INTERIORS
UNCOMMON BEAUTY LIBERTY COMMON IS THE LATEST ENTRY ON NASHVILLE’S DESIGN-FORWARD DINING SCENE
T
erry Raley knows his way around designing a restaurant or two — not by trade, but by practice. His latest offering, Liberty Common from his Amaranth Hospitality Group, is an effortlessly stylish, modern Southern brasserie that honors Old World café tradition. “We really wanted to capture what I feel like a brasserie is, with coarser marble, copper elements, opal glass sconces,” Raley says. “We wanted to do booths that were channel backs. I didn’t want to do a carbon copy of a typical steakhouse brasserie, a New York City hybrid. I wanted it to feel like something that was uniquely Southern.”
In designing the 6,100-square-foot space of Liberty Common, Raley sought to borrow the essential elements of a traditional brasserie, such as a brass back bar system and marble architectural features, while avoiding a full-scale reproduction of French-American hybrid bistros. The result is a Southern brasserie with bright blue booths and tile but without the reproduction of French architectural elements typical of brasseries in other cities. “I feel like we took the best of what those places have to offer, and we just kind of modernized it a little bit,” he says. “I think it works.” Liberty Common is the fourth restaurant from Raley,
STORY BY HOLLIE DEESE PHOTOGRAPHY BY REEVES SMITH
Terry Raley made all the final design decisions for Liberty Common, a Southern-style brasserie directly across from Ascend Amphitheatre.
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