While Sunday is a day of rest, or theoretically a day of rest, it’s just the opposite for the cooks at City House in Germantown. On Sundays, they find themselves amping up and leaning into new dishes and techniques while making use of the season. In other words, the team is flexing their culinary muscles.
Since the earliest days at City House, which opened in 2007, chef-owner Tandy Wilson has stirred things up on Sunday, 86ing the regular weekly menu in favor an improvised roster leveraging seasonal ingredients and creativity à la minute. Modeled after an Italian Sunday family feast, City House’s seventh-day offerings include seven or eight starters, six pizzas and three main dishes, featuring a fish, a vegetarian dish and meatballs. Always meatballs. And sharing is encouraged.
The weekly routine lures a loyal following, with familiar faces showing up on Sundays to see what’s new at the Germantown landmark, where Chef Tandy received the James Beard Award for best chef in the Southeast in 2016. But as much as Sunday Supper is an opportunity for diners to shuffle things up, it allows the kitchen team to exercise culinary and creative muscles that strengthen the restaurant over the long haul.
“I wouldn’t be where I am without Sunday Supper,” says executive chef Brad Midgett, who joined City House in 2012 and now shares with Tandy the task of drafting the Sunday menu. “It’s a privilege to work on Sundays, because it’s an accelerated opportunity to learn, setting up new stations and seeing new dishes.”
Writing the menu starts with a stroll through the larder to see what’s on hand at the end of the week. If it’s corn season, for example, expect variations on corn—maybe grilled cob cross sections and a setup of corn, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and jalapeño mayonnaise with grilled octopus. Or if a farm has a small harvest of an intriguing ingredient that’s not enough volume to sustain an actual ongoing menu feature, Sunday is a moment to experiment with it.
Or maybe Sunday is a time to bring back an old favorite. Either way, it’s a chance for the kitchen to play around and for younger members of the team to stretch their skills when it’s their turn to recommend dishes.
“The true value of Sunday Supper is in developing cooks,” Brad says. “It’s an opportunity to let them get experience and build confidence, with Tandy’s guidance. It’s so much fun to have that creative exercise to allow young cooks thrive. Sunday Supper holds a very special place for me, for sure.”
We wrangled Brad into writing down his meatball recipe, perfect for Sunday suppers all fall.
