Julia Sullivan Transcript

Kerry Diamond:

Hi everybody. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond. I'm the founder and editor of Cherry Bombe magazine. 

Today's guest is Julia Sullivan, the award-winning chef and restaurateur behind the beloved Nashville spot, Henrietta Red. Julia grew up in Nashville, left to train in some of the country's top kitchens, then came home to open the kind of place she wanted to eat at herself. Welcoming, warm, and focused on thoughtful seasonal cooking. She recently opened a second place, Judith, a stylish spot in Sewanee, Tennessee, and I was lucky to visit last weekend with my friend Libby Callaway. Some of you know Libby, she is the unofficial mayor of Nashville. We had the best meal and wanted everything on the menu. I was in town for the finale of our Summer Tastemaker Tour with Visa and OpenTable at the Frist Art Museum. We had the best time there, we got a private tour of the museum, had a great dinner, and enjoyed a concert by singer-songwriter Jessie Baylin, who I adore. Thank you to everyone who joined us in Nashville, and on all the stops this summer. Some of you might've seen Julia on the cover of People Magazine's special health issue recently. She was on there because she had a rare immune condition that affected her breathing and her sense of taste and smell. Something that's terrible for anyone going through it, but especially for a chef. Through it all, Julia's passion for bringing people together over food hasn't changed. We talk about her health journey, her resilience, and what's inspiring her these days in and out of the kitchen. Stay tuned for our chat.

Today's episode is presented by Visa and OpenTable. If you love great restaurants and unforgettable food experiences, here's something to put on your radar. OpenTable and Visa have joined forces to launch the Visa Dining Collection, giving eligible Visa credit card holders in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico special access to prime reservations and culinary events. We were thrilled to be part of the fun this season with our Cherry Bombe Summer Tastemaker Tour, made possible through the special partnership. We had an amazing time at Lutie's at the Commodore Perry Estate in Austin, Wildflower Farms in the Hudson Valley, and the Ground in Oregon's Willamette Valley, and we just wrapped things up at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville. To everyone who joined us along the way, thank you. It was such a joy to meet members of the Bombe Squad in each city and celebrate incredible women in food. Be sure to check out the other Visa Dining Collection experiences like Friends in Town, a series that pairs local hot spots with visiting chefs. Our friends from Don Angie and Osteria Mozza are getting together on September 30th in NYC. Now that's a hot ticket. Restrictions apply. For full terms and to see if your card is eligible, visit the Visa Dining Collection special events page. The link is in the show notes and on the episode landing page. 

Now let's check in with today's guest. Julia Sullivan, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.

Julia Sullivan:

Hi, I'm so happy to be here.

Kerry Diamond:

Let's jump right in. You've got a lot going on right now. When did you open Judith?

Julia Sullivan:

So I opened Judith in late November of 2024, so just this last fall. We did our friends and family the weekend before Thanksgiving, which was a little bit crazy. But it is on a university campus, and so we were really pushing to get things open and get friends and family out of the way before the holiday season hit and everyone left campus for the holidays. And I think it was the right thing to do, it's gone really well so far.

Kerry Diamond:

So it's on a campus, that's so interesting.

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah, well it is in Sewanee, Tennessee, which is a pretty unique place. It is where the University of the South is, and it is a 13,000 acre campus, and so it's a beautiful forest on the Cumberland Plateau, which is the southernmost part of the Appalachian Mountains. The university is obviously a big part of the town. It's where a lot of people are employed there, but there's also a really great local community and other towns nearby, so there's other things going on, but yeah, they are my landlords.

Kerry Diamond:

So no shortage of employees, you can hire some of the college students.

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah, it's interesting. We haven't hired any... well, actually we just had our first start in the back of house, but about half of our front of house is students. It's funny, a lot of people kind of said, "Well, they're always coming and going, and a lot of the local businesses don't really hire them," but we've had a lot of interest, and I have been so pleasantly surprised to be honest. You hear so much about the generational gaps and the differences in work ethic and attitudes, but we're working with a lot of people 19 to 23 who are so smart, so bright, so funny. It's actually super refreshing, and I've enjoyed it a lot.

Kerry Diamond:

Oh, I'm happy to hear that. Well, as someone who had a lot of jobs in college, thank you for hiring college students. You called Judith an American tavern, why that description?

Julia Sullivan:

Henrietta Red in Nashville, we call it an oyster bar, but it's really an oyster bar and restaurant. It has over 100 seats, and the oyster bar part of the concept was really important to me. But beyond that, we have a full seafood menu and wood-fired oven, and we cook a lot of fish and vegetables. And for Judith, it is in a rural area where the community is ... it has much fewer choices in terms of places to go, and so you kind of want to do something that's upscale-ish and a really beautiful experience and beautiful food, but you also kind of have to appeal to all kinds of kinds.

So you've got 18-year-old college students who might have very little spend and are coming for a friend's birthday. You have their visiting parents, you have faculty administration, and then also community members who have been a big part of our clientele. So we have a smash burger on the menu, but we also have a really beautiful steak, a pasta dish. We're using trout from Middle Tennessee. We're using a lot of local products from up on the mountain.

I think that we wanted to present ourselves as just not too intimidating. Come in, try the food, we'll make you feel comfortable, but the food, I think is beautiful, and somewhat high level.

Kerry Diamond:

Can you tell us a few things that are on the menu?

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah, absolutely. So we have several things that we've opened with, and that have been on since. We've been making our own sourdough out there, because there aren't purveyors to buy from like there might be in Nashville. We have a really beautiful chicken liver mousse that has been a big crowd favorite. We'll be putting on more and more dishes using sort of local seasonal produce.

We're still really kind of learning the market and learning the area, and even connecting with new vendors, but we have a nice tomato Tonnato salad going on, that the Tonnato is made with the trim from our trout dish that's actually a tomato trout. We are just now putting corn on the menu, so corn gazpacho. We have a really beautiful tagliatelle pasta with a variety of local mushrooms, both foraged and grown by our friends at Midway Mushroom, who are right there close to us. A lot of it is a sort of similar vein, seasonal twists on the standard menu format.

Kerry Diamond:

How do you handle going back and forth between Judith and Henrietta Red?

Julia Sullivan:

So far it's honestly been shockingly smooth, and I am really enjoying the contrast. So I've been basically in Nashville Monday to Thursday, and I'm typically at Henrietta Red on Tuesday and Wednesday. Of course, there are exceptions to that if people are out of town, or if we have a special event going on. But then usually Thursday midday I head up to Sewanee and I'm there kind of Thursday to Monday. So I am working a lot, but the ability ... it is 90 minutes away, so not commuting, but the ability to kind of split up my week that way has been a really amazing thing.

I think if I had opened something just across town in Nashville, or I guess this is the way I've always perceived it with people who own locations in different parts of the city, that you're always feeling compelled to run back and forth and then get home at the end of the day. And this has been a really beautiful separation of time, where when I'm out there I can just really focus on that. And it's in a really, really beautiful natural area, so I spend my mornings typically hiking and out having fun with the dogs. I think after nine years of Henrietta Red, it's been a really welcome kind of change of pace, actually.

Kerry Diamond:

And what do you do in the car on the drive? Are you a music person? Podcast?

Julia Sullivan:

I'm a podcast person, I have to say. I mean sometimes music, but usually I'm catching up on content. I like to catch up on politics, catch up on news, sports, Cherry Bombe. I have several that I listen to pretty frequently, so I feel like I always have something.

Kerry Diamond:

Tell us what's in rotation.

Julia Sullivan:

Pod Save America, although I had to tamp that back after the election. Letters from an American is a great one, if you haven't heard of that. It's like a 15 to 20-minute daily synopsis that comes out, and just gives you a really historical glance back at the context of what's happening, and then updates on what's happening currently. I've been kind of into the World's First Podcast with the Foster Sisters lately. Aaron Foster came out with that great show, Nobody Wants This, in the Fall, and so they're pretty entertaining, the two of them. That's what I was listening to on the way home last night.

Kerry Diamond:

Those are some good recos, I love Pod Save America. So you are a Nashville native, right?

Julia Sullivan:

Yes.

Kerry Diamond:

What was it like growing up in Nashville? It's such a different city today.

Julia Sullivan:

It is, it's so different. Nashville was a lot, I think just quieter. I would've thought of it as a mid-sized city, and I think size-wise it still qualifies kind of as mid-sized, but there's just so much more going on here, so much more development.

But it was a great place to grow up. I think we were spoiled, everybody had big yards and everything was very neighborhood-y, and we were always outside in the summer, kind of taking advantage of all that. And now it's changed in a lot of really great ways, but the amount of development that's happened in such a short amount of years, it really does have a different feel.

But I also live in East Nashville now and I grew up in a different part of town, and so I don't spiritually feel like I'm back in my childhood home, it has a very different vibe. But yeah, it's interesting to see, I felt so compelled when I was living in New York as a cook, coming back here and doing something was always ... that was always my goal and always part of my dream, and I think that I will continue to do it for a while, but I don't know if it's where I will end up ultimately. I think that's still up in the air for me, which is exciting. I mean, life is long, why stick to one thing forever?

Kerry Diamond:

We'll be right back with today's guest.

If you love all things Italy, you're going to love the next issue of Cherry Bombe's print magazine. And guess who is on the cover? It's Chef Missy Robbins of Lilia, Misi, and MISIPASTA in New York City, and Chef Nancy Silverton of Osteria Mozza, Chi Spacca, and more, in Los Angeles. Yes, we have two covers, and every single page inside is inspired by Italy. Flipping through the issue is like taking a virtual visit to the country. We have features on lots of Cherry Bombe faves, from Hailee Catalano to Mimi Thorisson and Tamu McPherson. The Italy issue will be out this September. Head to cherrybombe.com, or click the link in our show notes to subscribe or buy a single issue. Subscribers get free shipping. 

Also, our next Jubilee conference is taking place in Los Angeles on Sunday, September 28th. If you're new to Jubilee, it's our conference that's all about connection, community, and celebrating the creatives who make the world of food and drinks so vibrant. We're thrilled to be heading to L.A. and to give the city the love it deserves. If you're a Bombesquad member, be sure to use the ticket link in your inbox for special pricing. Not a member? You can still join and receive the private link.

You left Nashville to go to Tulane for college. Did you know you wanted to be a chef?

Julia Sullivan:

No, I was a finance major. I majored in finance and management, and that was because it was intentional, I will say. I went down to Tulane not really knowing what I wanted to do. I felt very compelled to be a small business owner, I felt very entrepreneurial, but I didn't really know, I didn't ... it didn't ever occur to me to be a business major. And then I think after my first year of prerequisites and stuff, became more and more interested in food, in part because of that insane cultural heritage of New Orleans, and how exciting the restaurant scene was. There's restaurants that have been open a hundred years, and multi-generational families, and so much interesting stuff going on, so much cultural identity. That was something we didn't really have in Nashville when I was graduating from high school, or still, I mean really it's a very different food scene. And so eventually I started working in restaurants and I majored in finance, because I thought it would be the most applicable thing no matter what direction I ended up going in.

Kerry Diamond:

That was smart. Not every chef has a finance background.

Julia Sullivan:

I mean it helps at times and not in others, but I think when I was first opening Henrietta Red and going out, and it at least kind of enabled me to have conversations and know the lexicon and put a business plan together, having a bit of an idea of what financial statements are, and that kind of thing. But easier said than done, obviously everything is easier when you're doing it in practice, so.

Kerry Diamond:

That is true. Did you work in finance after graduation or-

Julia Sullivan:

No, never.

Kerry Diamond:

... Did you get into it ... no. So you never worked in finance? Okay.

Julia Sullivan:

No, that would've been a really funny sliding door though. I went back to Nashville, and I worked for a female chef named Laura Wilson, who at the time was at a restaurant in Brentwood called The Wild Iris, and she was a wonderful cook, also trained in New Orleans, and doing really beautiful seasonal food. I think it was the first time that seasonality and farm-to-table, and she was bringing in stuff from her garden the first time, that really clicked for me. And so I worked there for about six months before I went to the CIA for culinary school.

Kerry Diamond:

That's so crazy to hear you say that, because I so associate Nashville restaurants now, with seasonality.

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah, absolutely, but you know what's interesting, I mean I know Margot McCormack from Margot. Margot opened in 2001, and that's the same year I graduated from high school. And so when I was looking around for jobs and places to work back then, there were not kitchens that would hire me at that point.

And of course now everyone encourages staging and trailing and everyone's desperate for employees. So if somebody walks in the back door and says, "Hey, I really want to cook," usually you'll give them a chance. But I was not even hired at Margot's, and Margot is the first person that I really associate in Nashville with that kind of cooking. Deb Paquette, other really wonderful people, but I think that it's become more the norm, at least in restaurant cooking over the last decade, or 15 years.

Kerry Diamond:

Before we talk about culinary school, how did your family feel about you graduating from college with a finance degree, and not pursuing finance at all?

Julia Sullivan:

I think it would've killed my dad if I pursued finance. I think he also thought it was a smart decision, but my dad is like, he's such an academic. He was a physician, he was an endocrinologist, and what was important to him was education. And so he was very much the kind of person that said, "Do whatever you want to do, but you're going to go to college." So when I started expressing interest in going to culinary school, he was like, "You're going to finish Tulane first." And I'm so glad that I did. I had obviously a ball down there, but heading to CIA after that was the right move for me, and he supported that.

Kerry Diamond:

So CIA is the Culinary Institute of America. And I'm guessing you went to Hyde Park?

Julia Sullivan:

Yes.

Kerry Diamond:

Why did you pick that culinary school, and what was the experience like for you?

Julia Sullivan:

I think I picked it primarily because, at the time my first front of house job in Nashville was working at a restaurant called Mambu, and the chef, Corey Griffith, had gone to CIA, and he talked to me a lot about it. It was also right around the time that “Kitchen Confidential” came out, I think 2000, 2001. And so I was really interested in that, I think it's the only one that I applied to, so that's where I ended up. I had never been to New York before, so that was a big change.

Kerry Diamond:

Wow. Going to culinary school was your first visit to New York?

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:

Oh my gosh.

Julia Sullivan:

And I think I was enrolled there before I even ever went to the city too.

Kerry Diamond:

Wow, okay. What was the experience like for you?

Julia Sullivan:

I feel really grateful that I went post-college, because I had gotten my fun out in excess when I was at Tulane. We were out at Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, and it was a really unique college experience. And so when I went to Hyde Park, I was very studious, I was ready to go.

And the curriculum there is such that you're in class almost all day every day. And so it was sort of like being at cooking camp. It was a fairly rigorous cooking program, more so than academic, but I loved it, and I feel like a lot of people will ask the question, "Do you need to go to culinary school?" And of course you don't. There's so much opportunity now, there's so many chefs that have come from Thomas Keller's Kitchen, Daniel Boulud, Jean George, they're are all over the country in small and mid-sized markets, there's plenty of opportunities to work for great people and cook good food. But I think that not having ever really gone to New York and really eaten in that kind of restaurant, and it was really critical for me to get that kind of exposure. But it also ... I'm a pretty proactive person, I tend to be involved in really community stuff, so the extracurricular opportunities also had a big impact on me and what I did next.

Kerry Diamond:

So tell us what you did next, because you gravitated toward fine dining, right?

Julia Sullivan:

I did, which was an interesting choice. I ended up spending a day, I think, visiting Blue Hill at Stone Barns, because I was involved in some of the student agricultural stuff on campus, and so I ended up there for my externship. And after finishing my externship, I continued working there on the weekends throughout my second year of school.

I don't know, fine dining, it did click. I think the structure of it, it worked for me, working in kitchens like Blue Hill and then eventually I was at Per Se, that kind of is graduate school. You're still focused so much on French technique, and just utilization and all these things that you just keep building on that education. And I think that the structure, it just clicked for me for whatever reason, for my personality. And so I was pretty much head down for several years after culinary school. Learned a tremendous amount.

Kerry Diamond:

What do you think it was about fine dining that attracted you?

Julia Sullivan:

I had been an athlete all through high school, track and cross country mostly, and have continued to compete and stuff like that, throughout my twenties and thirties, and I think that I'm goal-oriented, I think I'm success-driven. I'm probably making myself sound a little more overachieving than I actually am, but I think just that being part of a team, being part of a structure, having kind of a hierarchy to climb and strive for, and learn the next thing, get to the next station. I think that that was a good structure for me until it wasn't.

I spent two years at Per Se and I really had a very positive experience, but at the end of two years I was working on the saute station, which is meat cookery and preparing the sauces. I was there from '07 to '09, which you'll remember was about the time of the financial crisis in New York. And so when it was an extremely interesting time to be in fine dining.

We went from 2007 where there's still this opulence and we're cooking ... we're adding in courses for everybody every night. The private dining is always booked. There's expense accounts, we're throwing around caviar to where we had to shift in a way that really, really changed kind of the fundamental purpose of the restaurant, almost.

And all of a sudden we went from doing the nine-course tasting menu every night, to offering a five course, to offering snacks in the salon. We really had to kind of pivot in a way to where we could keep business coming through, when all these banks were shutting down in New York City. I think it was really that change, where all of a sudden we were juggling so many different components, and I was 24 working the meat station. I kind of hit my wall and I knew that. I knew ... I felt like I got to a point where I was actually whole my peers back, because I just was in over my head at a certain point, working on that level. I made the decision after two years to move on, and I went in a much more casual direction.

Kerry Diamond:

That's such an interesting observation. I don't think anyone has ever put it that way on the show, that you felt you were holding your peers back because you were in over your head. You got there and you stayed there for two years. Are you maybe not giving yourself enough credit?

Julia Sullivan:

One of the amazing things about working in that restaurant, especially in the early 2000s is, if you looked around that hotline, I was working next to some of the most talented people in the country, who now are still some of the most well-respected chefs in the world.

I think I was young and I was ambitious and I was so driven, I pushed myself and I pushed myself, and then I just reached a point where the Peter principle, where all of a sudden you're at your capacity but you can't see it. But I could see it, I could see that I couldn't keep up, and I just felt at that point there was something else out there to learn.

Kerry Diamond:

Did you want to go before you were shown the door, or would that have never happened?

Julia Sullivan:

Yes, I mean, but you probably know my good friend Daisy Fratis, or Daisy Ryan at Bell's, Los Alamos. She at that point, she and Greg worked with me and they were both front of house, and Daisy kind of knew I was on the edge, and she came in one day, handed me a Coca-Cola and said, "You got this." I went and I gave my notice, and I remember Jonathan Benno looking at me just saying, "Don't sugarcoat it. Let's just ..." He knew, I think he knew too, and he and I are still close, he's still a great mentor of mine. So we have a lot of respect for one another, I think.

Kerry Diamond:

That's good to hear. Where did you go next?

Julia Sullivan:

So I took this summer off. I was going through an emotional breakup with Per Se. I was going through an emotional breakup with a boyfriend, and I had to get out of a studio apartment. And so I got an email from Dan Barber that said, "Do you know anybody who'd like to be a private chef in the Hamptons for the summer?" And I said, "In fact, I do."

He sent me out to work for one of his old family friends who had a house in East Hampton. I did that for a summer, which was a beautiful, rejuvenating, amazing experience. The produce and the fish out there was really special. And the man I worked for was ... we had a really fun relationship. He was actually an Orthodox Jew who was 83 years old. He lived alone during the week, and then his family would come out from Brooklyn on the weekends and I would cook for them.

I really got to just play and cook, cook like a home cook. And I had never done that before, because I graduated high school and got into college, and got into fine dining. I had never really just cooked, which is really different from working the hotline at a three-Michelin-star restaurant every night. So that was a really unique experience.

Kerry Diamond:

You don't strike me as the kind of person who spends a lot of time on TikTok, but over the past few years, have you followed all the private chef stuff on TikTok?

Julia Sullivan:

Yes, yes. And I'm always like, "Man, if I had only been right place, right time." That was my life, what Meredith Hayden is doing, I love watching, because it reminds me so much of being out there myself. It is a fun job, if you work for good people, it is a really fun job.

Kerry Diamond:

That's a big if, Julia.

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah, if you work for tough people, I think it can be a really tough job. And I did, I did follow that up with other experiences, and I don't know that I would do it again. Then I went from that experience to Franny's in Brooklyn, which of course is a joy. So I think we all wish Franny's was still there.

Kerry Diamond:

Oh my gosh, Franny's was such a beloved restaurant, when I read that you worked there, I was like, oh my gosh. It always blows my mind when you get to meet people later in life, but that you spent so much time at a place where they worked. Were you there during the prime years?

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah. And I have the best memories of working there. I mean the kitchen, it was so ... it was so funny. It was so different from Per Se or Blue Hill, but I worked there with my friend John Adler. We had worked at both Blue Hill and Per Se together, so he's kind of who recruited me. We were going about it with this energy, and this real, "Yes chef," vibe, but the food was just so beautiful. And once again, I think, although I had this education and this fine dining experience that I described as grad school, at Franny's, we were really cooking. You are taking beautiful simple food, and letting it just kind of stand on its own. And I often say that I really learned how to season food there, because instead of diamond crystal kosher salt, and champagne vinegar, you're like, okay, we can add salt with capers, and anchovies, and preserved lemon, and we can use acid with all these different things, and fermented flavors and this and that. And so it taught me about layering flavor in a way, that I don't think at the time I really had an understanding of.

Kerry Diamond:

I can totally see, I mean I've only been to Henrietta Red once. I wish I spent more time in Nashville and I could go more often, but I can see all these inspirations and how they came together to create Henrietta Red. When did you start to think, I want my own place one day?

Julia Sullivan:

Very, very early, and I think it went back to that kind of desire to be my own boss, the entrepreneurial thing. I have had that for a long time. I think, had my dad really ... there was a while, because I admired my dad so much, and he's still around, but he is retired, he has Alzheimer's, so he's a very different person now. But I admired him so much, and being a physician was so much part of his identity, that there was a long time I thought I was going to be a doctor. And then I just kind of realized, I'm not really interested in ... I'm not even that good at biology. It's not my best subject, chemistry. I was really drawn to being a business owner and then found cooking later I think. It was always a goal, I was always sketching it out, drawing ideas, concepts, names, and then really the thing that pushed me was being a part of an opening in New York, where I got to be very involved from the design and construction process.

It was seeing kind of the inception that ... and it kind of started to click and be like, "I could do this." And so that's when I really made the decision to go ahead and move back to Nashville. I was only 30, which now kind of blows my mind. I was able to make that move and had that confidence, but the way I thought about it was always that, if not now when? And I could stay in New York for the next three decades and work for amazing chefs and never stop learning, but if I'm going to do this, this feels like the right time. In fact, it was in a lot of ways, because Nashville had already changed a lot by 2013, but in the last 10 years it is very different. As far as returning to my hometown, I made the right move. At that time.

Kerry Diamond:

When you moved, did you have the idea for Henrietta Red kind of fully formed? How did that take shape?

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah, not fully, but the oyster part of it was important. I didn't even really know why it was important yet. I used to love going to Maison Premiere and eating oysters. So convivial, and they had this long list where you could choose all these different kinds, and Nashville didn't really have an oyster bar like that yet. And my original idea for Henrietta was smaller, it became bigger because of the space we landed in. But the Oyster bar component was a big part of it.

That started out more as a concept idea, but I have gotten deep, deep, deep into the oyster community and culture and world, and now it's just a passion of mine. The oyster bar still to me is one of the most fun, interesting parts of what we do.

Kerry Diamond:

I saw something on your Instagram, you're part of some kind of oyster group. What was that?

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah, Oyster South. So Oyster South is an organization of growers, industry people, restaurants, chefs, food writers all across the Southeast, that promotes the growth of the southern aquaculture industry.

Kerry Diamond:

Oh, how interesting.

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah, and people have really different ideas about what southern aquaculture is, but to give you the very short trajectory, it used to be almost all wild-caught oysters. The kind you see in Louisiana or south Alabama that are dredged off the bottom of Apalachicola. You would get sort of different sizes, different qualities, and of course that dredging is very, very detrimental to those bodies of water, destroys the reefs. And so Oyster South was very early in coming, kind of trying to educate southern oyster farmers about off-bottom farming. For an example like what they do at Island Creek in Duxbury, Massachusetts.

Interestingly, in 2016 there were no off-bottom farming leases in the Southeast, and now there are over 140 just in the state of Florida. And Oyster South works with farms from North Carolina, the NC Oyster Co, all the way to now Galveston, Texas. And so there is this huge burgeoning oyster industry that's sort of giving, even people who maybe used to do deep sea fishing, or shrimping, and because of environmental factors or overfishing or competition from other countries, those industries are getting harder and harder. A lot of them are diversifying when starting to grow oysters. And so it is a really amazing organization where we get to connect with so many cool people, and then we get to sell their product too. So it's a lot of fun.

Kerry Diamond:

So you have this idea in your head, how do you go about finding partners or investors?

Julia Sullivan:

Well, that was interesting. Because I was armed with my finance background I put together a business plan, and I hired some accountants to check my math, and I went out and I was very, very optimistic. I went about it in a very traditional ... I pounded the pavement, I went and I knocked on doors and said ... I went to friend's parents, parent's friends, "You should talk to this guy, you should talk to this guy." And what I found about traditional fundraising is that most people are waiting to see what other people do. Are they going to invest in this thirty-year-old woman who just came from New York? I didn't have any capital to put in myself, and so it was a little hard to kind of show proof of concept and say, "Meet me halfway."

And I did have a friend of house partner at the time, and we probably tried to fundraise for about a year and a half before, I ultimately went to my friends Ben and Max who have strategic hospitality in Nashville. I'd known Max since first grade, I had worked with them at one restaurant in Nashville. I went and approached it more as a, "I am hitting walls here, are there 10 people you can introduce me to that I could keep pitching this to?" They ultimately came back with me ... with an offer to partner for them to fund the restaurant.

And at the time I was incredibly resistant to this, I had a big chip on my shoulder, I didn't want to be part of a restaurant group. It was more of a, "If I want to do this, this is a path forward." And it's been, for the most part, a really positive journey. I've learned a ton from working with them. They're hugely supportive partners, and the nature of their group is that they work with a lot of really talented chefs, and all of our businesses are separate businesses. And so if you are a chef partner, you have a lot of control over what happens in your own restaurant.

And so as far as partners go, I think it's been a great relationship and a great experience. And then with Judith, I did want to approach it differently and fund it myself, because I really ... at this point, I'm thinking about my own future, and I was able to do that, in transparency, I invested some of my own capital and I took out a loan, which is not something I have done before, and it's not something everyone would recommend. But it was a path forward for me to be a sole owner, and so it is so far working out and really excited about it.

Kerry Diamond:

So you are the sole proprietor of Judith? That's amazing.

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah, yeah, it's very different. And like I said, the University of the South are my landlords, and they have been great partners. There were some improvements to the space, it was an old building. It was the university laundromat in 1950 for many, many, many years. And then at some point it changed hands and became a restaurant. This was kind of a deal where the previous proprietor had passed away and the building was for sale, and I went to them and said, "Hey, this is something I'm interested in, it's coming from a heart-centered place. My dad is a graduate of the university, and I can see that this is an amenity that is needed up here." And so they ended up reacquiring the building from the estate, and then renting it to me. But as far as the business goes, yes, I'm the sole owner.

Kerry Diamond:

Very cool. Let's go back to Henrietta Red for a second. So it opens, how long did it take for it to take off? Because it's a very popular restaurant now.

Julia Sullivan:

It's crazy, it got busy very, very fast, and I just remember, especially in the early days, my partner at the time, her name was Allie, I'm very proud. Looking back, we really just went after it. The restaurant was busy, we worked very hard, and I think we knew what we were doing. Looking back on that, I'm really impressed with my thirty-three-year-old self, I really am. And I'm still really, really proud of what we do there, it's been a really ... of course, with the pandemic, et cetera, et cetera, it's just been a really interesting, challenging, rewarding road, for sure.

Kerry Diamond:

I was looking on the OpenTable website, and I saw that Henrietta Red is listed as an icon. That's an amazing distinction for a restaurant, especially one that's only nine years old.

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah, it was very special that they did that for us, yeah.

Kerry Diamond:

What do you think makes Henrietta Red iconic?

Julia Sullivan:

I think probably the amount of just accolades the restaurant has had, and myself, I think being kind of a steady presence in the community, being kind of an old standby at this point. I mean, nine years is not that old, but it's kind of old for Nashville. And I think, yeah, presence, consistency. We push ourselves, I will say nine years in, we still push ourselves to make really delicious food every day. Where certainly, in Nashville, you just cannot take anything for granted at all. And so we are still pushing ourselves, still creating dishes, still making delicious food.

Kerry Diamond:

You told us about the oysters, tell us a few other things on the menu.

Julia Sullivan:

A lot of seasonality. We are, at Henrietta Red, I would describe it almost as micro seasonal, so we're always responding to what's available in the farmer's market. We just changed our spaghetti, so it has a really beautiful sun gold tomato sauce and herb oil. We have a grouper right now with potatoes and a leek foam that's really delicious, a leek butter sauce.

Kerry Diamond:

Is there anything that's been on the menu the whole time?

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah, absolutely. So we have our daily bread, which is a yeasted bread, kind of based off of a Persian flatbread recipe, but it was something that we could make every day, and throw in the wood oven. It's really delicious, we serve that with the anchovy butter. We have a chicken liver that's been on the menu, that's different from the one at Judith. We have a dish called Poppy's Caviar, which is one of my favorites. It's something my dad used to do with sour cream, where he would dump sour cream, and the little jar, caviar, that you can get in the grocery store, the really salty lump fish roe, he would just dump that on top, and then kind of make a scallion vinaigrette and serve it with saltine crackers. And interestingly enough about that recipe, we kind of refined it and made it beautiful, and we serve it with house-made crackers and a slightly better caviar. We use paddlefish, which is indigenous to southern rivers, and you can buy it locally here.

And so we really dressed it up and we call it Poppy's Caviar, and I had always thought it was my dad's recipe, and then come to find out in Sewanee that it was actually one of his professors, his professors used to serve it as parties, and my dad stole the recipe and then I took it from him.

Kerry Diamond:

Oh, that's so funny. Or borrowed the recipe. Is your dad the Poppy in the name of the recipe?

Julia Sullivan:

Yes.

Kerry Diamond:

Aw.

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:

Your dad seems like he's been a huge influence on you, Julia. I'm sorry he's not doing well.

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah, it's all right, he has been for sure. Both my parents have incredible work ethics, and are both incredible people. With his dementia he is of course changed, but he still has this incredible sense of humor, and so that's been really pleasant. It changes a lot of people in really difficult ways, and he's been in his own way kind of hilarious and delightful, so at least we still have that.

Kerry Diamond:

You said he was an endocrinologist, right?

Julia Sullivan:

Yes.

Kerry Diamond:

Because what I want to talk about next is your health journey. So I didn't even really realize this, but you were just on the cover, the literal cover of People Magazine's health edition, probably the last thing in the world you imagined you would be on the cover of.

Julia Sullivan:

Correct, yes.

Kerry Diamond:

What led to you being on the cover of People Magazine's Health Edition?

Julia Sullivan:

It's an interesting story ... well, I guess it depends on what you're interested in. But I had asthma as a child, but I kind of grew out of it, it was mostly exercise-induced, and at some point I stopped carrying an inhaler, it stopped being so urgent. And then when I moved back to Nashville in 2013, there's a lot of allergies here, people complain about it all the time. I just started struggling with allergies in general, and then ending up in this cycle where my nose would be closed up, I would start having asthma attacks, and unbeknownst to me, I also had an NSAID allergy. And so if I took aspirin or ibuprofen at work, for instance, for tired lower back or something, it would throw me into this asthma attack that usually it would take over 24 hours to recover from, just so much lethargy from not being able to breathe.

I went to several doctors who were pretty unhelpful, who either took scans and said, "Just use Flonase," and I was begging them to take me seriously. "I can't breathe, it's a huge problem, I'm struggling to taste and smell, and it's such an important part of my job." And then eventually I ended up at Vanderbilt Hospital, they have a allergy, an asthma clinic there called ASAP. Had a nurse practitioner who gave me a CAT scan and said, "Wow, you have really severe nasal polyps." And so they're basically small benign growths that were kind of filling my sinuses and my nose, to the point where the scan was just dark, you couldn't see any cavities at all. They present you with options that are kind of scary, like, "Okay, well, you can have a surgery where we're going to scrape out the polyps, but they might come back."

But that's also, for my profession, that's my tool, that's how I smell and taste things. And so I equivocated about the surgery for quite a long time, and then she said, "There is this one medicine you can take, why don't we try that first?" This particular medicine, and I'll say the name of it because several women have reached out to me since that story was published and said, "Oh my gosh, I have a similar thing, and my doctor has prescribed me this medication, but I'm afraid to start." It's called Dupixent, it's a biogenic, it's a shot you give yourself twice a month, and it's for immune disorders that are caused by inflammation.

So mine specifically was the Samter's Triad, which is the combination of NSAID allergy and nasal polyps, and I started taking about four years ago. I am totally healthy and normal now. No asthma, no nasal polyps, and-

Kerry Diamond:

Wait, the polyps are gone?

Julia Sullivan:

Oh, yeah, completely gone, no surgery, the medicine put them completely into remission. But the craziest parts about it were like, you're constantly struggling to breathe, constantly struggling to smell and taste, and it was also happening alongside the pandemic, so everyone's telling you, "Well, if you can't smell or taste, these are COVID symptoms." And so I would go to the mobile testing center on the way to work, almost every day through the entire pandemic, because I had no way of telling, "Can I not smell because of this? Or can I not smell because maybe I have COVID?" Always exhausted, I was always frustrated.

My co-workers, specifically my chef cuisine at the time, who's Pam Stevenson, I would have to have her smell and taste things, or if we were putting a new dish on the menu, she would be the final word because I did not trust my palate at that point. The nurse and doctor that I saw, and specifically this drug were like life changing, game changing.

Kerry Diamond:

I'm sitting here, I can't get over the fact that you couldn't taste or smell through part of this journey, did you think you might have to leave the chef world?

Julia Sullivan:

It burned me out really badly. I mean, because if you're just going through these motions, and you don't get the joy of smelling things as you're cooking, smelling a dish, tasting a dish, and you can't trust your own palate, I grew to a point where I was very, very tired.

And I've talked to Pam about that time too, because she was putting so much on the menu, and I don't have a lot of memories of what we were serving then. And the only thing I can think is that we associate our memory so much with specific tastes and smells, that because I don't have that kind of catalog in my brain of that time period, I can't really recall it that well, at least professionally.

And similarly, I would go out to restaurants in Nashville. I remember going to the Catbird Seat one night and I took a glass of red wine, which is also an agitator for these particular symptoms, and went through the entire eight or nine-course meal, just not being able to taste anything. And it's like you're spending money, and you're out and you're supposed to be having a good time, and you're just miserable. It burned me out. And then that with the pandemic as well, I did go through a period of being like, "Should I be doing this anymore?" I considered going back to school for my MBA. I thought a lot about different things, and then what happened is what's happened to me several times in this 22-year career, is that a new opportunity came up and I kind of doubled down, and now I'm all in again.

Kerry Diamond:

Julia, that's so remarkable. Thank goodness there's a drug out there that you were able to take.

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah, I mean truly, because it is ... it's not life-threatening, but it is quality of life. It suffers badly. I mean, this is something that other women who suffer from this will tell you, it is pretty miserable.

Kerry Diamond:

I was just thinking of the frustration level, and just, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but just how demoralized you must have felt through the whole thing.

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:

Yeah, wow.

Julia Sullivan:

Demoralized and just tired, not being able to breathe well, it really makes you tired. It's so far in the distance now that I kind of forget about it sometimes. That story came to me through Vanderbilt, and I was a good candidate because the drug has been so successful for me, and so, yeah, I'm very lucky.

Kerry Diamond:

Did you get to meet Dolly Parton at Vanderbilt?

Julia Sullivan:

No, she was not roaming the halls, unfortunately.

Kerry Diamond:

She's a big funder of a lot of their projects, isn't she?

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, we're so happy that you've come out on the other side, and are making all this beautiful food for everybody, and have these two beautiful places, including your icon, Henrietta Red.

Julia Sullivan:

Yeah. Yes, yes, yes.

Kerry Diamond:

We've run out of time for the speed round, but I'm going to ask you our final question. If you had to be trapped on a desert island with one food celebrity, who would it be, and why?

Julia Sullivan:

I think probably Ina, Ina Garten, because I just imagine going out and spending the day foraging, working hard, bringing lots of things back to the camp, and then just her sitting there waiting for me with a martini and a laugh. So that's who comes to mind immediately.

Kerry Diamond:

That sounds perfect. Has Ina been to Henrietta Red yet?

Julia Sullivan:

No, she hasn't. I've seen Ina once in the wild, when I was up visiting a friend in Connecticut, but I've never had the pleasure of meeting her.

Kerry Diamond:

Well, Ina, if you make it to Nashville, now you know where to go. So Julia, thank you so much for your time. You are amazing.

Julia Sullivan:

Thank you so much, Kerry. It was such a pleasure.

Kerry Diamond:

That's it for today's show. Special thanks to Visa and OpenTable, and I would love for you to follow Radio Cherry Bombe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, wherever you listen, and leave a rating and a review. If you're already a follower, thank you. Check out the links in our show notes for our magazine, Jubilee tickets, and Cherry Bombe membership info. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Special thanks to Good Studio in Brooklyn. Our producers are Catherine Baker and Jenna Sadhu, and our talent guru is Londyn Crenshaw. Thanks for listening, everybody. You're the Bombe.