Toast Nashville with Chef Kev D, Alex Belew and Maneet Chauhan

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are powered by Gordon Food Service and I'm excited to have you here on a Tuesday for a very special bonus, a promotional episode today. We're going to be talking about Toast Nashville. This is a fun event that's going to be happening this weekend. You may have heard yesterday on the show, we are promoting also the Tennessee Tasting Sunday night. We're giving tickets away to that event. If you go to the Instagram page right now, you can see a post with Josh Buckley who was on her show yesterday.

01:06And if you go to that page and you can comment on who your favorite episode was, you can win tickets to go to the Tennessee Tasting. Now that is Sunday night. If you want to go to this event, Toast Nashville, it is Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning, you're going to learn all about it in these interviews with Chef Kev D, Alex Ballou and Manit Shohan. And all you have to do is listen and in the middle of this episode, in between the interviews with Chef Kev D and Manit Shohan, you're going to hear me give you the way to win free tickets. I've got tickets to all of the events. So I'm going to be giving away tickets to the Friday night special, special tasting and concert. I'm going to be giving away tickets to the Saturday tasting altogether. So these will be happening and you're going to find out how to do that in between these episodes. So hang out and listen. I think you're going to have a lot of fun. This is a big culinary weekend here in Nashville.

02:07I'm so excited to be a part of it, but let's now jump in right now with Chef Kev D and Alex Ballou. All right, guys, we are super excited here today. We're joined with Chef Kev Dashane as well as Alex Ballou. Now let me give a little bit of an intro here. This is going to take a little while because we've got some pretty fancy people on the podcast today. Chef Kev is the executive chef to the stars. He is also the author of Beyond My Chef Coat. Now he was formerly the executive chef at these New England landmarks, 156 Bistro, Centro Martini and Washington Square Tavern, and as I said, executive chef to the stars, such stars as, I don't know if you guys have heard of these people, but maybe like Garth Brooks, John Legend, Tommy Lee Jones, Tyler Florence, Little Big Town and various athletes from the New England Patriots in Boston, Red Sox.

03:11That's quite the intro. Thank you. I appreciate it. I also cook for regular people as well. That's why we're here today. We're going to talk all about that. We're also joined by Chef Alex Ballou and Alex is the most recent winner of season 21 of Hell's Kitchen Battle of the Ages. You were in the 40 plus team, Alex. Yeah, I was in the AARP category. AARP team. Alex is also the former owner of Dallas and Jane in Murfreesboro as well as, I'm going to throw out their made south meals, man. You did a great job with that. You're crushing it, dude. Thanks. Yeah, it was a wild ride. So Chef Kev D, I have a question for you. If you're a personal chef to Tyler Florence, does it add more pressure when you're the executive chef to an executive chef? It does a little bit, but it's also laid back in other ways. So we worked together on the food truck race for six weeks and I got to cook for him a number of times during that. But, you know, super good guy laid back, not like you see on TV, like a lot of like Gordon, we've both worked with, who's the sweetest man in the world.

04:18You know, those TV personalities isn't always what you see and what you get in real life. You concur with that, Alex? Yeah, Gordon's a sweetheart. I mean, he's just he's hilarious. He's a guy that you would want to sit down and drink a beer with and just laugh and talk shit about people. And I did that with him. I got to have lunch and we had beers and we talked about family and, you know, as his chef expert on Hotel Hell and just like the most down to earth father of five, like coolest guy ever. Yeah, he's a good big. I love that. So I'm fortunate to get to talk to you guys. We're here today to talk about Toast Nashville. There's an event coming this weekend. It all kicks off on Friday. Now, you get you as the guest, if you want to come to this event, you can meet Chef Kev D and Chef Alex Blue in an interactive kind of a setting. They're going to be cooking food. They're going to be meeting people. Manit Shahan will be there as well as lots of other chefs. You've got musical acts.

05:20Chef Kev, tell us what we can expect out of this weekend at Toast Nashville. Yeah, there's so much involved. The best the best way I can put it is just just going to be a party. Right. We've got the chefs. We've got the food. We've got craft cocktails, music, DJs, the whole nine yards. It's at the most beautiful listening room, lounge, analog Nashville that you can imagine. So it's just this really cool boutique food and wine festival in this amazing setting in Nashville. April the 21st, that's Friday. It's all going to kick off on Friday and it's going to end in this beautiful culmination at a epic brunch at Shahan Ale and Masala House. This I'm just so excited. The first night, Friday night, you're going to do tastings. And then the end of the night is going to cap off how. So we have Ivan Neville is going to be doing a full on concert and the music and the sound in this room is amazing. We did Gavin DeGraw and Peter Frampton and a couple of other people. The sound is so crisp. So we're doing like a two hour VIP pre-party with the stations and food and cocktails.

06:26And then it's going to parlay right into that concert. And then Saturday, we have the two tastings, four hours, Chef Alex up on stage, Chef Maneet. We got Kevin Bledsoe, who's going to be doing barbecue, two sessions on Saturday. And then we head to Maneet's Ale House on Sunday morning for brunch. And though like Alex and I have been at events together many times, it's the first time we're going to actually be able to cook together, which I'm psyched about that because pre-COVID, we had some plans to do a guest chef dinner at Dallas and Jane, but those fell through obviously, like everything did. So I'm psyched to be able to actually cook with them this time. Yeah, we've done some stuff in Boston before. I mean, you know, just the chance to make 110 buttermilk biscuits again. It's been so long. So when you guys do these events, when you're up there, you're on stage, you're cooking food, what's your favorite part? Now, Alex, you've been doing a lot of this with your kind of the press tour from winning Hell's Kitchen. What do you look forward to most in a situation like this? I mean, it's really just fun to meet people that are so they feel so invested in who you are. They've watched you from the beginning to where you are now.

07:34They really feel like they know you. And it's it's just fun to be able to meet people that are so excited to see you and to taste your food. I don't know. It's it's a little surreal. It's very sweet. I met a kid last night who was just like he's 13. He wanted to be he wants to be a chef. He's so excited. He screamed when he saw me. I thought someone's arm was getting ripped off like I was I was based in the kitchen. I just heard and his mom was like, breathe, breathe, breathe. But it's just I don't know. It's sweet to be able to meet so many people that are very, very much in love with what you're doing and support you the whole way. Chef Kev, same question. You know, the same same as Alex, I love interacting with people. And I get the same thing from the food truck race. Kids coming up to me in the airport that recognize me from that show, which is, you know, back in the day, it was like people in the food world would recognize you. Right. Chefs and things like that. When you do a food festival, when you have kids come up to you, it's a whole different thing. So that part's exciting. But working with the other chefs is one of the best parts for me. Just to see all these guys at different events all over the country and to be able to cook with each other and talk about what everybody's doing and plating and new trends and things like that. I really enjoy that part as well.

08:45Can you talk about any of the food that you'll be cooking, any of the samplings or tastings you'll be preparing during this event for Toast Nashville? Yeah, so I'm going to do a couple of demos. I have one. It's a sausage and fettel mussel dish with some shandy beer. Really easy to make big batches and have people pick at it and a ginger seared scallop. I think Alex is doing something with salmon. It might be a surprise. He might be able to tell you. I'm not sure yet. Yeah, as soon as I figure it out, I'll let you know. Exactly. But we have all types of food. I mean, we've got barbecue. Kevin Bloodsos can bring in barbecue from Texas. We got Maneets. All three of her restaurants are going to be sampling different stuff. Loveless Cafe, other chefs. So there's going to be all kinds of different flavors going on. And I am so excited for this event. Are tickets still available? Yeah, believe it or not, there's only like six left for the brunch. So get those now. We're almost sold out. But the two tastings on Saturday still tickets for and then there's some still available for Friday night. So toast-nashville.com and you can get tickets there.

09:50That family of six that was thinking about Cracker Barrel. You got plans now. This is your time. Epic brunch Sunday morning. So we're going to do toast-nashville.com if you want to buy tickets right now. And you can go see Ivan Neville on Friday night. There's two separate tastings on Saturday. And again, culminating with that amazing brunch with Maneet at Chauhan's on Sunday morning. Let's talk about some of the sponsors for this event. I know that you say craft cocktails and you say these things are going to be amazing. Who are some of the people and the sponsors we can expect to see providing some of this amazing product? I mean, we got something from everybody. We got John Emerald Distilling from down in Alabama with their whole line of spirits. We got Milagro, which is doing the official tequila. Makers Mark, Jägermeister, too many to name. Gala Wines, Fever Tree with all their mixers. Operation Barbecue Relief is going to be there doing some of their ribs. They got a smoker out back. They're starting on Thursday.

10:52And that's going to go throughout the whole weekend. Pabst Blue Ribbon, few beer lovers is going to be there. Glenn Fittich, Question Tequila, Tullamore Dew. We got, you know, Cayman Jack, Captain Morgan, too many to name. And then for restaurants, we have Tansil Mockingbird, King Tut Grill, Chunot Alehouse, obviously. Purveyors coming up from Huntsville, Alabama. That's a restaurant group that I work with, and it's an amazing restaurant. Loveless Cafe, Sugar Drop Desserts, Butterfly Garden, Get Made Lobster, Blood Sows Barbecue. In the Hutton Hotel, they're also going to do a table. They have a new restaurant opening in a couple of months, so they're going to feature some signature bites from there. Nice. We get to have a sneak peek of the new restaurant in the Hutton Hotel at this event as well. Yep, that's right. Wow. And you get to come and meet Alex Ballou and you, Chef Kev. This is going to be so exciting. It's going to be a fun one. And then also, I should mention that we're doing an auction for charity to benefit the tragedy that just happened in Nashville.

11:58Obviously, we're all akin to that, but we're doing a silent auction. We have chef knives. We have signed cookbooks. Chef dinners, all kinds of stuff that we're auctioning off strictly to give to help out those affected by the Covenant school incident. So that's something that we're trying to really push to help the community as well. I love it. I love it. I'm so excited for this event. It's just going to be an absolute blast. We're happy to partner with you guys on this and really get the word out for what you guys are doing. This potentially is going to be an annual event that you're going to do every year? Definitely going to be an annual event. We're going to we're going to do it at Analog and Manit's places, but we want to grow it in the city and do different events at different venues. We're going to keep the core of what we're doing now, but kind of grow it out into the city every year. So it becomes a citywide event. Wow. Sounds like fun. Yeah. I mean, I love Nashville. I know Alex does, too. And just the whole feel, right? The experience of Nashville, the drinks, the food, the chefs, the music, the bachelorettes, the tons of bachelorettes. If that's what you're looking for, that's the place to go.

13:03But there's just something for everybody. It's like I could sit here and list all the stuff. But like I said at the beginning, it's just going to be an amazing party, right? There's something for everybody. So speaking of amazing party, you're going to come to town. You're going to be busy on Friday. You're going to be busy on Saturday. You're going to be busy Sunday morning. Are you going to get to enjoy Nashville Sunday night? I think yes. I'm not leaving until Monday morning. So I think Sunday night's going to be the night to maybe find a rooftop and have a cocktail. So your Monday morning is going to be a little slower than general. I try to sleep on a three hour flight. There you go. Alex, are you going to be doing anything fun while you're in Nashville? You get away from Murphy's Bro for a little bit or? I mean, I'm probably going to go to Bill's Sandwich Palace if the opportunity presents itself, because I mean, let's be honest, it's so good. Yeah, I mean, I'm in for that. And then, of course, you know, East Side Bon Me is always there too, which I see most about all the time.

14:04I'd like to say, I think I introduced you to that place. Didn't I take you there for the first time? I don't remember. It was one of the first time for sure. We filmed a TikTok right outside of it. Yeah, I was reading a bad review. Well, I wish it was 12 scallops, like 12 fucking scallops. What do you want from me? I just re-released that today on my TikTok, by the way. I don't get on the TikTok much anymore. It's a posting ghost kind of thing. So it's a deep rabbit hole of despair for me to go down. So I try to stay away from it. All right, we've got just a couple more minutes. Chef Kevde, this is a question. What is the thing on your phone that takes you down a rabbit hole or something that you get sucked into on your phone that you just wish you kind of didn't have? Your favorite app? I mean, it's probably Instagram at the moment just because it's so quick, easy and accessible. And food and events and you can push it all out in the same spot. So, yeah, Instagram, a lot of food, a lot of cocktails, a lot of stuff like that is what if I have time to do it, that's what I'm doing.

15:06What is your Instagram handle for people to follow you? It's Chef Kevde1. Chef Kev, K-E-V, the letter D, the number one. Yeah. Chef Kevde1 and Alex, same for you. Just at Alex Ballou. Yep. Wow, you got your full name in there. Yeah, there's not a lot of me's. So there's actually another Alex Ballou who lives in Clarksville. He played baseball for UT. We're not UT, Austin P. And he he was like, hey, man, you want to be friends? We have the same name. You're like, no, there's only room for one. Sure, man. Let's do it. Let's go. All right. One thing we do on this show is the final thought, the Gordon Food Service final thought, whatever you guys want to say to the people listening right now, whatever you want to say, it is your turn. Alex, this would be your third time doing it. So I'll go last. Chef Kevde1, we'll start with Alex because he's already done this a couple of times. If Chef D can think of his final thought, whatever you want to say, as long as you want to say it, take us out, Alex.

16:10Final thought, man, it's going to be a great year. Make sure that you make smart choices. Don't chase money. You chase your dreams. That's all I got to say. Love it. That's a good one. Chef Kevde1. Yeah, along the same lines, life is too short to eat crappy food and drink crappy cocktails. So eat and drink the good stuff while you can and enjoy life, enjoy the experience. Water. And that's a great segue into saying you can eat the best food and drink the best drinks. This weekend, starting Friday for Toast Nashville, thank you so much, Chef Kevde1 and Alex Ballou for joining us today. Look forward to seeing you guys this weekend. Thank you, Brandon. See you soon, man. Thank you so much to Chef Kevde1 and Alex Ballou. I recorded this at my home via Zoom, essentially, and I bought a new microphone. I got everything ready and none of it worked. So the sound is not what you're used to, but thank you for hanging in there. We're about to jump in with the one and only Manit Shahan.

17:14But I will tell you how you get to win tickets. So I'm going to give one grand prize, which is going to be two tickets to the Friday night Tasting and Ivan Neville concert and two tickets to the Saturday night or day, whichever you would like. And then we're going to be giving away many more tickets for second and third places. Here's how you win. All you have to do is you have to go to Nashville underscore restaurant, underscore radio on Instagram. You're going to find the post I'm going to put out there this morning that says Toast Nashville and that promotes this particular episode. All you have to do is comment. You have to like the post. You got to follow Nashville restaurant radio. And then you get to comment with somebody who you'd like to take. Tag a friend who you'd like to take with you. That's it. There's nothing crazy about it. You just got to find that post. You got to hit like. You got to hit follow. And then you got to tag somebody who you'd love to take to that event.

18:15And chances are you get to go. So there it is. That's a great value for you. And it's a way for me to say thank you for you listening to this show. We really appreciate you listeners. But I think I think we've had enough hearing me talk. I think we've got to jump in right now with Manit Shahan. All right, we are super excited today to be joined with our good friend Manit Shahan. She is the president and partner at Morph Hospitality. She's a host on Chopped. She's all over the place. She's a troublemaker. Let's just let's just say it right, right? That's the one. That's the one badge that I wear with, you know, the most amount of pride. That's what it is. How have you been? It's great to see you. It is great to see you too. I've been doing great. Grateful for all the opportunities coming my way. So, yeah, just happy. I guess that's important.

19:17Speaking of opportunities, we have something really cool coming up this weekend. Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, Toast Nashville is the inaugural one. This is the first one. Just spoke to Kev D and Alex Ballou. They are super excited to be there. Tell us about this. How did this happen? I am so excited. So I think this whole started as a brainchild of Michael and Kevin. They just called me. They're like, hey, Nashville, Nashville is such a cool city. I'm like, yeah, it is. And they were like, why don't we do a food and music event? I'm like, why not? So the next thing that you know is both of them are such go-getters. They're like, we are flying into Nashville. Let's meet up and let's figure it out. So it so organically grew in the sense that they got this amazing space at the Hutton.

20:18It's the analog, which is such a beautiful venue. It is a music venue. So there's going to be music over there. There's going to be incredible food. There are a lot of local chefs who are joining. Then, of course, there is Kevin. There is Alex. We are hoping to convince Christian Petroni to join. So it's going to be amazing. I think it's just a celebration of what Nashville is about, which is music and food and some amazing cocktails and drinks while you're at it. There's so many drink sponsors for this event. I was like, man, I would even go so far as to say Nashville is food and music and drinking. The downtown, going to all these different honky tonks and drinking, and I think that's going to be represented really well at the toast in Nashville. Absolutely. And then the fun part is that there are going to be demos. So all of our chefs are going to have demo sessions on Saturday.

21:21So there'll be a morning session and an evening session. We'll be doing all of these demos. We'll have tasting portions for everything. So it's just fun. I think the one thing which all of us have started valuing so much more is togetherness, the aspect that we can actually spend time with each other, and we do not take that for granted anymore. So that's what it's all about. The only thing is that there are limited number of tickets available. So once they are gone, they are gone. And if I was to want to get tickets, I would need to go to toast-nashville.com. I heard when Kev and Alex were just on, they said there's only five tickets left for the epic brunch at Chauhan's Ale and Masala House, which is your flagship restaurant, Sunday morning. It is, I think. Yeah. I mean, and hopefully by now they are gone too.

22:21By the time this airs, they're going to be gone. But it is. I think it's amazing in the sense that each and every chef is going to be doing one course, which represents their style. We'll have these incredible wines. There's this young Indian female winemaker based out of Napa who's got Nidu wine. So she's coming and showcasing those wines, amazing cocktails that our team is excited to create. There is this sense of excitement and fervor, which I'm hoping that we can share with as many people as possible. Now, I asked them this question. When you do these tasting events, what do you look forward to the most? What's your favorite part about doing these events? My favorite part of doing these events is meeting the people. I always say that when I am, usually if I'm in the kitchen, I go out and say hi to tables, et cetera, but not the interaction is limited.

23:22Or even when I'm on television, it is behind a camera. The interaction that you get to meet such incredible people, their excitement, just sharing their thoughts, I think to me is the most exciting part about these events. Now, when you're visiting tables in the restaurant, you don't want to interrupt their meal. You want to come by and say hi, but you want to interrupt. They're there for celebrating anniversary or just dinner on a Tuesday. You don't want to interrupt that. But at these events, that's the time you really take the selfies and do the whole thing, right? It is so fun. I think it's also very overwhelming for me because you live every day. You're like, okay, this is what needs to be done, your checklist through the day. But when you meet people and they're like, oh my God, we saw you on TOC, we love you. Just that validation and that love, it's overwhelming. And it just keeps on inspiring me to work harder and do better. I'm in not even the same stratosphere as you.

24:26But when I go out to eat, sometimes somebody will come up and say, hey, aren't you the guy from Nashville Restaurant Radio? And they go, I love the podcast. And I go, it means so much to me because when you're recording these shows and you're putting it out there, you're just putting it out in this energy into the world. You don't really know how people respond to it until they look you in the eye and they say, I love you. This is great. And it does. It feels really, really good. So it does. And then it's always fun because the people are like, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry if I'm fangirling. I'm like, no, no, no, no, you're doing great. You know, wonders for my ego. I need it. So it's amazing. I love it. So where are you today? Today, I'm actually at home, believe it or not. Just came in from New York yesterday. Did Jacques Pepin Gala dinner, which was incredible. And then I am here for a few days and then I head to Phoenix before Toast.

25:30How many, do you get like miles? Do you have like millions of airline miles? The amount of travel that you do, because I follow you on Instagram and I follow you all over the place. And you are so good about posting when you're on an airplane and just all of the things. I love following you. But you, your schedule is unlike anybody's. Like, how do you keep this up? It's a good question. I just do because there's no other option. But I also, I think the biggest thing is I feel very blessed and I feel very lucky to get these opportunities. And I have a big problem of saying no. Like if anybody asks anything, I'm like, yeah. I mean, even this, like I, Thursday I'm flying to Phoenix. Friday is the dinner that I'm doing in Phoenix. Right after that, I'm catching a red eye, getting back to Nashville. And as soon as I land in Nashville, I'm going to Toast Nashville to do both my demos, like boom, boom. So it is, you know, and then Sunday is our big brunch.

26:32So I, you know, I mean, I genuinely enjoy what I'm doing. If I wasn't, then I would not be doing it. It seems like a lot of fun to go to dinners and demos and constantly just be eating such amazing food. What is your favorite food to eat? If you're, if I was to say, I'm going to cook you the best meal. What is the thing that you would want to eat? I don't, I don't want to offend you, but you will not cook my favorite meal, because to me, it's all about nostalgia. There are two things which I absolutely like. To me, what is comfort food? One is my mom, she makes a potato and fenugreek saute, which like as a kid with fresh butter and Indian flatbreads, oh, that's so good. And the second is Vivek makes this incredible chicken curry, like, you know, spends all of this time just cooking it, roasting it. And those two are my jam. I would, you know, give my left arm to eat those all the time.

27:33My grandmother's roast that she would make. She would make this roast meal. She would make this chicken and rice when I was a kid. That every time I go to California and she makes this dinner, it just, it brings me home. And it's, is it this amazing handcrafted meal? It kind of is from her kitchen, but is it the most technically sound? No, but there's much emotion around eating that food that it just brings it all together. It's so true. It's that one bite and it transports you into being this, you know, eight-year-old, nine-year-old, ten-year-old with no responsibilities. And those are the feelings that you want to recreate through life. So yeah. Well, if you are out there right now listening to this and you'd like to meet Manit Shahan and you'd like to go try some amazing food, listen to Ivan Neville on Friday night, and potentially if you hurry right now, I don't think there's any tickets left to the brunch, but if you want to try and get tickets to the brunch, go visit toast-nashville.com and get your tickets today.

28:41This is going to be such a fun event. Manit, I'm going to let you get back to your life. Thank you for taking time today to talk with me and I cannot wait to see you real soon. Thank you so much. It's always so fun to talk to you. And always a pleasure to speak with Manit Shahan. She's so much fun. Thank you guys for joining us today. Just to give you another wrap-up, Toast Nashville, you're going to have Manit Shahan, you're going to have Christian Petroni, Kevin Deshains and Kevin Bledsoe and Alex Ballou. That's just a few of the names that'll be there. Here's what we're going to be giving away. So if you want to come, we're giving away the grand prize. It's going to be two tickets to the Friday night VIP preview session and the exclusive VIP party with the Ivan Neville concert. This is at the Analog at Hutton. And you're going to get two tickets to the Saturday night grand tasting session number two. That's as well going to be at the Analog Hotel. There's a VIP post party.

29:42There's live music. Two nights of good times. That's the grand prize. Second place, third place, fourth place. I'm giving away a set of four tickets to the Saturday grand tasting session in the daytime and a set of four tickets to the grand tasting at nighttime. So two people will get to go to Friday and Saturday night. And then four people get to go to Saturday morning and four people get to go to Saturday night. Guys, these tickets are a hundred dollars a piece. So you're going to be doing really, really good. This is a really great value. You got to go to Nashville Restaurant Radio's Instagram page. You got to follow us. You got to like the post. And then you got to tag a friend or three who you'd like to take with you. This is going to be a lot of fun. Thanks for listening today. And as always, we hope that you guys are being safe out there. Love you guys. Bye-bye.