Nashville’s Luxurious Joseph Hotel Debuts With Fine Italian Dining and Sweeping City Views

The Joseph, a Luxury Collection Hotel, celebrates its opening downtown today, and the 297-room luxury hotel contributes a couple of exciting new dining and drinking options to the SoBro section of Nashville. James Beard Award-winning chef Tony Mantuano and wine and hospitality expert Cathy Mantuano are heading up the culinary program at The Joseph, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Nashville in partnership with The Pizzuti Companies. This includes everything from the Lobby Lounge and of course the fine dining Italian restaurant to the all-day rooftop restaurant, but also all banquets and catering through the hotel.

The Joseph’s lobby lounge offers Illy espresso, fresh baked pastries, and a tea trolly, while up on the 21st floor rooftop, poolside, Denim offers an all-day menu of salads, pizzas, and sandwiches. Yolan is the hotel’s signature restaurant, a refined Italian love letter to Nashville that merges both the Pizzutis’ and the Mantuanos’ roots in Italy with the couple’s signature attention to hospitality.

The Mantuano duo are a huge get for Nashville, as is Yolan as an addition to the city’s Italian dining scene. Noted as President Barack Obama’s favorite chef, Mantuano has received 12 nominations from The James Beard Foundation, winning Best Chef Midwest in 2005. He introduced Italian fine dining to Chicago with Spiaggia–one of the country’s most decorated Italian restaurants.

Haas & Haas Photography

Named after owner Joel Pizzuti’s grandfather, the Joseph is a luxurious tower of sophistication, with every detail considered and well-placed whispers of Nashville throughout. The Joseph experience begins when guests pull up to the grand porte-cochere, where a live greenery-covered wall, massive video screen showing a digital art display, and a bright blue sculpture that can be used as a bench.

Delia Jo Ramsey/Eater Nashville

Delia Jo Ramsey/Eater Nashville

Just inside the front door, a reception desk with custom panelling commissioned by Pizzuti from popular Texas-based boot company Lucchese is an exquisitely detailed brown leather display merging flora and fauna from Texas (Lucchese’s roots), Ohio (Pizzuti’s home state) and Tennessee (the Joseph’s new and second home).

Delia Jo Ramsey/Eater Nashville

Raindrop door handles were also commissioned for the space, which also hosts many art pieces from the Pizzuti’s family collection and exclusive art all with ties to Tennessee. Over 1000 pieces of art fill the space.

Jim Kruger | Kruger-images

In addition to the rooftop bar and pool, the top floor also hosts a 5,500-square-foot spa and salon named Rose, after Pizzuti’s young daughter. Also infusing Nashville and art, a rose gold floral front desk is Nudie Suit-inspired, with abstract florals throughout the relaxation area and six treatment rooms.

Every service at Rose begins with a foot scrub and soak in an oversized copper tub with signature rose-infused botanicals. Rose’s services include a highly sought Biologique Recherche Remodeling Face Machine (and several treatments featuring Biologique Recherche products), steam rooms with ice fountains for an invigorating hot/cold enhancement and multi-sensory experience showers. An adjoining 1,500-square-foot fitness center includes hi-tech equipment and city views. Each hotel room mini bar has local items from Olive & Sinclair, Poppy & Peep, Colts Chocolates and Bearded Iris Brewing, and the coffee stations house custom-sketched coffee cups bearing the face of Lou, the Pizzuti family’s beloved French bulldog.

See a rundown of each of the Joseph’s dining establishments below, then stay tuned for a first look at the menu for Yolan later today:

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Yolan

Named after Joel Pizzuti’s grandmother Yolanda, Yolan offers house-made pastas, meats, and seafood with rare ingredients and local produce. A glass-ensconced and temperature-controlled wine cellar is filled with more than 600 bottles unearthed through travels to Italy and other parts of the world. Weekly at The Joseph, guests can experience “King of Cheese,” the ceremonial cutting of an 80-pound wheel of Parmigiano-Reggiano, where they’ll share an aperitivo with the Mantuanos while they impart little-known techniques behind producing the cheese and its historical significance. They can also learn about Yolan’s cheese cave, a special area reserved for the proper storage of extraordinary varieties. Reservations for Yolan are available on Tock.

Jim Kruger | Kruger-images

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Lobby Lounge

The Joseph’s lobby lounge welcomes locals who work-from-home and visitors to Illy espresso, fresh baked pastries, and food from adjacent Yolan in the afternoon. The hotel offers a daily tea trolley experience coined “The Art of Tea” — with a custom tea creation like sparkling tea, zero proof tea, or tipsy tea alongside a tea-themed talk and details about the hotel’s surrounding collection of over 1,000 pieces of artwork (both commissioned for the hotel and from the Pizzuti family’s personal collection).

Delia Jo Ramsey/Eater Nashville

Delia Jo Ramsey/Eater Nashville

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Denim

Denim is the 21st-floor rooftop’s all-day, indoor-outdoor rooftop lounge — centered around a gorgeous, socially distanced outdoor pool and deck. The casual menu features fresh salads, wood-fired pizzas, and finely roasted meats ,served with sweeping skyline and the Cumberland River views.

Delia Jo Ramsey/Eater Nashville

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Four Walls

Opening later in the fall, Four Walls will be a separate entrance intimate cocktail bar, sporting hand-crafted concoctions and light “cicchetti” (snacks).

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Given the current climate, social distancing markers are placed throughout the hotel’s common areas, and hand sanitizer stations are also readily available. The Joseph, a Luxury Collection Hotel, is located at 401 Korean Veterans Boulevard.

Delia Jo Ramsey/Eater Nashville

• Chef Tony Mantuano’s Downtown Italian Restaurant Yolan Opens Soon [ENASH]