The Myint Culinary Dynasty at the northernmost curve of Belmont Boulevard can be traced back to 1975, when family matriarch Patti opened International Market, which put a Thai spin on the familiar Southern meat ‘n three steam table formula. Son and heir apparent Arnold was born two years later, and the busy market and restaurant was essentially his nursery. “My mother had a bassinet in the front of the restaurant for me. I started working the register as soon as I was old enough to count.”
Arnold grew up in the Belmont neighborhood, attended University School of Nashville, and one day had a life-changing encounter with a large slab of ice. “I went skating with friends when I was 11. I liked it and I was good. I got a pro and started training.” Myint was a Junior Nationals winner at 13, and his career as a competitive skater took off. “I loved everything about it. I loved the feeling I got when I was skating. It was athletic and artistic. I liked the competition. I loved the attention. The other skaters became like family. I loved the traveling. I loved it more than anything in my life. It was my life at the time.”
And then, it wasn’t. Eager to do something else, he settled in New York to give Broadway a shot, but found he couldn’t deny his heritage, and enrolled in the Institute of Culinary Education. After graduating with honors, he snagged a job in research and development with Jean-Georges Enterprises, LLC, the business arm of Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the French-born chef famous for his innovative interpretations of classic French cuisine, which he often married to his passion for the flavors of the Far East. “I bounced around his Manhattan restaurants, and that was a great experience. But I didn’t want to peel shrimp eight hours a day for other chefs. When I felt like I had enough inspiration to bring it home, I moved back to Nashville.”
That was in 2005, two years after his mother opened PM in a building she owned on the other west side of Belmont. While still in NY, Arnold consulted on PM, and was on site every few weeks, “just enough so the staff was like, ‘Who is he?’” When he came back to Nashville for good, he took a bold step by going smoke-free well before new legislation required, then focused on the food. Myint’s concept was casual-but-quality Asian, leading the younger demographic frequenting PM toward more adventurous ethnic eating. “I wanted it to be more accessible, less scary. One minute they’re eating a burger, and the next thing they know, they’re tasting duck curry and it’s okay.”
With PM established, Arnold’s attention turned to ‘next.’ “I have all these restaurant concepts in my head all the time. I can’t stop thinking about them.” He was developing an idea based around hotel mini-bars that he planned to install in a mini-space adjoining International Market when his mother alerted him that the building directly across the street from the Market was available. His first idea was an Asian teahouse that would spotlight the fair trade organic tea company he was developing. “But then I was thinking, let’s see, an Asian restaurant across the street from an Asian restaurant, catty corner from an Asian restaurant. We’re not Chinatown. Let’s do something different.”
In Arnold’s hyperkinetic thought process, cha—the Mandarin word for tea—morphed to cha cha cha, which put him in a Latin mood, which made him think of Latin food, which evoked thoughts of Spain, wherein floated visions of tapas, which conjured an Oprah-esque proverbial moment of a-ha which gave birth to ChaChah....
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