St. Louis celebrity chef brings Pastaria to Nashville

• 170-room hotel also planned for mixed-use campus on Charlotte Ave near the 28th/31st Avenue Connector.

A St. Louis-based celebrity chef is bringing his causal Italian concept to Nashville with a location that should open next summer at the OneC1TY mixed-use campus on Charlotte Avenue.

Pastaria Nashville will be James Beard Foundation Award-winning chef Gerard Craft's first restaurant outside of his adopted Missouri hometown and the second location under that Italian concept.

Craft said Nashville has been on his radar for a while.  “It’s a city that shares a lot of the same values as St. Louis," he said in a statement. "We knew that if we were going to expand beyond St. Louis that it needed to feel right, and we feel that Pastaria now has a place to call home in Nashville."

Craft opened Pastaria’s flagship location in Clayton, Mo., about three years ago. He described the restaurant as “town hall” style of dining with a lively atmosphere.  Décor elements will include a pasta window to watch handmade pastas being rolled and extruded.

Pastaria Nashville will occupy a roughly 6,500 square foot ground-floor retail space at the first office building at OneC1TY.

Middle Tennessee's largest orthopedic surgery practice, Tennessee Orthopaedic Alliance will be the anchor tenant of that 120,000-square-foot building, occupying roughly half of the space. Health information management company MediCopy Services Inc. and the Cumberland Center business and university alliance are among other tenants.

"It's an exciting time to have our first workplace environment nearing full occupancy in addition to bringing great food and beverage experiences to the ground floor" said Ryan Doyle, general manager of OneC1TY.

Only one suite with 3,500 square feet of office space remains available on the fourth floor of the 120,000-square-foot building, Doyle said. There's another roughly 2,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor that's already spoken for, he said.

Meanwhile, OneC1TY's master developer, Dallas-based Cambridge Holdings Inc. is finalizing design and construction planning for the next projects at  the 19-acre OneC1TY campus site near the 28th/31st Avenue Connector.

Plans include a 270-unit apartment building, a second office building and a 170-room hotel. "We feel really good about the hotel component we're bringing to the market," Doyle said.

Doyle declined to reveal the hotel's flag, but said it would be a new concept for the Nashville market.

Pastaria Nashville will be the sixth restaurant for Craft, the executive chef and owner of St. Louis-based Niche Food Group. Among accolades, he's The 2015 James Beard Best Chef: Midwest winner, a Food & Wine magazine Best New Chef and Food & Wine Innovator of the Year.

Pastaria’s menu features soups, salads and appetizers, organic pastas, Neapolitan-style pizzas, wood oven entrées and gelato. It will also include staples such as kale salad with creamy anchovy dressing, pecorino, and bread crumbs and crispy risotto balls with mozzarella.

The beverage program includes Italian red, white and sparkling wines, local beers and selections of amaros and an expanding cocktail menu.

The Italian concept draws inspiration from the pasta factories and lively osterias Craft has visited during trips to Italy, including in Naples, Rome, Abruzzo, Umbria and Tuscany.

OneC1TY also has raw food restaurant Avo among tenants at the C1TYblox mini retail district at OneC1TY.

Reach Getahn Ward at 615-726-5968 and on Twitter @getahn.