— Il Mulino —
$10 / March 2023
Few things thrill like finding a hidden gem at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. But prominent restaurants have hidden gems, too, and the joy can be just as surprising.
I recently found myself craving chicken parmigiana, or chicken parmesan, or chicken parm, call it what you will. Unfortunately, I found myself craving it in Nashville, and after more than five years here, I had never seen or tasted a rendition that lived up to my expectations.
A quick detour into the definition of the word “rendition,” then we’ll talk about expectations. Dictionarily-speaking, a “rendition” is an interpretation of something that already exists. And chicken parm — let’s just be colloquial here — has been around for nearly 100 years. I sincerely doubt Nashville had an Italian restaurant 100 years ago, since it has so few now in absolute and per capita terms, and so few now in comparison to places where you can order, say, tacos. I am probably exaggerating … slightly (there were about 150,000 people here in 1930, so, ok). But given the dish’s strong roots in the Northeast U.S. (note: not Italy), where it may have evolved from veal parm, any chicken parm produced here is going to be a rendition.
Given its status as an interpretation then, I suppose one can offer Nashville’s Italian-restaurant chefs a little slack. On this, I am not going to. Locally, chicken parm, when you can find it, is approached by almost all * in an almost inverted fashion from what you’ll find in New York and nearby eastern-seaboard cities, from where it originates. In the Northeast, the chicken is pounded, breaded and pan-fried, and served swimming in a pool-sized volume of tomato sauce with so much mozzarella cheese on top, you will never see the chicken unless there’s a cross-section of it on your fork. The chicken parm’s color will be sauce-red in some places, cheese-white in others, and a blended visual here and there as each spills into the other in cooking and in plating. And for sure, you will find brown blisters poking up from the top as well.
In Nashville, being Nashville, the emphasis is not on the sauce, not on the cheese, and definitely not on the three main ingredients eaten as one. The focus — big surprise — is on the fried chicken. Breaded, yes, but most often also deep-fried. It’s wrong and it matters. The oil should be soaked into the bread crumbs, and as such, the chicken’s coating, properly made, will be absent the crust that makes Southern fried chicken (hot chicken or not) Southern fried chicken and not Northern fried chicken, were there such a thing. Which there isn’t.
When chicken parm is typically presented to the diner here, the sauce is an absolute afterthought, as if someone told the chef that it’s not chicken parm if it doesn’t have tomato sauce, but at the same time, the chef just can’t go someplace psychologically where the fried chicken isn’t the star of the show. That would be too daring, perhaps. Or would alienate too many customers? In Nashville, you normally get a dollop of sauce. And the sauce might be placed atop the cheese, of which there will be so little, how would you ever know? You probably will never see the sauce or the cheese unless there’s a cross-section of it on your fork. If you have any expectations of chicken parm here, it should be per the above.
Luckily, however, once in a while, expectations unmet can actually lead to unexpected pleasures. At lunchtime at the Nashville outpost of New York-based Il Mulino, the chicken parm passes almost every test. (Couple of blisters would be nice.) The chicken is fried right. The marinara sauce is tangy and pulpy and plentiful. The cheese is high-quality. (Could they blend the three a little more together? Yes. But I can live.) The capellini that accompanies the chicken parm is perfect, thin as can be, boiled to the exact second. For $23, however, it’s not exactly a cheap eat; do take advantage of the complimentary valet parking at the Hilton Downtown, where Il Mulino is located, so that in effect, since you’re just tipping and not paying for parking, you kinda eat for free.
There is a $10 cheap eat on the lunch menu that you would be wise to jump on, however, and that’s the Chocolate Torta for dessert. In tune with the time of day, it’s not a large offering, and as rich as it is, you could totally eat two. More the reason to savor each bite, then.
Like the chicken parm, the Torta is all about its layers. The bottom is flourless chocolate cake, slightly lighter than the more stick-of-chocolate-butter kind you’ll find in many restaurants (everywhere). This layer doesn’t dominate, none of them do. Next up, zabaglione dark chocolate mousse. Smooth as silk, it’s everything you’d want it to be. A cocoa glaze to coat. And then three peaks of meringue that hint at the marshmallows you melted on a summer’s night, as a little kid, but just a bit softer, a bit lighter, browned, I bet, with a quick drive-by from a blow torch. A slice of strawberry occupies the final spot, mostly for decoration, but you know, nothing’s perfect. Calling it a Chocolate Torta makes sense. There is no one Chocolate Torta out there, therefore this is not a rendition, there is no exemplar to measure it against. It’s an American-American original, fitting just fine in Nashville.
* = If you have $25 to spare, try the chicken parm at Bella Napoli. Runs on all cylinders, but priced accordingly.