Photo by Corey Woodruff
St. Louis and Nashville are about to get a taste of each other’s culinary excellence.
James Beard Award–winner Gerard Craft's Gateway-Music City Crossover Pizza Takeovers will bring the cities together in his St. Louis and Nashville Pastaria restaurants (the latter location debuted just last year).
Courtesy of Pastaria
Chef Andy Little
Andy Little
The pop-up series, slated for one "takeover" per month, will begin by bringing Nashville chef Andy Little to St. Louis on Wednesday, March 7. Little is head chef of Nashville farmhouse restaurant Josephine as well as a multiple James Beard Award Semifinalist for Best Chef: Southeast. Chef Little will create a special menu at the Clayton Pastaria location for one night only.
“Just being in another city and certainly a city that’s so close to Nashville—[that night] is going to be really fun,” Little says.
Some items on Little’s menu include his Nashville hot scrapple and pizzas topped with pork roll, beef tongue, and grilled mushrooms.
To create this menu, Little is using “ingredients and flavors that we were working with in the restaurant, and also ingredients and flavors from my background in Pennsylvania. So it’s very much a Pennsylvania-meets-Nashville going to St. Louis in a pizza.”
For dessert, guests can choose from two flavors of gelato: Cope’s Corn and cream cheese with sticky bun streusel bites.
Overall, Little is excited about the crossover series and says St. Louisans (and Nashvillians) should be, too.
“Anytime chefs get to collaborate and experience new things and taste new flavor profiles—and also have to be taken a little bit outside their comfort zone—good things almost always happen from that," he says.
Representing St. Louis in Nashville will be Kevin Nashan, James Beard Award–winner and chef of Sidney Street Café and Peacemaker Lobster & Crab Co. He will offer his Pizza Takeover menu at the Nashville Pastaria on Tuesday, March 13.
