa Valley and Per Se in New York, Brendan began focusing on simple food done really well. He has garnered the attention of magazines like Bon Appétit, which touted his burger at Au Cheval, one of Hogsalt’s 16 restaurants, as the best in the country. His collaboration with RH Nashville continues that same focus, and the RH Café in the new gallery not only offers burgers but grilled cheese  — with truffles — as well.

By the time you started RH Hospitality in 2015, you already had nine restaurants and two Doughnut Vaults. What appealed to you about the partnership with RH? Really, the people, I think. I was contacted by a representative from RH, and they kind of told me the rough scope of the project [3 Arts Club Café] and what was happening, what the goals were — at least at that time — for hospitality, which was very unknown, very preliminary, just kind of thoughts and hopes. I wasn’t really interested at first. It didn’t totally make sense to me. I didn’t understand how a restaurant was going to exist in the heart of a furniture gallery. I politely declined a few times. And a few weeks went by, and they reached out again. This time, they were passing through Chicago to do a site visit of the gallery and just asked me if I would consider walking in and meeting the team and this and that. ... I just really felt like this was a group of people I’d get along with well and it could lead to some really interesting opportunities.

Do you see the restaurant in Nashville becoming a draw on its own — not to say it’s autonomous, but appealing in a way that someone might say, “Let’s go to the cafe and then catch a movie”? Definitely. It’s like a great relationship. They both exist independently of each other, and they are also very much integrated and add value to each other.

Your background is working in very high-end restaurant environments, but you also clearly value doing a burger really well. When you’re going out to eat, what’s your favorite type of food? I eat out more than once a day. Typically, I’m eating out every day of the year. When I travel, I’ll read and look and see what’s going on and make my way around. But my preference is really … any restaurant that is committed to quality and putting something on the plate that is recognizable.

Having French cooking in your background, I understand you developed a pen-pal relationship with Julia Child. Yes, I did! You did [your] homework. I can’t remember how we ended up with an introduction, but I met her in Santa Barbara. I worked as a teenager on a farm in Southern California called Chino Farm, a very well-recognized boutique farm, and she loved that farm. ... I don’t honestly remember [how we met], but I do remember meeting her in Santa Barbara and having lunch with her, and it was just great. I was 16 at the time. She was just an amazing woman, and I think she was a little fascinated with me, that there was this 16-year-old kid from California who loved food already and was kind of enamored by the whole thing. I took the time to write her a letter, and she’d write me back. It was wild. For a couple of years, when I was living in New York and traveling quite a bit, we had a light correspondence that I’m positive was very casual for her but extremely meaningful to me.

Photograph courtesy of RH Nashville