Strolling down West Franklin Street, you may notice a wooden gate that leads into a garden. But the beauty doesn’t stop there.
Visitors can follow the garden path back to find the Bird’s Nest Café nestled in between wildflowers. Bright yellow umbrellas provide shade for outdoor diners. Or guests can open the door and step in, and as the chalkboard sign says, “Fly right on in and find a seat.”
The winding entrance to the cafe is intentional. “You can’t rush in. You have to meander in, kind of look around and go, ‘Where am I? What’s happening?’ It’s slowing down,” owner Tyra Miller said.
For Tyra and her husband Lance, life is art. Lance has been an art teacher at Brown County High School for 20 years. He did all of the logos and photography featured on the menus and on other Bird’s Nest gear.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]“Every aspect of your life, no matter how you do it, is some form of art. Food is such a huge part of that,” she said.
“It’s abstract food art. We really are having fun.”
The café is open for breakfast, brunch and lunch. It offers apothecary cocktails and fresh, unique meals, from blueberry lavender french toast, to sweet potato waffles with moonshine maple cream sauce, to an avocado turkey sandwich.
“With the brunch, we want it to be really fun. We’re having so much fun making the stuff up. We’ll see a picture in a magazine and we throw our spin on it,” Tyra said.
“No one tells us we can’t, so we just do.”
Every employee at the Bird’s Nest is an artist. Tyra points to one of her waitresses sweeping the floor. “She is at IU. She is crazy creative. There is not one person here who you couldn’t say, ‘Could you do the (chalk)board?’ They could do something amazing,” she said.
Head chef Jennifer Hendershot is a cake artist who is game for anything Tyra throws her way.
Hendershot’s daughter, Casie Zoellner, is the head waitress and an artist who manages the Bird’s Nest Facebook page. She’s also the mother of Tyra’s grandson.
“It’s like a family business,” Tyra said. “There’s always people in here yelling, ‘Mom!’ It’s definitely one of those types of places.”
Tyra has years of experience creating gathering places. She and Roberta Chirko sold the Muddy Boots Cafe in the early 2000 so that Tyra could focus on her bed and breakfast, the Robinwood Inn. But she began to miss the connection having a cafe created.
“When I started Muddy Boots, there were people who lived in Brown County and had lived here for years who I had never seen,” she said.
“It’s easy to lose sight of your community if you don’t have a place to be face to face. Nowadays, I see people online, but it’s not as organic as sitting down and hanging out with them.”
Tyra said she wanted the Bird’s Nest to be different from the Muddy Boots because “it had been done before,” but tourists still pick up on the connection.
“They’re like, ‘Do you know what this place reminds me of? This place reminds me of, did you ever hear of Muddy Boots Café?’ We laugh, because I’m like, ‘Of course.’”
Even the locals who frequented the Muddy Boots have found the Nest. “Doris Embry is here. I would open an entire café just for Doris Embry because I missed her,” Tyra said.
She also wanted to honor the building it’s in, which is the original home of Brown County Pottery. Near a set of windows hangs a Frank Hohenberger photo of women making pottery in front of the same windows. “I want to create an atmosphere, and it was like, this building is so easy to do that. … When I saw it, I could just see the whole thing,” she said.
The Bird’s Nest opened last October, but on limited hours. At first, their vision was to serve brunch and maybe some muffins. Then someone mentioned getting a liquor license, and they began researching brunch more. “I saw a quote that said, ‘Brunch without booze is just a sad, late breakfast,’” Tyra said.
“We didn’t want to be a sad, late breakfast.”
Customer favorites include the apothecary cocktails, like the Wild at Heart Love Potion, the Wood Fairy and the Wood Elf.
Sweet potato waffles with moonshine maple cream sauce is one favorite that the Millers brought over from their Robinwood Inn. “We were just playing around, and we’re like, ‘What if you took whipping cream and put maple syrup in it and then a lot of butter, then moonshine?’ It evolved into this really tasty thing. We just make it up,” Tyra said.
Starting soon, the Bird’s Nest will host bluegrass brunches on Sundays.
“My family is all from Kentucky. I’m a vegetarian, but … my parents had a gorgeous garden then they would cook everything in bacon grease. It would be green and taste like bacon,” she said.
One of the classic southern meals they serve is buttermilk biscuits with bacon gravy — or red-eye gravy, with ham drippings and espresso.
“It kind of pays homage to my mother because … my mom has been trying to teach me to cook since I was tiny. I was not ever, ever going to cook, because I just saw a whole line of women cooking and cleaning. I didn’t want any part of that,” Tyra said.
She actually didn’t learn how to cook until they opened the inn. “My mom said I rebelled myself full-circle, because now all I do is cook and clean,” Tyra said with a laugh.
The couple also is working on opening The Robinwood Studio next door to the Bird’s Nest, where they will sell Tyra’s seasonal essential oils, and Lance’s art, T-shirts, grab-and-go coffee, snacks and meals. It will also house a bakery and more kitchen space.
Starting this summer, customers will be able to place to-go orders online.
The plan is to continue to serve breakfast, brunch and lunch to allow employees to be home with their families in the evenings. But Tyra is open to letting people use the Bird’s Nest after hours for events or private parties. “I want to be available to do things like that because, again, I think that’s part of the community situation,” she said.
She plans to continue hosting themed garden parties on Saturday evenings, featuring live music and family-style dinners. Past themes have been Italian, Mexican, Mediterranean and an old-English fish and chips dinner.
“The whole atmosphere is different, but it’s really nice. There’s jasmine out there, so in the evening the jasmine smell is heavenly,” she said.
Tyra said the Bird’s Nest has become an extension of the couple’s inn. Instead of eating breakfast there, Robinwood Inn guests can now come to the Bird’s Nest to get anything off the breakfast menu.
“It brings them into town. … The guy today who is over there, he was like, ‘I don’t want to leave,’ but he came in here, he met some of the locals, and I think he’s considering moving here. It’s like that kind of place,” she said.
“I am trying to still capture that feeling I had (when she first moved to Brown County) where it’s just a coffeehouse, you’re meeting everybody, in a small town. There’s something really magical about that.”
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Address: 36 West Franklin Street, Nashville
Hours: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays; 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturdays; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays; closed Tuesdays
Facebook: Bird’s Nest Cafe
Websites: birdsnest.cafe for photos, more information on the Bird’s Nest Cafe and the Robinwood Studio
Robinwoodinn.com for availability and booking of the Robinwood Inn
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