Coming across Chef Levon Wallace selling pretzels from a parking lot or his driveway is akin to seeing Jimmy Fallon at Zanies, but such was life during the pandemic.
Finding himself at home with time on his hands for the first time in years, the veteran chef started making soap, and with the lye hanging around he decided to make his kids pretzels. They scarfed them down. Wife Kim suggested having a neighborhood bake sale in their driveway. Watching neighbors and strangers open the bags of warm pretzels was amazing to Levon, who had been operating as a big-picture restaurant consultant.
It was this “instant hand-to-hand interaction” that Levon missed and wanted back. In an an act of “obnoxiously wide-eyed optimism,” the couple started “poppin’ up” together, waking up before sunrise to prep. Their original driveway service quickly transformed to farmers markets and a commissary kitchen before they outgrew their capabilities. “For the first year it was just Kim and I, and there’s a certain amount of grit to making it work by yourself. But when we started outgrowing our original space, we began tapping out and knew we couldn’t grow the business without taking a leap,” says Levon.
They opened FatBelly Deli at 921 Gallatin Ave in East Nashville in late 2022 and still operate it themselves (with the help of eight employees). Core menu options are always available, and they offer specials to keep the sense of urgency and flexibility. “Originally, when we were making menus for the pop-ups, it was ‘What do I want to do this week?’ Now, we have to be mindful of what we can execute.”
And what they execute are great sandwiches. Their linchpin is what is called Dutch crunch bread, a knockoff of a San Francisco classic: a slowly fermented white hoagie bread made from their pretzel dough with a topping of rice flour, sesame oil and sugar. “You get the crunch that is great on a sandwich, but the eatability is much better.” Sandwiched between the Dutch crunch bread are over-the-top combinations that are hard to resist. The cold muffuletta is a big seller, but also the Country Club and the BFG (Big Fat Greek). As Kim is at the restaurant at 4 a.m. baking pretzels and bread, they figured they might as well be open for breakfast; the to-go breakfast sandwich, kept hot in foil bundles, is a hefty combo of bread, custardy eggs, hash browns, cheese and house-made sausage.
All the challenges of starting as a pop-up may make a permanent home seem effortless. “I don’t miss moving my shop around town every time we popped up,” says Levon. “And because we started as a pop-up, we’ve already run into all the surprises. There aren’t many hurdles we haven’t encountered already.” While staffing remains an issue in the hospitality business, Levon and Kim agree that the secret to running their new brick-and-mortar is finding the right people and creating a healthy work environment. “We want our food to be fun, and if your crew can’t have fun at work, we can’t translate that to our guests,” says Levon. “The music is loud. The coffee is strong. The sandwiches are big. The pretzels are fat.” So the next time you crave that pretzel flavor, keep an eye on Instagram, stop by a pop-up and meet some new faces. You may be eating at Nashville’s next hit.
