You may know him from Top Chef season three or the show’s All-Stars edition, but Dale Levitski is much more than a made-for-TV cook. The accomplished restaurateur sharpened his knives in Chicago (where he had two restaurants of his own) before moving to Nashville in 2014 to take the helm of Sinema, an eclectic restaurant and bar housed in a historic former theater. Since then Levitski has opened a casual restaurant in Nashville called The Hook and partnered with Parade and cheeky YouTube channel Cinema Sins on a series of videos featuring Disney-inspired dishes. He talked to us about life after Top Chef and turning animated films into fine dining.
How did this Disney menu come about?
It’s something that I’ve had on my mind for almost ten years. The guys at Cinema Sins had come to us about creating a cooking version of their show and I thought, Let’s do Disney!
There’s so much to work with from the Disney vault, how did you narrow down your three dishes—Down the Rabbit Hole from Alice in Wonderland, Hakuna Frittata from The Lion King and Seaweed Surf & Turf from The Little Mermaid?
The amount of ideas from all the different movies is amazing. We just ran with it. We’re not making cartoon food: We’re making great food. The three dishes that we did turned out pretty spectacular.
Were there any ideas that didn’t make the menu?
We talked about a bunch: Redoing spaghetti and meatballs with Lady and The Tramp—it’s one long noodle and one meatball and you just battle it out. Beauty and the Beast has a lot of stuff you can do with Mrs. Pots. There’s The Frog Prince—you can go really fun with that one.
What’s the next step for your Disney-inspired dishes? The Disney Dinner! We are going to use the three dishes and come up with two or three more, and I think that might be a really good thing. If that’s successful we may take it further and have a series called Dinner of a Movie, [for which] we could do a movie-inspired dinner monthly or quarterly. It’s just too perfect with what we are [at a movie theater-themed restaurant] and it makes complete sense.
You’re a Midwestern boy who moved to the South. How did that happen?
I had a couple restaurants in Chicago and decided to take a little bit of a break so I went to Montana for five months to run the fine dining room at a resort. In that time period, I decided to leave both the restaurants that I had. I wasn’t happy—I was having a mid-life crisis: I’d just turned 40, my dad just passed away and I just needed a life change. [I was] contacted about this project—Sinema—and they flew me down for a tasting and offered me the job on the spot. Within two days I was moving to Nashville.
Do you miss your hometown?
I was in Chicago for 15 years. I grew up in the suburbs [there]. I was ready to live somewhere else in the country. I love Chicago dearly, and it’s only an hour and a half flight away.
What was the biggest adjustment in leaving the Windy City?
Being a Chicagoan, I had never had a car because it’s a pedestrian city, so at 42 I bought my first car ever. I had to get my license when I moved to Montana, but before that it had been almost 10 years since I had one. One of my cooks took me to the DMV two or three times because I always had the wrong piece of information. I finally got my license the day before I moved to Montana.
What do you think about the Nashville food scene?
I think Nashville is really having a renaissance. It’s one of the number one tourist destinations. We’re such a culturally important destination for music and we’re starting to get [more] into food—there are a lot of very worthy chefs here. I think Nashville is going to keep getting more national love and national press. That’s one of the reasons I moved here was to really become a part of a city that’s booming.
You just opened a second restaurant, The Hook. Has the menu been inspired by your move?
I would say it’s more of me becoming part of Nashville and understanding where I am and what is going on here and being influenced by southern flavors and southern techniques. We’re in the fried food capital of the world—which I love! But there was nowhere [in the neighborhood] to get seafood or even salad or sandwiches, so The Hook came out of that. We do have a heavy menu of fried food, but we also have non-fried options like veggie sandwiches and my Chicago Italian beef, and we have roasted chicken as well as fried chicken so it’s got something for everyone. Being a landlocked city, seafood hasn’t really been a part of the culture [in Nashville], and I was really craving that. The response has been really fantastic because it’s something different and approachable. It’s not different just to be different, it’s oh we don’t have that here, but I know what this is. People here know this food and they’re excited about the little twists we’re putting on it.
You were a two-time contestant on Top Chef. Is the show’s “Restaurant Wars” episode an accurate representation of opening a restaurant?
No! [laughs] But it’s where you see a lot more of people’s true colors. “Restaurant Wars” is halfway through the season, so everyone’s getting super competitive. You’re deep in it and your brain is fried and you’re at the peak of stress because you’ve been sequestered so long. You’re mentally exhausted. It’s kind of where everyone flips out and forgets everything. I think I flipped off the camera and dropped a whole bunch of F-bombs behind the scenes because the service staff [messed up] and I threw stuff everywhere.
How did the show impact your life and your career? Our first night in Miami, one of the executive producers was like, “Your life is about to change—today.” And you’re like, Oh yeah I can handle it, this is great. But you have no idea. The day after the premiere, I was flying back to Chicago from New York and the people in line at TSA were like, “Hey Dale, what’s up?” Being well known does skew a lot of things personally and professionally. I don’t want to say it opened doors, but it helped make opportunities easier because [people] know who you are. They know your palette or your skill set. “You got second place on Top Chef, I trust you already.”
Do you cook at home? No! [Laughs] I moved out of an apartment and rented a house, and I was like, “Fresh start! I’m going to get rid of everything!” After a year, I still don’t have glasses or dishes. I’m a master of eating pasta out of a pot. The copper-plated KitchenAid mixer, the Cuisinart—I have all the equipment in my house just collecting dust. They’re mocking me.
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