How Tinwings Took Flight

The contents of the pot nestled atop the gas flame inside Tinwings’ bustling yet orderly kitchen don’t just bubble, they gurgle. Almost as though the ingredients simmering inside -- the green and red lentils, the celery and onions, the carrots and tomatoes -- have metamorphosed into super-stew, a sum greater than its parts, similar to the beautiful community that chef and owner Lee Ann Merrick has cooked up. She stands beside her creation and lovingly gives the stew a gentle stir with a giant spoon, encouraging its garlic and paprika, sage and turmeric, salt and pepper to swirl about their veggie stock medium and form flavorful friendships with their vegetable companions. Green & Gold Lentil Stew has entered the building. But it won’t stay long.

“For me, cooking is love,” Lee Ann says. “It’s a privilege to get to cook every day.  People come and take my food home and share it with their families. That’s amazing.”

Lee Ann grew up in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s surrounded by cookbooks and absorbed by such TV classics as Julia Child and The Galloping Gourmet. In addition, there was her own mother.

“Mom loved to cook,” Lee Ann recalls. “There was always a soup course, a salad course, that kind of thing.”  With the passion for cooking firmly planted in her childhood, it took root once Lee Ann reached the age of fifty and looked around for something to do once her kids were grown. “I thought, ‘what do I really want to do now? What makes me the happiest?’”

The answer was cooking. It began with a dinner party, one so successful that the menu repeated itself again and again. “I fondly call it the “do over” menu,” Lee Ann chuckles. “The first dinner party was for a friend in 2012. Someone there later called and asked me to do the same menu.  And then someone at that second dinner party asked me to do the same thing for a third time.  And then someone at that party asked me to do the same for a fourth and even a fifth party.”

As for the menu itself, Lee Ann recites it from memory: “Roasted salmon served room temperature with a lemon caper dill sauce (we still have it in the store), artisan bread (which we still bake), confetti corn salad, a beautiful green salad with raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, and fresh dill, and salted caramel bars for dessert (which we also still have in the store).”

Since then, the menu has greatly expanded, but one thing has not changed: Lee Ann and her Tinwings team take enormous pride in accommodating her customers’ individual tastes and dietary needs. 

But catering, of course, ebbs and flows. To create a steadier demand for what was cooking in her kitchen, Lee Ann initiated her Wednesday Tinwings To Go Meals. “We send out a menu every Wednesday for pre-order and pickup or delivery the following Wednesday,” Lee Ann says. “The choices have grown from just soup, salad, and bread to ordering anything we have a la carte.” 

The success of her catering allowed Lee Ann to open in her current location in The Nations in the spring of 2015. A former H.G. Hills grocery store, the building with its original tin ceiling still intact provides the perfect vibe for cooking and for customers. In the space next to the kitchen, there are several supermarket-style fridges stocked with what Tinwings calls their “market favorites”: chicken salad, egg salad, kale salad, quiche, roasted salmon, and artisan bread.

But more than just great comfort cuisine is cooking in Lee Ann’s kitchen: a great community’s cooking too. 

“I have been in Nashville since first grade and married a Nashville native,” Lee Ann shares, “and have forged a connection with the community in every neighborhood in which I have lived: Sylvan Park, Green Hills, West Meade. But moving to the Nations has created an opportunity to connect with a new community, a more diverse community, and a chance to work with St. Luke's & The Nashville Food Project in a meaningful way every week.”

“I feel like we're on the planet to help one another,” she says. “To celebrate life. To laugh. To share food. To connect. My customers are scattered across many neighborhoods now, but we connect weekly because we are a community - even a family. We nurture one another. We care for one another. We laugh with one another. We cry with one another. At the end of the day, that's what's most important: human connection. Oh, and good food of course!”

Speaking of connection, Lee Ann started a cookbook library cobbled together from her own vast library and those donated from friends (Edible Nashville regularly donates books). There’s a comfortable rocking chair set next to a shelf of cookbooks, available to borrow on the honor system. Flip through a few before telling Lee Ann what you’d like to try.  She’d love to hear from you.