At June, Sean Brock Recommits to the Maximalist Tasting Menu | Eater Nashville

"Located in East Nashville’s McFerrin Park neighborhood above Audrey on Meridian Street, I view June as Sean Brock’s most ambitious, full-circle return to the maximalist tasting experiences that made him famous: a 20-plus-course, two- to three-hour dinner divided into five “acts” (canapés, water, land, dessert, and petit fours) that emphasizes “extreme seasonality,” with menus changed twice a season and a plan to produce eight menus a year. The roughly 32-seat dining room (about nine tables) is a minimalist, earnest space of dark wood and spa-like touches centered around an open kitchen with a custom-built stove, and its visible R&D lab — a compact test kitchen outfitted to modify, infuse, and control ingredients — plays a huge role in developing menus and using organic, biodynamic, and sustainable products at their peak. Brock honors his Appalachian-born maternal grandmother (Audrey was her first name; June her middle) by highlighting Southern products like deer, paw paw, and sweet potato while also incorporating rarer, “extraordinary” ingredients and more envelope-pushing techniques; sample dishes include snow crab with freeze-dried buttermilk and parsnip pudding, uni with sweet potato, spinach, and citrus blossoms, and black cod with celeriac and cabbage. Reservations are $250 per person, with an optional zero-proof pairing for $100 or a regular drink pairing for $180, and bookings are released monthly." - Clair Lorell