‘Flavors Without Borders,’ a Next Door Neighbors show, premieres on-air June 26

Nashville’s culinary scene earned another accolade recently when Jake Howell received a James Beard Award for the Spanish- and French-inspired cuisine at Peninsula. Along with meat-and-threes and barbecue places, international cuisine has also found a home in Music City. Three restaurants with menus inspired by the owners’ heritage are sampled in Flavors Without Borders, the latest documentary in Nashville PBS’ Next Door Neighbors series.

The 30-minute program premieres on-air Thursday, June 26, at 8 p.m. and is available on YouTube and the PBS app. Additional airtimes for Flavors Without Borders are Sunday, June 29, at 6:30 p.m. and Monday, July 7, at 9 p.m. on WNPT. Flavors Without Borders will air on WNPT2 World Channel Saturday, July 5, at 5 p.m. and Sunday, July 6, at 1 p.m.

Hosted by Megan Grisolano, Nashville PBS’ senior director of content and executive producer, Flavors Without Borders first visits Jamaica Way located in the Nashville Farmers’ Market. Owner Ouida Bradshaw became a restaurateur after relocating from Boston, where she taught school for 20-plus years. Her Caribbean-tinged dishes – items like oxtails and jerk chicken – also include selections she created with Southern preferences in mind.

“Don’t go to a Jamaican restaurant and say, oh, can I have some mango chutney chicken,” Bradshaw says in Flavors Without Borders. Sauce is another nod to regional tastes. “People want [the food] to be smothered in sauce; people literally buy cups of sauce,” she added.

Meanwhile, broth is a key element in pho, one of the signature menu items at Vui’s Kitchen in Berry Hill. Pho is Vietnam’s national dish and is a craft in itself, a 12-hour process, Vui Hunt explains in the documentary. Served over rice noodles and topped with a protein of choice and other ingredients, pho is a comfort food Hunt likens to a grandmother’s homemade chicken soup.

Banh mi sandwiches and the smell of pho are not the only things that make Hunt reminiscent of Vietnam; the picnic area also contributes to that sensation. “Vietnam is very tight when you’re in Saigon, but in all the spaces there’s an outdoor scene to it,” Hunt says. “And so, we’re really proud of that.”

Over in Antioch, brothers Emmanuel and Ruben Salazar are doing what they can to wrest Mexican food from the Tex-Mex tinge it has in the U.S. At Dos Carnales, the restaurant they started six years ago, they serve authentic dishes from their hometown of San Luis, Mexico. This authenticity sometimes takes first-time customers by surprise; here, enchiladas may come with red or green sauce but never cheese sauce, for example.

Despite the sacrifices inherent in running a restaurant, including long hours and time spent away from their children, the Salazar brothers enjoy the community they’ve fostered over countless dishes.

“I hear a saying that it’s easier to get a customer to be your friend than a friend to be your customer,” Emmanuel says in Flavors Without Borders. “Right now, we have customers that are really, really, close friends and we love that,” he added.

Flavors Without Borders was written and produced by Shawn Anfinson, managing senior producer at Nashville PBS. Next Door Neighbors is made possible by the generous support of the Nissan Foundation.