Virgin Hotels Nashville Announces Signature Restaurant and New Chef

Nestled in the wedge between Division Street and Music Square West, right off the Music Row roundabout, the stylish new Virgin Hotels Nashville casts a long shadow over Demonbreun. Although the property has been open to guests since early last month, we still didn’t know any details about their signature lobby-level dining establishment or who the chef would be. At least we didn’t until very recently, and you didn’t until you read the next paragraph.

The new restaurant will be named The Commons Club, and the culinary mastermind behind the project is chef Ryan Lachaine, a young chef who has been lauded in the national press for his work at several notable Houston restaurants and at his own eatery, Riel. The Commons Club will actually be divided into three separate areas: the restaurant’s main dining room, referred to as “The Kitchen”; a watering hole named simply “The Bar”; and a swanky hangout space they are calling “The Shag Room.” All three will reflect the Virgin brand’s playful gestalt and are aimed at attracting locals looking for a unique experience in Nashville, as well as the tourist trade.

I spoke with chef Lachaine by phone after he had returned to Houston from his latest planning trip to Nashville in preparation for opening part of The Commons Club with a limited bar menu sometime in August, with full operations set for this fall. Although he still lives in Houston, the chef was born in Canada of Ukrainian roots. All three of these locations will manifest themselves in some ways on his upcoming menu.

But first, in light of the current state of Smashville, I had to ask the Canadian chef if we could count on him to become the latest avid Preds fan, since Houston doesn’t have an NHL team (yet.) He chuckled, “Oh sure, I’ll root for the Predators,” but then he admitted that he grew up in Winnipeg, so you have to expect that the Preds’ Western Conference rivals, the Jets, will probably remain first in his heart. On the plus side, he shared that he is friends with fellow Manitobans ex-Pred Joel Ward and ex-coach Barry Trotz, so at least we’ve got that going for us.

At Riel, Lachaine has turned heads with his “globally inspired Gulf Coast cuisine,” and he intends to bring that sort of menu to Nashville as well. Before you obsess too much on the “Gulf Coast” part of that and start thinking that The Commons Club will be some ritzy version of Red Bar on 30A, the Texas Gulf Coast is a whole different kettle of fish compared to the Redneck Riviera.

During his tenure rising through the kitchen ranks, Lachaine worked with other acclaimed Houstonian chefs, including Bryan Caswell and Chris Shepherd, mentors who have popularized the melting pot that is so prominent in the nation’s fourth-largest city. This includes plenty of seafood, of course, but cooked with all sorts of Asian influences in homage to the city’s large Vietnamese community. Houston’s diverse restaurant scene also includes Indian, Chinese and Korean restaurants, whose flavors may make their way onto the menu.

Lachaine has chosen Kevin Kobayashi as his chef de cuisine to run the day-to-day operations in the kitchen at The Commons Club as Lachaine racks up the Southwest Airlines frequent flier miles shuttling back and forth between Nashville and Houston. Kobayashi is best known for his work at Ramen Tatsu-ya, a small chain of popular noodle shops with locations in Houston and Austin. You can be certain that chef Kobayashi will also have input into the flavors and dishes on the menu at The Commons Club as he works to execute Lachaine’s vision. The head chef explains, “Kevin and I have worked together before, so I’m comfortable with him. This is my first hotel restaurant working in a corporate atmosphere, so I’m really depending on him, and I’m sure he’ll bring some more Asian influence to the menu.”

For the overall theme to the menu, Lachaine is leaning on his successful experiences at Riel that helped him land this new gig in the first place. “I’m sticking with what I know,” he states. “The management at Virgin has been great to work with so far. I didn’t know what to expect, but they’re letting me be me.”

A big part of who he is is Ukrainian, learning to cook “Old Country” recipes from his mother and grandmother. Thanks to construction and pandemic delays, Lachaine has pretty much already had to scrap the summer menu he had already written and is now working on plans for the fall. “I’ll definitely have some pierogies and borscht on the menu,” he promises. “Food has to have a sense of place and some seasonality, so we’ll have some fun there.” The chef has also spent some time dining around Nashville to help develop that new sense of place and commented that a recent dining experience at The Catbird Seat, prepared by its newest chef Brian Baxter, was “one of the most amazing meals I’ve ever had.”

Now that he knows the bar is set high for new chefs and restaurants in Nashville, Lachaine intends to make his own mark on the local culinary scene. And soon, you’ll know that, too.