In most cities, when you think of the best, most authentic, local dining in town, chances are you don’t think about heading to a hotel – any hotel. But that’s exactly the kind of thinking that Executive Chef Brandon Frohne is hoping to change with his new endeavor, Mason’s, a restaurant that just opened in the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel.

With starters like beef tartare, bone marrow, crispy sweetbreads and crab corn dogs, Chef Frohne’s menu looks more like a page out of James Beard’s playbook than the ho-hum hospitality fare we’ve been conditioned to expect.

“Growing up in the South, I understand how much people really love Southern food,” says Brandon, who spent most of his childhood in East Tennessee. “We’re trying to take those classic dishes and really elevate them. I also feel like it’s a symbol of the way Nashville and this city’s food scene is evolving. We want to put out a product that matches up with what’s going on now, while still staying true to our roots.”

That means using technical equipment like a smoking gun to infuse flavor into hot sauce or the Chef’s anti-griddle that freezes sauces and purees on contact. Chef Frohne learned his craft by apprenticing under great chefs, like Nashville’s renowned Martha Stamps, and jumping from one culinary experience to another – sometimes even working for free. Then, in 2012, he established his own pop-up restaurant in town, Forage South, which gathered a local cult following.

This January, a search began for an executive chef at Loews Vanderbilt’s newly renovated restaurant and bar. Johannes Diele, Loews director of food and beverage, explains that Brandon’s culinary creativity stood out from the stack of resumes he’d peeled through for months. Pointing to legendary hospitality greats like César Ritz, Johannes explains that for centuries, you’d go to a hotel for a great meal, but “sadly, most hotel dining has become really bland, and not anything to write home about. Here, we’re wanting to give travelers and foodies alike an incredible Southern dining experience.” In their first meeting, Chef Frohne conceptualized the beginnings of a barrel-aged hot sauce with fresno peppers. With that kind of innovation at the helm, Johannes says, hotel dining could easily make a comeback.

At the restaurant’s adjacent Mason Bar, guests can pull up a comfortable barstool to a stained concrete counter, lit by a large, square chandelier made entirely of mason jars. Barkeeps offer spiced nuts to accompany a long, leather-bound list of regional spirits, select wines and traditional Southern cocktails crafted with house-made tonics, juices and sodas. With hide-wrapped wingback chairs, Mason Bar is as romantic as it is comfortable. Step inside Mason’s or Mason Bar, and it’s clear that no expense was spared to create a refined, elegant dining experience in one of the most unexpected places.

Photo by Ron Manville

After years of hosting sustainable dinners in a shotgun house in Athens, Georgia, the team behind the The Four Coursemen is taking its show on the road with a new venture called Public Domain Dinners.

Launched several months ago with a dinner in Charleston, South Carolina, Public Domain Dinners aims to introduce people in various cities to local farmers and notable chefs, and inspire them to try new things in their home kitchen with locally grown food.

“The whole point of the dinners is to create a menu that showcases the artisans in the town, from farmers and cheese makers to brewers and chefs,” says creator Damien Schaefer, a web developer by day, but a respected moonlighting chef.

Just don’t call Public Domain a typical “supper club.” While not all of these underground dinners match the description, Damien set out to eschew any hipster or foodie vibes. Public Domain’s dinners are meant to be approachable and inclusive, hence the name. The producers of the meal sit at the table with the guests and hope they can help show them the attainability of great eating.

“This is meant to be accessible, inspirational and educational,” Damien says, who referred to Public Domain as an “anti-restaurant” since guests don’t pick their dishes. “There’s a level of adventure to that and a level of surrender.”

This weekend’s dinner in Birmingham, Alabama, features award-winning chef Frank Stitt and will be held at Good People Brewing Co. Each course will feature a beer pairing form the brewery. At 50 guests, it is at the larger end of the size Damien prefers for the intimate dinners. More dinners in other cities (look for these experiences to pop up in Austin, Asheville and New York) will be coming at the rate of once a quarter (initially) to once a month (eventually). Damien recommends coming 30 minutes early to socialize with the other guests and prepare to develop a deeper understanding of where your meal came from. “It’s about the food, the drink and the community.”

In New Orleans, warmer weather and longer days mark the beginning of crawfish season. From March to May every year, Louisiana harvests more than 110 million pounds of the little lobsters, sending them to backyard boils and upscale plates around the nation. Crawfish (or crayfish or crawdads, depending on where you grew up) are a native to the Louisiana coast, where open water provides a perfect habitat for the crustaceans to burrow and grow.

With crawfish season upon us, we caught up with recent James Beard Award semifinalist Michael Stoltzfus, the self-taught chef at the New Orleans’ restaurant Coquette, to learn more about this staple in Cajun cuisine.

Tell us about your move from the Atlantic coast to the Gulf coast.
I’m from Maryland originally, I’ve been here in New Orleans about 8 years. Other than bluegrass music and soft shell crab, there aren’t too many similarities. On the Gulf, I have access to a number of fish, from snapper to cobia to tuna and red fish. There are just a lot more options here as far as seafood goes, and that makes things a lot easier. Also, New Orleans has this rich history with food. We have our own indigenous cuisine that a lot of chefs have picked up on and played with, and now we’re taking it in a different direction, which I think is very cool.

After living in New Orleans a while, tell us about crawfish season.
I know that they say once we get our first thunderstorm, the crawfish start coming. In late February, early March, we’ll start getting really nice-sized crawfish. Then they kind of hit their peak for the next few months. That’s when we really use them because the tail is much bigger. This year it’s been earlier than usual, so it’s a good year for crawfish.

What’s your favorite way to prepare crawfish?
My favorite thing to do is really simple. We just toss crawfish tails in butter, tarragon and country ham, and then serve them on top of some grilled asparagus that we get locally. I think it’s hard to beat.

Why do you feel that crawfish are so important to the culture of the South?
For me, I think there’s this social aspect of just hanging out and having a boil, eating crawfish – that’s what kind of makes it fun. Half of it’s just getting together, having beer and boiling crawfish. That’s kind of my relationship to it, and that’s what appeals to me.

What’s your method of eating a crawfish?
In Maryland, we always had to eat crabs, so I think crabs were probably a little harder to eat. But basically, you twist the tail off, and then kind of like a lobster tail, you push down on the sides, and pull them back and crack them open. And then you suck the head of course.

Roderick Bailey never expected to be a master in the art of couscous. The 36-year-old chef grew up in Memphis and spent nearly two decades traveling the country to learn about low-country, Latin and French cuisine before opening his first Nashville restaurant, The Silly Goose. But with only 800 square feet available in the restaurant’s prime location, he was limited in his options for the menu. After all, there wasn’t even space for an oven.

“I had to figure out what could be executed in this space with absolutely no kitchen equipment,” Roderick says with a laugh. “I thought, okay, I can’t have an oven, and I can’t have a stove . . . what can I do?”

Without fretting, Roderick quickly sketched out an inspired menu filled with creative sandwiches and couscous, a grain that can be cooked with boiling water in just five minutes. All he needed was an electric grill and an air pot, both of which were visible in the open-concept kitchen. To maximize flavor, Roderick filled plates with fresh local ingredients, pin dots of savory purees and drizzles of his signature balsamic reduction that looks more like melted chocolate than tart vinegar. Within weeks of signing a lease, news spread quickly that Roderick’s light fare and friendly price point couldn’t be beat.

But by summer 2011, it was time to expand the operation – both in size and in scope. Sure, the restaurant’s consistent waiting list warranted increasing the square footage, but more importantly, Roderick felt his culinary muscles needed room to stretch.

“For me to not get stagnant and for me to continue to be happy, I needed to be able to cook different food,” Roderick says. “I was getting a little stale, and I just needed to spread out creatively. Now, we’ve gone to a full-scale dinner menu, and I couldn’t be happier.”

Over the last few months, The Silly Goose has slowly added more refined plates like one of Roderick’s new favorites: blackened grouper with lemongrass broth, caramelized parsnips, shiitake mushrooms, brussels sprouts, cauliflower and cashews. But the sophisticated upgrades haven’t hampered Roderick’s casual style – the kitchen still buzzes with warmth and joviality, something that is hard to find in the machismo-ridden restaurant world.

“We are genuinely having a good time while we’re at work,” he says, mentioning that he refuses to wear a chef’s coat or hire people who aren’t friendly. “One of my only rules is to treat people how you’d want to be treated, and I think that Southern hospitality is big part of who we are.”

It seems like doing things his way is paying off for Roderick. Just last week, he was voted The People’s Best New Chef in the Southeast by Food and Wine magazine. And to think, it all started with a restaurant with no oven.

A number of years ago, we first discovered Leiper’s Fork partly by accident when the wait for a table at The Loveless Cafe one Sunday afternoon was two hours long, and it was decided that the time could be better spent exploring the Natchez Trace Parkway.

The 444-mile scenic parkway that ends in Natchez, Mississippi, begins within spitting distance of the cafe on Highway 100. Take in the parkway’s wildlife, forests and magnificent vistas — including from the soaring Natchez Trace Parkway Bridge over State Route 96 in Williamson County, one of only two post-tensioned, segmental concrete arch bridges in the world — about 13 miles to the Leiper’s Fork exit.

Virginia and North Carolina American Revolution veterans who received land grants as payment for service first settled Leiper’s Fork. The village is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and, thanks to contemporary concerned citizens who acted two decades ago to restore it and protect it from the runaway growth in other parts of Williamson County, it is a unique place to visit today. Walking the streets, it’s hard to believe it’s so close to a major city.

The unincorporated village is a hidden gem of Middle Tennessee and features shopping, country restaurants, regular music events and annual festivals. We recommend you start your visit by fueling up at the Country Boy Restaurant perched on a wooded hillside above the Harpeth River. The restaurant offers home-style Southern food, and one of its best features is a large circular “community table,” where local characters and anyone else who cares to join them enjoy conversation over steaming coffee in the Country Boy’s signature bright red mugs.

Be sure to check out the old-fashioned general stores, the farmers market and an impressive collection of art galleries. There’s live music Friday and Saturday nights at Puckett’s Grocery & Restaurant, which you can enjoy with a clientele just as eclectic as the furniture with farmers, artists and the occasional country music star.

As a faster alternative on your way home, take State Route 96 instead of the Natchez Trace Parkway to get an equally stunning underneath view of the arch bridge.