I got into Nashville after a long day of driving - most of it through Central and Southern Illinois in a heavy rainstorm from the remnants of Hurricane Beryl - around 6:00 p.m. one recent day. I had set up a dinner get together with a former colleague who lives in Nashville. He asked me what if I wanted to go somewhere upscale or casual. I said, "Hey, man. This is your town. But you know me, casual, good food, beer." He immediately said, "We're going to M.L. Rose."
Austin Ray grew up in Nashville, the son of Davidson County's first female sheriff Gayle Ray. When he got old enough to look for a job, it didn't hurt that his mother had a lot of connections in the community. Ray's first job at the age of 13 was washing dishes and making sandwiches for a catering company. Later on, he went to work in the kitchen at The (now-closed) Mad Platter, a trendy restaurant run by Craig and Marcia Jervis located in Nashville's Germantown neighborhood. After graduating from Hillsboro High School on Nashville's southwest side in 1997, Ray wanted to go to college that had a strong hospitality program. He chose Boston University in Boston, MA.
Pictured right - Austin Ray. Photo courtesy M.L. Rose website.
While in college at B.U., Ray worked in bars and restaurants learning the trade on the side. When he got his degree in hospitality from Boston, he was immediately set up to work for a large corporation. But after a while, Ray found that the corporate lifestyle wasn't his thing, so he moved back to Nashville in 2002 to look for opportunities there.
Living in an apartment in Nashville's tony Oak Hill neighborhood, Ray started a small catering business using his small kitchen as the main facility. But it wasn't too long after he started his catering business when he met Benjamin Goldberg, a young man who also had the same drive and vision Ray had in wanting to chart his own course in the restaurant/bar business.
Ray and Goldberg collaborated on a new upscale nightclub - Bar Twenty3 - which opened in 2004 in Nashville's Gulch neighborhood. And when two popular live music venues were shut down due to urban development in the fast-changing downtown Nashville area, the two opened City Hall, a live music event space. But by 2008, Bar Twenty3 had fallen out of favor with new night spots opening up in The Gulch, and City Hall's lease had expired. Ray and Goldberg closed the bar and the live music venue and went their separate ways. (Goldberg and his brother Max eventually founded Strategic Hospitality overseeing Nashville restaurants such as The Catbird Seat, Bastian, and Henrietta Red, as well as eateries at local landmarks and venues such as the Nashville International Airport, First Horizon Park, and GEODIS Park.)
By this time, Ray was now living in the Melrose neighborhood of Nashville and he wanted to have a neighborhood bar that was the antithesis of Bar Twenty3. While Bar Twenty3 was trendy, upscale and sort of elite, his next project was going to be more of a drinking than eating establishment where every day regulars would show up and enjoy themselves.
Ray purchased a former gay bar in Melrose - The Chute - and started renovations. He quickly realized that the building was in bad shape and needed a lot of work. There were times when Ray questioned his decision to open a bar in the neighborhood, but then he realized that the neighborhood was changing from a seedy section of Nashville into a more gentrified area. Ray opened the Melrose Pub in 2008.
Just across the street from the Melrose Pub was a place simply called The Melrose. It had been there since 1944 and was a dingy dive bar/pool hall. In fact, it had been there so long that some people thought the neighborhood was named after the pool hall! With The Melrose just across the street from the Melrose Pub, it soon became evident that when people were going to meet friends at the Melrose Pub, some thought they were to meet at The Melrose across the street. It got to a point where people would refer to The Melrose as "the dirty Melrose", and the Melrose Pub as "the clean Melrose."
But some people continued to think the Melrose Pub was the same thing as The Dirty Melrose pool hall and refused to go there. Austin Ray knew he had a small personality problem on his hands and around 2012 he changed the name from the Melrose Pub to the present day M.L. Rose. (Ray got the last laugh in the whole deal - he bought The Melrose pool hall in 2016 and spiffed the place up taking a lot of the dinginess out of the place and making it more of a 1940's-style, art deco drinking establishment. It's still referred to as "The Dirty Melrose", but it is far from that these days.)
About the time Ray changed the name of his establishment to M.L. Rose, he opened a second location in the Sylvan Park neighborhood. In 2017, Ray opened a third M.L. Rose location in the Capitol View residential, entertainment and commerce district on the north side of downtown. In the meantime, he also opened a German-style sausage house and beer hall - Von Elrod's - in Nashville's Germantown neighborhood. M.L. Rose has seen steady expansion over the years and it is projected that there will be 7 M.L. Rose locations in and around Nashville by the end of this year. All of the M.L. Rose restaurants, along with Von Elrod's and the Dirty Melrose are under the A. Ray Hospitality banner.
It was the Sylvan Park location just south of Interstate 40 in West Nashville where my buddy and I were going to meet up. (see map) I took an Uber to the place because I've sort of learned over the times I've been coming to Nashville that some places either don't have any available parking nearby, or it costs to park with an app on your phone you have to download and enter a credit card for payment. It turned out that there was sufficient parking in a couple lots near the Sylvan Park M.L. Rose location.
Out front of this M.L. Rose location was a retro-fitted A-frame patio area that looked like it was added on well after the building had been erected. It was a good-sized area which may have been larger in capacity from the inside dining area. Flatscreen televisions were hung in the corners for sporting events. It was actually more of an "inside" patio.
Just inside the front door I ran into the main dining area. It was sort of kitschy, but not to the point of being repulsive. It was a lively atmosphere in M.L. Rose that evening and all the booths along the wall were full. It was going to have to be a high-top table in the dining room or near the bar for seating as it was muggy outside from a recent rain shower in the area.
The bar area was on the long wall of the "L"-shaped restaurant. It featured a long bar with high-backed chairs and large televisions on the wall on the back bar. It was sort of packed in the bar when I first got there, so I ended up taking a four-seat high-top table just inside the front door.
I was greeted by a young guy wearing a Caitlin Clark t-shirt who let me know he would be taking care of me that evening. I told him that I had a buddy showing up, so we needed a couple food menus. He dropped the menus off and asked me what I wanted to drink. I fumbled around looking for a beer menu before the guy pulled one off a holder behind the condiment holder on the table. They had about 3 dozen beers, ciders and sours available and I was looking for a hazy IPA to try. While my server patiently waited for me to give him my order - I apologized a couple times while I was perusing the tap menu - I finally settled on a Tunnel Vision hazy IPA from the Bearded Iris brewery in Nashville.
My buddy showed up not long after I got my first beer. After exchanging pleasantries, our server came back over to take his beer order. He got a Music City Light from the Music City Beer Company in Nashville. When he brought my buddy's beer to him at our table, I had to ask the server if he was a big Caitlin Clark fan. He told us that he was born in Iowa City, but moved to Minnesota as a young boy. But he went to college at the University of Iowa and I said, "So did I! I'm from Davenport now!" My buddy - who is a huge Illinois sports fan - just had to sit there was we talked about how great going to Iowa was.
The menu at M.L. Rose isn't all that deep. They have the usual appetizers - wings, pretzel bites, fried pickles and peppers chips, and waffle fries topped with cheddar and jack cheese with bacon bits, diced tomatoes and chopped green onions. But most of the rest of the menu was devoted to burgers and sandwiches. I was definitely going to get a burger, but the crispy Buffalo chicken wrap made me pause for a moment.
My buddy had been to M.L. Rose many times and he said he didn't even need a menu as he knew what he wanted. He got the Crunchwrap burger - a burger patty topped with a cilantro creme and cheddar and jack cheese tucked inside a tortilla which is then fried. Shredded lettuce and pico de gallo came on the side along with a chipotle ranch dressing with salsa. I thought it was pretty interesting and he offered me a bite, but I declined. "It's like a Mexican hamburger," he said between bites. "I think it's great!"
I got the ANM.L.-Style burger with waffle fries. It's M.L. Rose's take on the famous In-n-Out "animal-style" cheeseburger featuring two smashed burger patties topped with American cheese, stout beer-braised onions, shredded lettuce, tomato slices, dill pickles and finished with M.L. Rose's mayo-based "awesome sauce". The cheese just oozed out from the sides of the burger patties. It was a great burger and very messy. It was at least a five napkin burger. But the bun held together exceptionally well with the gooey cheese and the dripping sauce on the burger.
My buddy and I lingered after dinner for a couple more beers getting caught on things in our industry. He told me that he had just bought a Rivian R1T electric pick-up truck - he had mentioned the last time I saw him when we ran into one another in Fort Wayne earlier in the summer that he was thinking about getting one. I had to see it and we went out into the parking lot so he could show me his new truck. I was going to Uber it back to my hotel and he said, "Nonsense. I'll take you back." I've always liked the looks of the Rivian trucks when I've seen them on the road and I was pretty impressed with the features - and the power - of my buddy's truck.
M.L. Rose was exactly what I was looking for - a casual restaurant with a good beer menu, good beers and a laid-back vibe. Our server that evening - whose name I missed getting - was a good guy, especially for wearing a Caitlin Clark t-shirt. But he was very attentive and on top of any request or need we had. While the menu isn't all that big at M.L. Rose, there's enough of a variety for basically anybody. (There's a Kid's Menu for families, as well.) It's easy to see why M.L. Rose is one of the more popular burger joints in the Nashville area.
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