Chef Trey Cioccia - The Farm House and Black Rabbit
The Farm House
The Black Rabbit
Nashville’s culinary scene has grown extensively over the past decade with new restaurants opening on a regular basis, adding a wide variety to the mix of dining options available.
Chef Trey Cioccia
And yet, when it comes to exceptional Southern cuisine with fresh ingredients sourced from local farmers, Chef Trey Cioccia’s two downtown restaurants still end up on the list of favorites with both locals and out-of-town visitors alike.
He owns The Farm House in the SoBro section of downtown (south of Lower Broadway) and Black Rabbit in Printer’s Alley, both within walking distance of each other.
“It’s interesting,” Cioccia says, “we get so many people who discover us on the last day of their visit who say, ‘We wish we would have found you sooner!’”
Cioccia is a Nashville-native who grew up with a love of the land and a deep appreciation for those who work it, thanks to his grandfather, a Middle Tennessee farmer. Early on, Cioccia discovered a personal knack for cooking, so after high school, he decided to go to culinary school in Birmingham, Alabama.
“It was the first time in my life I got straight A’s,” he says with a laugh. “I loved it!”
After leaving Birmingham, Cicoccia spent some time in Italy becoming familiar with Italian cuisine before returning home to Nashville. He worked for some other area kitchens, including the prestigious Hermitage Hotel, before deciding to open The Farm House in 2013.
Over the past decade, The Farm House has made a name for itself for its food, warm, cozy environment, and stellar cocktails. Popular dishes include pimento cheese beignets, homemade cornbread, and pig ears, just to name a few. And for a main dish, try the lamb ragu. It’s a personal favorite of the owner.
“It’s super simple braised lamb, it’s got a little fig in it, mushrooms cooked down, and then it’s got parmesan polenta,” ‘Cioccia says. “My wife and I had dinner there recently. Isn’t that funny, I had dinner at my own restaurant. But it was amazing, absolutely amazing.”
In 2017, Cioccia decided to open a second restaurant about four blocks away called the Black Rabbit. The dishes here are also made-from-scratch, using locally sourced ingredients, but the overall approach is a little different.
“We wanted it to be open kitchen and we wanted it to be very social,” Cioccia says. “We wanted people to put their phones away, share food, talk to each other, have cocktails, and listen to some good blues and jazz.”
Black Rabbit is housed in an old building with some unique history. A former attorney for Jimmy Hoffa once had his office here. In the early 1960’s, that attorney later accused the FBI of bugging his office to get incriminating evidence on the infamous labor union leader.
“There’s so much history in that building including it being Jimmy Hoffa’s lawyer’s office,” Cioccia says. “Built in 1891, it’s a beautiful place, and we didn’t want to take any of that away when we built it out. We wanted to leave everything as original as we could.”
The layout provides a relaxed setting to sample items like Cioccia’s famous rabbit rolls.
“It’s served on a Hawaiian roll we make in house, then we do a mixture of Swiss cheese, poppy seed, grated onion, and mustard. Then our rabbit spam is rabbit and pork, cooked like a pate, and that’s taken out, smoked, sliced, and roasted in our woodburning oven.”
A rabbit roll pairs nicely with the restaurant’s signature cocktail called the Devil’s Temptation (made with gin, hibiscus, thyme, and lemon).
And while Black Rabbit and The Farm House are well-known for exquisite southern faire later in the day, both have become hot spots for brunch on the weekends.
“Nashville’s a big brunch city, but if you think about downtown,” Cioccia says, “most of your brunches are in hotels. So, we serve brunch because people love to eat breakfast.”
For more information on The Farm House visit: https://www.thefarmhousetn.com/
For Black Rabbit visit: https://www.blackrabbittn.com/
Both restaurants are closed on Mondays.
