Located on 8th Avenue South, The Hook is a fast-casual restaurant, providing customers with chicken, seafood and more.
The Reed family (Colin Reed, Brenda Reed, Ed Reed and Sam Reed), who is the owner of the Nashville fine-dining restaurant Sinema, started the latest restaurant concept of “fast-casual” dining.
The Reed family’s newest restaurant, The Hook, has also embraced this dining concept.
The manager of The Hook is Jesse Fraser, a Lipscomb alumnus who graduated with a mass communication degree.
Fraser said the degree has really helped him excel in the restaurant business.
“I am definitely communicating with the masses in this industry.”
Fraser said some of his favorite memories during his years at Lipscomb come from times with his brothers in the social club Delta Tau.
“We formed amazing friendships that still last to this day,” said Fraser. “Bowling with other social clubs, formals, intramural football games, throwing water balloons at people coming out of the library, BBQs at the pool, playing Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 till all hours of the morning; these are just a handful of the amazing times we shared.”
After graduating from Lipscomb, Fraser worked with talented chefs such as Neal Fraser (no relation), John Besh, Alon Shava and the Boka Group.
Fraser has dabbled in careers other than the food industry, though. He said his most rewarding job was when he was a teacher to Autistic kindergarten students in Los Angeles.
After a decade of working in various areas, he decided it was time to go back home to Nashville.
Fraser bartended at Sinema for a couple of years and said he loved working with the Reed family so much that he decided to move to their next restaurant, The Hook, and manage there.
Before The Hook, the lot was a car dealership. The team decided that the lot was not big enough for their vision, so they knocked down the dealership and started building from the ground up.
“It’s been an amazing learning experience. It is never easy opening a new restaurant, but it was even tougher learning a new role,” Fraser said.
Concept wise, the team’s goal was to provide quality seafood at an affordable price in a fun, laid-back environment.
“Living in Tennessee, it can be difficult to find fresh seafood without spending an arm and a leg to get it,” Fraser said. “I think our fast-casual concept is working well, and I hope it only gets busier and busier.”
The crew has talked about the future and said they would like to make The Hook a franchise, opening in more locations in Tennessee and other states.
However, Fraser said that he is concentrating on the Nashville location right now.
“We are focused on making this the best that it can possibly be before we do anything else.”
The Hook is located at 2222 8th Avenue South in Nashville and is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.