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Delicious creations dished out daily

By Alexa Hinton, ahinton@nashvillecitypaper.com

Chef Sean Begin

At Copper Kettle, former executive chef Sean Begin helped turn a sleepy neighborhood nook along Granny White Pike into a culinary standout.

His salads alone were leafy masterpieces marked by flavor layerings, filling and gourmet ingredients, and Sunday brunches were a decadent spread of every Southern rib-sticking delicacy imaginable.

Now, the Boston native's new Grassland area restaurant, Daily Dish, stands to become another food phenom that could transform a dated strip along Hillsboro Road into a hot dinner destination.

"I've had my eye on this place for a while," Begin said. "Grassland, I feel, has a need for something a little different. There's a wonderful Chinese restaurant, a great coffee shop right down the road, but I felt there was a need for a family-style restaurant. I think we fit in great."

Begin (pronounced 'bay - jin') landed in Nashville 13 years ago with a distinguished résumé of esteemed stunts in Cape Cod, Mass., Vail, Colo., and Palm Beach, Fla., where he was immersed in rustic Italian and classic French styles of cooking.

He got his start in Music City as a sous chef at the Capitol Grille, then started and ran catering for Bound'ry before his five-year tenure at the Copper Kettle. He added the technical flair of his past to Southern cuisine to create Daily Dish's fresh and daily-changing menu.

His wife, Jill, designed the restaurant's cozy interior atmosphere of warm, earthy colors and worked with a local artist to design the detailed nuances of decoration, like the plates that hang on the wall adorned with the hand-painted description of each salad.

"What makes this really sweet being here is that we have been in this community for about 10 years, and our son, Jon-Luc, goes to Grassland Elementary just down the road. I like to joke that he's old enough that the school bus can easily drop him off at the front door so that he can do dishes," Begin said. "We feel like we are at home here."

What kinds of foods were you raised on?
I grew up in the Northeast, so lobster dinners on special occasions and fresh cod, fresh steamers, fresh fish. Your staples like corn on the cob. We used to grill a lot pork chops in the summer.
My uncle Ronnie, who was my father's brother, he kept in contact with my family even though my dad didn't. He owned a bakery restaurant. He was a big influence in my life because he had this restaurant of his own and at a very young age it intrigued me. I was amazed by it — just walking in there and going, 'Wow, this is what I want."

When did you know you wanted to be a chef?
Probably when I was in high school because I always liked to cook. I really did. When I was younger I was really into making breakfast. That was fun to me to make things like French toast and omelets.
Later on in high school, I started working at a catering company and my school didn't have a huge culinary program, but they had Foods 1, 2 and 3 — little cooking classes. I had to get into that. Probably about 25 percent of the students were boys. But now I don't know how to change my oil.

You met your wife on the job?
She was the restaurant manager at Capitol Grille and I was the sous chef there. I remember it like it was yesterday. She had just gotten the job and was standing in the dining room with the food and beverages manager, and I was in the kitchen peering out the window going, 'Wow. She's beautiful.'

What did this space look like before Daily Dish opened?
It had been the Grassland Soda Shop, but when we moved in this space, everything had been ripped out. It looked like a garage. We had a clean canvas to work with. The walls were red — candy apple red — and white and the floor was candy apple red. Jill did the colors. The layout of the whole thing was my idea. I wanted a restaurant where people go through a line and order something from the menu or get something off the hot bar or cold salads we make every day.

Your menu is created new each morning. How?
What I like to do with the hot entrees is do something healthy, like I'll do a grilled chicken with some kind of light red sauce and something that is roasted for a really long time like pot roast or pork loin, and then I'll do something fried, like fried catfish or pecan chicken or fried chicken.
The sides change but there are a few things that people want everyday like mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole. I'll do a little sauté and use olive oil for vegetables for the lighter side. Then the salads we do in the deli case change all the time. We'll do a fresh green salad, a spinach salad, some type pasta and potato, always fresh fruit and the Waldorf. I try to satisfy everyone who comes in because I am the kind of person where one day I want a salad and another day I'll want fried chicken and mashed potatoes.

How would you describe your style?
I'd say comfortable food with a twist — with a flair. We do Southern food but also other home-y, really delicious foods from rustic Italian or French countryside or Spanish. I still want to put out a paella. We try to stay reasonable, too, so far as pricing, but I think I can pull it off with a nice paella and saffron rice, a broth, chicken, scallops, maybe some chorizo.

Which dish are you most proud of?
The grilled pesto chicken salad is our best selling. The almond-encrusted goat cheese salad will be huge when we hit the spring and summer because we are talking about mangos and strawberries and a sun-dried cherry vinaigrette. I think it's just a great combination of flavors. I am most proud of the orange-glazed mahi salad. I like how the vinaigrette came out. It has a bit of an Asian flair and I like how the flavors come together with the sweet and the citrus.

What is your creative process?
I've been doing this for more than 20 years, so there are so many things rolling in my head. It's almost like when a musician comes up with a song — you think of something and then one day it flows, it's perfect and you know it is exactly what someone will be looking for out there, and then another day you get a block. Those days where things are flowing, you have to write them down and get in the kitchen working on it.

What is your favorite ingredient?
My favorite ingredient is fresh basil. I get 10 pounds of it a week. I love to put it in the different sauces I make, like today when I do the tomato basil cream sauce, and I make a lot of pesto.

Any kitchen horror stories?
This is the kitchen horror story. I was young — a kid — at the Sheraton Hotel in Milford, Mass. My job was to do an omelet station for a party in a separate room. I was getting all my stuff together and I was really nervous about it. I had these two butane burners, and back then when I was 20 they didn't make butane burners like how they make them now. I had my pots all set up and I wanted to engage the two burners. There are little canisters and you hold a button down to open the valve and free the gas and then you turn a knob to click it on. I didn't line the canisters up correctly. I punctured both the cans but didn't know it.
Four minutes later I turn them on and the whole table begins to light up because the butane had been pouring out. Soon the linen was catching. I started to panic. I tried to pat it out, but it was too big, so I ended up running out of the room yelling, 'Fire!' down the hallway. They had to break the glass and bring the fire extinguisher out.

What is your guilty food pleasure?
I love chocolate. I am all about it. I was at Sam's Club to pick up some stuff, and I don't know why I did this, but I bought one of those big boxes of candy bars like the ones kids sell. I usually try and eat healthy but a candy bar — sometimes you can't beat it.

What would your last meal be?
A New England clambake. That's lobster, steamers, mussels.

Daily Dish
2205 Hillsboro Road
791-1255
dailydishfranklin.com