COMPREHENSIVE ALPHABETICAL GUIDE TO NASHVILLE RESTAURANTS
The Ones I’ve Tried, Anyway
By
Jimmy
Joe Meeker
Copyright ©July 2004 by Donald W.
Gillette
Rules That Should Be Posted In All Restaurants
But Aren’t
ü
Leave
your cell phone in the car. Now, I know you
can’t do that, because then you couldn’t go to dinner with somebody and spend
the entire time talking to somebody else who’s not even there, so at least try
not to scream into it as if you’re trying to be heard over a chain saw.
ü
Chuckling
is fine. The occasional “Ha ha” is
okay. But don’t giggle and cackle. Nothing’s that funny. You’re in a public place, you hooting idiot,
so knock it off.
ü
Men,
evidently your parents didn’t know any better when they raised you, but you’re
supposed to take off your hat when you’re inside a building. Just because Mommy and Daddy had the social
skills of a pig, that doesn’t excuse you.
ü
Parents,
hire a baby-sitter. Your kid’s not cute.
Your kid is a squealing, crying, puking,
annoying pain in the ass of everyone in the restaurant except you. Why would you bring a baby to a restaurant in
the first place? The cuisine?
ü
If
you’re unlucky enough to have to sit in a booth, don’t keep rocking back
against it. The guy sitting behind you
came in for food, not to play bumper cars.
ü
You
don’t have to say “shit” or “fuck” so often and so loudly that every woman and
child in the place can hear you. So
watch your goddam language.
NOTE:
3rd and
Lindsley
Face it, you don’t go to 3rd
and Lindsley for the food anyway—and you shouldn’t because it’s not that
great. It’s adequate and it’s only there
for you to have something to eat if you got there to early--before the
entertainment started. The night we went
there, the entertainment was an entire club full of lesbians watching two
lesbian musicians. The lesbians were
fantastic, but the food was very ordinary.
Amerigo’s
Without a doubt, the best tiramisu
you’ll find—not only in
Don’t let that stop you,
though. If you feel like having a pizza
at Amerigo’s, order one—but tell the server you want it baked right or you’ll
keep sending it back to the kitchen until it is.
But I’m being negative again… Amerigo’s is a good Italian-American
restaurant and the setting is nice, too.
Just be careful of the pizza.
Applebee’s
This place probably wouldn’t be bad
if they didn’t hire morons to work in their kitchen. I got really tired of never getting what I
ordered, so I quit going a long time ago, but you can order the exact same
dinner at Applebee’s a dozen times and invariably the “chef” will leave
something different out of it each time.
Or you’ll get the large when you ordered the small. Or vice versa. This phenomenon is even harder to believe
when you discover they actually have pictures of what the food’s supposed to
look like hanging right in front of the prep table in the kitchen. Applebee’s is a good example of what happens
when a chain spends more money on advertising than they do on training
employees.
Atlanta
Bread Company
For breakast, their breads are
terrific. But be prepared to wait
forever if you happen to order a cappucino.
And give detailed instructions on how to prepare your bagel, roll, or
muffin, too. From experience, I know
that if you say “Toast it”, you’ve got to tell them to cut it in half first
because if you don’t, they’ll start a fire in the kitchen. For lunch, it’s not much different that any
lunch counter/sandwich shop, but the bread makes it worthwhile. Watch out if you go in the late afternoon to
pick up a loaf for dinner, though. Last
time I did that, they pushed a loaf of store-bought bread on me claiming it was
their own—it had the trademark “Kroger” waffle pattern on the bottom and
wouldn’t even fit in one of their own bags.
Baja
Burrito
First, you line up with a gaggle of cackling
sorority girls hugging and kissing everybody they see and a bunch of tattooed
jocks with biceps larger than their brains.
Then, after you get the “food”, people bang into you and knock things
out of your hands while shuffling around in front of the condiments as if
they’re trying to figure out the controls on a Boeing 747. Next, choose your seat: if you’re right at home with a decibel level
that rivals an AC/DC concert, sit inside, but if exhaust fumes are your thing,
try the patio. Aside from this wonderful
ambiance, the gummy burritos filled with starch are awful, too. I’d steer clear of this moron-filled
flophouse unless you’re one of the
forementioned cackling sorority girls, tattooed jocks etc., etc., etc.
Bar-B-Cutie’s
The barbeque is good but some of the
waitresses are horrible. I thought the
one who took my order was going to cough herself to death before she could get
the food onto the counter. I don’t like
places where the girl behind the counter looks like she just got finished
cleaning the men’s room, so now I go to the drive-in window. If I can’t see it, it’s okay.
Blackstone
Restaurant and Brewery
They brew their own beer here and it’s
great, especially the German Heffe Wietzen.
The food was pretty good, too, but if you have grilled tuna, you’ll taste
it for the next 5 hours. I don’t think
that’s the chef’s fault, though. I think
it’s the tuna’s.
Bosco’s
It’s impossible for a decent
pub/restaurant to just stay a decent pub/restaurant without the owners getting
dollar signs in their eyes and so, Bosco’s is now a chain. I don’t care what you call it,
a chain restaurant is any restaurant with more than one location and the same
name.
Yes, their in-house brewed beer is good but on a
hot day in
So Bosco’s is okay. It’s a little different and it’s a good
change of pace. And now, all that’ll
change with their
Calypso
Café
Calypso Café has the best lunch in
the city. The food is always good,
always consistent, and the service is great.
It’s got the occasional obnoxious, ill-mannered diner who doesn’t
realize there are other people in the place with her, but I’m beginning to
think that’s going to happen anywhere you go.
What the hell’s wrong with these people?
Anyway, Calypso Café’s a bit crowded at lunchtime,
but they get you in and out pretty quickly.
And it’s worth the wait--except on Sundays when the church people bring
their fidgeting kids who should be on Ritalin but obviously aren’t.
If you go after
Cooker
I was surprised to read that the
Cooker had closed their Hermitage location because they were trying to be a bit
more “upscale”. Every time I’ve been in
a Cooker, there were enough kids in the place to give me a bad case of the
heebie-jeebies and that’s certainly not going to change much by closing their
one location where there weren’t a lot of kids.
The food is okay at the Cooker, though.
Nothing special, but usually dependable.
The servers all think they’re meant for better
things than serving food, but that’s becoming so common that I barely notice
anymore except when I get an unusually obnoxious punk whom I threaten with a
steak knife.
Cracker
Barrel
The food’s so-so and the atmosphere
is loud, crowded, and a little bit too cutesy.
If you’re under 40, you’ll never know how good it used to be because
it’ll never be that good again. Everyone
who works at Cracker Barrel has been promoted one level beyond that at which
they were competent and now the place is nothing more than a “sit-down”
McDonald’s.
Darfon’s
Darfon’s is nothing if not
dependable. It’s not flashy, the menu
hasn’t changed since the day before the Revolutionary War, but they’ve never
screwed anything up on me, either. It’s
not loud, the servers don’t ignore you, you get your meals quickly, and they’re
always good. That’s dependable. You might not have the dining experience of a
lifetime at Darfon’s, but you won’t be disappointed, either.
Dragon
I like these types of restaurants,
but you have to believe me: the only
similarity between their food and real Chinese food is that you eat them both
off a plate.
Of course my wife, who actually happens to be Chinese, delights in telling me
“That’s not the way we do it” anytime I get something, so she won’t go often. Which pretty much means I
won’t go often, either.
El
Mariachi
Ordinary drinks. So-so Mexican food. Crappy booths.
Ellendale’s
Foo-foo food to
the max. It’s not bad by any
means; in fact, it’s pretty good, but it’s just so…so…small. The old house the place is in is interesting,
but it could use some sandpaper and a coat of paint.
F. Scott’s
The chef here is a wizard and will gladly
substitute his own creation for anything on the standard menu. I sat down and told the server what I
wanted. I also told him I was on the
Atkins Diet. He said he’d take care of
everything and when my dinner came, it was one of the best I’ve had in
Farooge Restaurant
I like Farooge Restaurant even
though it’s not really a restaurant.
It’s like a Subway but for Middle Eastern food like gyros, etc. The food is good, but if you’re looking for
ambience you won’t find it there. Think
Middle Eastern Burger King.
Fat
Mo’s Burgers
Frankly, I don’t see what all the
hype is about. The burgers are huge, no
doubt about that, but they’re dry as a popcorn fart and the fries are limp. And at Fat Mo’s, they use some kind of spice
I can’t identify that’s really weird and makes everything taste funky. I’ve tried to place it and all I can come up
with is a mixture of paprika and somebody’s feet. And it’s on everything, too.
Friday’s
To be honest, my
memories of Friday’s come from my college days when I’d go down to
But since then, I’ve eaten there twice, and the
food was okay—a little bit above the ordinary.
To me, Friday’s is a small step above places like O’Charley’s or
Applebee’s but since I won’t go into an O’Charley’s or an Applebee’s anymore,
Friday’s is okay with me.
If my wife has nothing to do some
evening, she might read this little epistle, so I should start off by saying
that she likes
International
Market and Restaurant
Right around the Belmont Campus,
this combination Asian market and restaurant serves fairly good Asian
cuisine. Some of it’s a little oily and
some of it’s been Americanized to be a bit milder than it should be, but all in
all, it’s excellent, especially for lunch.
They’ll also make you some things a la carte if you ask (like Pad
Thai).
The atmosphere’s not much, the plates are styrofoam, the utensils are plastic, but for the price, you
can’t beat it. The only thing I don’t
like about this place is that it seems as if lunch only takes about 5 minutes
to finish.
J. Alexander’s
Actually J. Alexander’s is a pretty
good restaurant. It’s very cool-looking
inside, I like those big ovens with the real wood fires that are displayed
against the kitchen wall, and the food is very tasty. The reason I ate at J. Alexander’s was
because I wanted to go to lunch at the Orchid Thai Cuisine restaurant in the
same strip mall, but they were closed that Sunday. I can’t stand having my plans ruined, so I
was already pissed off when I went into J. Alexander’s, but the atmosphere and
the food put me in a much better mood, so I made the conscious decision (as
opposed to an unconscious one) to like the place and I do.
I’ve had a sub in
Kalamata’s
Kalamata’s has pretty good food, but
I don’t like the way they do things. If
you’re not a regular, you don’t have a clue what to do when you walk in the
door. You don’t know where to order,
where to pick your food up, where to pay, when to pay—nothing. They make you feel like an idiot. I’ve been there twice and I still don’t know
how to do it. One day, I’m paying with
my plate in my hand and another day, I’m supposed to wait and pay when I’m
finished—all without a bill so I have to remember what exotic delicacy I asked
for and tell whoever decides to bop over to the cash register.
They’re re-modeling the place now and I hope
they decide to use servers because the cafeteria-style “what now” with people
milling around looking for their order or somebody to give their money to
doesn’t work.
But anyway, this is supposed to be about food,
and I like Kalamata’s food. I don’t like
the fact that they put their pita bread in a microwave instead of a real oven
because it gets gummy instead of crispy, but they’re supposed to be the experts
in Greek food, so if they want it gummy, who am I to correct them?
One other thing:
they have a great selection of sodas.
Kabob Gyros and Italian
Cuisine
Okay, boys, one or the other. Are you a Greek fast food joint or an Italian
fast food joint? Don’t know? Well, let me tell you—you’re a Greek fast
food joint. Good Italian food ain’t
fast.
The Middle Eastern food at this lunch counter,
pick-up window hole in the wall isn’t too bad at all and they’ll add or omit
anything you want them to if you can make them understand you.
It’s true that all these gyro shops, etc. are
about the same, though. It’s just fast
food with a funny name—nothing to get excited about.
Kobe Steaks is actually just another
Japanese steak house where the chef tries his best not to cut off his fingers
with a cleaver the size of a water cooler while making confetti out of a
chicken thigh, but it’s still very entertaining and the food is excellent. I like it.
Except for the taking off your shoes and sitting with people you don’t
know part. That’s a little bit
annoying. When I have to pay $50 for
dinner, I want my own table.
La
Hacienda
La Hacienda is growing into a chain
and I can’t say I like that because usually it means the food quality is going
to suffer, but it’s still my favorite Mexican restaurant even though I think
they use more MSG than any Chinese restaurant I’ve ever been in. The staff is friendly, efficient, they
remember me, and the food is out of this world.
I even like the Margaritas and I hate Margaritas. If the management can keep from getting
greedy while opening up their other locations, it should stay reliable.
The food’s nowhere near as good as
La Hacienda, but it’s a cooler-looking place if that impresses you.
A friend of mine likes to call this
place “Rogan’s Loadhouse.” It’s another
so-called steak house with a barrel of peanuts out front to fill you up before
you get to the meal. Ho-hum
main courses and greasy side dishes.
Keep driving.
Mambu Cafe
Mambu is a very cool place—but one
of those places you wouldn’t go in unless a friend told you it was okay. The food is “fusion” style and I’ve never
been too sure what it’s supposed to fuse, but it was very good. The portions were a little small, but Mambu’s
not one of those “strap on the food bag” sort of places. Anyplace where the servers takes 10 minutes
to tell you what kind of waters they have should tip you off that you’re going
to be hungry in a couple of hours, but you’re supposed to go there for the
quality, not the quantity. If a
smorgasbord is your idea of a good time, stay out of Mambu, but if really
excellent food means anything to you, I’d try it. One thing, though. They shouldn’t call a place that charges this
much a café.
Midtown
Cafe
Sometimes, you go to a restaurant
and everything is great; food, service, ambience, wine list, etc. Then you go back a month later and it’s like
the chef took the night off and left the janitor in charge of the kitchen.
That’s what happened to me at Midtown Café and
it was a shame, too, because I really liked the place the first time
around. I had the pork loin both times;
fantastic the first time, fishy-tasting and over-cooked the second time. At the prices they charge, you should really
expect a fantastic experience each and every time.
Also, they have something called “Snake River Farms Idaho Kobe Wagyu Beef
Filet” on the menu. Come on...it’s a
steak, okay? If you
want to be pretentious and haughty, at least keep a chef on duty every night.
Mulligan’s Pub and
Restaurant
Puh-lease. Sticking “Gallway” or “Gaelic” in front of
American food doesn’t make it Irish.
How’s this for Irish fare:
“Chips, Cheese, and Salsa”? What
about “Mozzarella Cheese Sticks”?
My poor grandfather’s probably
spinning in his grave.
This place would deep-fry a phone
book. And buffet style doesn’t really
adapt itself too well to fried food because no matter how they try, the food
just sits in its own grease. The next
day you’ll have to buy a case of Clearasil to dry up your pores. And the waiters annoy the shit out of you
asking if you’d like to sample frog legs.
That’s disgusting. Only an animal
or a Frenchman would eat a frog’s leg.
Noshville
Noshville calls itself a
Outback
Steakhouse
Never again. It might look tasty, but a slab of salmon
thicker than
O’Charley’s
Screaming kids. Mediocre food. Shitty service. Inconsistent preparation. If I thought the people who run O’Charley’s
were really Irish, I’d be ashamed. And adding
an “O” to everything is also getting a little bit too cutesy for me. O’forget it.
Orchid
Thai Cuisine
Orchid Thai Cuisine was good Thai
food, a good atmosphere, and pretty cool, I thought. I mean Thai food is like every other kind of
food—when it’s good, it’s good and there’s nothing else you can say about
it. None of the Thai restaurants in
P.F.
Chang’s
I like P.F. Chang’s. Especially the Kung Pao chicken, the spicy
eggplant, and the lettuce wraps. The
servers all think they’re too smart and talented to be working there
(Vanderbilt students, I guess) and one of the hostesses is so skinny she scares
me, but this place is reliable and the food is interesting. The only problem is that they keep telling me
they don’t use MSG in their food. Bullshit—there’s
enough MSG in that stuff to build a sand castle.
Parco Café
I don’t know….there’s something I
really like about this place, but I can’t put my finger on it. It’s in the Farmer’s Market and it’s a pain
to get there, to eat there, to order there…you name
it. Also, I think Mr. Fu uses the crappy
tuna instead of the albacore kind, because I can always taste it for the next 3
days, but it’s good so I keep getting it.
I want to try that frittata-like thing he makes, too, but I haven’t had
a chance yet. It takes him forever to
fix a sandwich or a salad, but it’s worth the wait. In fact, sometimes it’s worth the drive to get
there…
And the bread is always good, too—Tuscan
peasant bread, I think.
But his deserts are amazing. You’ve got to see them because they actually
look better than they taste and they taste fantastic. The fruit tea that Mrs. Fu whips up is
supposed to be “to die for” stuff, too, but from what I can tell it’s just tea with some fruit floating around in it. Nothing I could do at home could possibly be
“to die for”.
Prime Cut
I should have sued these sons of
bitches for every dime they had. The restaurant
is two stories down from street level, the floors were slick with beef drippings
and slobber, none of the lighbulbs in the stairwell worked, and my wife damn
near broke her leg when she fell down the stairs.
And we couldn’t leave because we were in a group
that took one of those idiotic limos to the place. Limos. Gimme a break. “Oooooo. You’ve got forty dollars…..”
So we ate there, me holding a towel full of ice
on her leg most of the time because we were too polite to leave. I don’t know if it was good or not and I
don’t care because the only reason I’d go back in there would be to burn the
place to the ground.
As a rule, I don’t like places where
there are no servers. I hate lining up
for food and I don’t like buying a sandwich that’s been wrapped in plastic and
tossed into a cooler. But
Rafferty’s
Rafferty’s is one of the few places
in town that can actually screw up a hamburger so badly you can’t eat it. If I ever go in there again, it’ll be to hide
from the police.
Rice Bowl, Inc.
Asian style food
without the buffet table. Not
authentic, just Asian-style. Oh, you can
get authentic Asian food there, but you’ve got to walk into the place as a
family. And you have to be a family of
Asians, too. The day we were there, we
ordered off the regular menu and it wasn’t bad, but about halfway through our
lunch, an Asian family came in and got the royal treatment—table service, real
plates, and everything. I still don’t know
how they did it.
But here’s a little advice from my
wife, who should know these things: if
an Asian restaurant advertises more than one style of food (for example, Korean
& Japanese or Thai & Chinese), then none of them are any good. And I’ve found that to be a pretty good rule.
Royal Thai
Restaurant
It’d take you a week just to read
the entire menu, but the food is great.
And they’ll serve it to you “authentic Thai” if you ask them to. I’m not sure what all the dishes are, but
everything I’ve had there was good.
There’s one in Hermitage (where I went) and another downtown called
“Express”—the “Express” doesn’t look good from outside, so I can’t vouch for
it, but the one in Hermitage was outstanding.
Of course, you’ve got to like Thai food.
If your idea of Asian cuisine is LaChoy frozen egg rolls or an all you
can eat Chinese Buffet restaurant, you might want to stick with a burger joint.
Ruby
Tuesday
Just chain food. Not good, not bad. Just food. They play up their “Salad Bar” a lot, but it’s
actually just lettuce and a couple of bowls filled with things tossed together
with pasta and mayonnaise. Still, it’s
got O’Charley’s beat by a mile.
SalaThai
This place can call itself whatever
they want, but I’m telling you right now that they don’t serve Thai food. I don’t know what the hell you’d call it, but
I’ve had real Thai food and this ain’t it.
Oddly enough, the real Thai food I had was in
Anyway, I once asked the folks at
SalaThai to just stir-fry some broccoli for me as a side dish and they said
they couldn’t do it—didn’t know how. You
can take that for what it’s worth, but if you claim to be an Asian restaurant
and you don’t know how to stir fry broccoli, something’s wrong.
Sam and
Zoe’s
Coffee houses have always bothered
me because frankly, I can’t tell one cup of coffee from another. Now, before you dismiss my opinion on Sam and
Zoe’s, keep in mind that this flaw doesn’t automatically make me a Philistine;
it just means that I cannot learn about coffee. So… Sam and Zoe’s has coffee. They also
have bagels and again, a bagel is a bagel.
And it’s not like their bagels are homemade or anything like that—they
come off a bread truck just like the ones at Kroger or Publix. If you still think this is the 60’s and you
wear tie-dyed shirts and bell bottom jeans, go ahead and eat there, but you’re
going to have a helluva time parking the Lexus because their location sucks.
No kidding—I’ve even forgotten
eating there, but I know I did. That
means one of two things: either it was
bad or I’m in the early stages. I prefer
to believe the former. It’s probably the
latter.
Sola Mio
I don’t know…
Sometimes a place has been built up so much that
when you finally get around to eating there, they could have Pamela Anderson
serve you naked and it still wouldn’t meet your expectations.
So, it was okay.
Nothing special, just okay. Not bad by any means, just too typical for a
typical Italian restaurant. Whatever that means.
By the way, it should be “Solo Mio”, not “Sola
Mio”. I guess the place is owned by a
Hungarian.
Starbucks
The one place where I can tell a
difference in coffee is Starbucks, but I’m not at all sure it’s worth $4 a cup
just so I can tell a little difference.
I honestly think Starbucks is just a trendy place to get a jolt of
caffeine, but there are those among you who swear by it.
One improvement they could make would be to buy
a toaster—you can actually get something to eat there, which makes it good for
breakfast or a light lunch, but only if you want to eat it cold.
Sutler
The Sutler’s a dump with good “guy” food
and hilarious waitresses who all look like your grandmother if your grandmother
was a hooker. You wouldn’t take your
wife there, but then again, I don’t know your wife. Anyway, it’s a good place for lunch. I like
the beer and cheese soup because it has a million calories and you don’t have
to eat again until leap year. The Sutler’s
claim to fame at night is music—they always have some pretty good musicians and
the food’s just there if you’re hungry.
Ted’s
They serve bison at Ted’s and
they’re really proud of it, too. They’d
probably be prouder if somebody in the place would learn how to cook the stuff
so it doesn’t taste like roadkill. Yeah,
yeah, bison (buffalo) is supposed to be better for you than beef—and it
probably is—but in order for it to be good for you, you’ve got to be able to
choke it down and I couldn’t get that “bison burger” past my lips. Oh, and if you order onion rings, better
order again because I got 4 of them with my burger. 4 onion rings. No damned wonder I felt something stick me in
the back when I got the $31.04 bill…
Tin
Angel
The Tin Angel is what happens when
people have more money than they have sense, but I guess even the hoi-polloi need
a place to cackle about sprouts and balsamic vinaigrette. The menu at this dump is ridiculous and the
only people who go there more than once go because they think they should. I went one Sunday for lunch and thought I’d
stepped into a Fellini movie. It was the
“B” list from the Swine Ball. I didn’t
even know dead people could eat. Except
for people who wear tennis sweaters in June, no one in their right mind would
go to this place.
Yellow
Porch
The menu in this place was really interesting
for a change and the food was pretty good, too.
Their homemade soups (the Potato, Tomato Basil, Mediterranean Vegetable,
etc.) are excellent and even if the food is a little on the “foo-foo” side, it’s well worth it. I
didn’t get to try out the bar but it looked great—large assortment, comfortable
stools, etc.
You might get the idea when you go in that it
was designed for old ladies to have “luncheons” there (and that does happen)
but overall, you could do a lot worse than the Yellow Porch for lunch. Another thing I like about it is that the
portion size is just right. I was having
lunch there one Saturday and saw Ned Ray McWherter at a table against the
wall--and we all know he’s not one to have a light lunch.
White Trash Café
At least they got the name
right. It’s a “meat and three place” and
they’re all the same. You get a hunk of mystery
meat and a spoonful each of three different greasy vegetables that all taste
the same. They toss two pieces of rock
hard cornbread on top of it and you’re supposed to wolf the whole thing down in
the 20 minutes you’ve got before you have to be back at work. I’d rather eat a Snickers—more nutrition and
fewer calories.
Zola’s
Without a doubt, one of the few
restaurants in