In Nashville recently, I was seeing an account in the East Nashville neighborhood. After getting out of the meeting around 12:30 in the afternoon, I decided to find something to eat in the area. I did a quick look on my phone for restaurants in the area and I had a choice between a Mexican restaurant and a burger joint that were across the street from one another. The Mexican place was a little taco joint and it was packed. That gave me the option B for the burger joint. I found a parking space behind The Pharmacy Burger Parlor and Beer Garden and went inside.
Cees Brinkman was born in the Netherlands and decided to move to Nashville in the early 90's. Brinkman owned a couple commercial rental properties in East Nashville and in one of them he was housing some surplus restaurant equipment. Brinkman put an ad on Craigslist to see if he could make some room in one of the properties and a local bar manager by the name of Terry Raley reached out to him as he was thinking of opening his own restaurant.
Raley came by the property on McFerrin Ave. and met with Brinkman. While he was looking over the equipment and telling Brinkman how he wanted to own a restaurant at some point, Brinkman was telling Raley that the building they were in - an old daycare center that had a patio - would be a great place for a restaurant. Brinkman missed the neighborhood restaurants he remembered back in The Netherlands that were social focal points with pub food and a great beer selection with large gardens where people would meet up on nice days. He told Raley the building they were in would be perfect for a restaurant like that.
The two formed a 50-50 partnership and started work on the building that had elements of an old time soda fountain as well as an old-school American steakhouse along with a European-style pub with a foliage covered beer garden. Brinkman had collected antique apothecary bottles from an old pharmacy building he owned just up the street and they decorated the restaurant with many of the bottles giving the restaurant it's name - The Pharmacy Burger Parlor and Beer Garden. In December of 2011, the restaurant opened its doors.
In early 2015, a business dispute over a new restaurant Raley had opened without Brinkman involved put the business partners at odds. Brinkman took over the day-to-day operations of The Pharmacy Burger at that point. A series of suits and countersuits made their way through the courts before a judge ruled in favor of Brinkman in 2020 and damages were awarded. After the court battle cleared, it allowed Brinkman to open a second Pharmacy Burger location in 2021 in the Assembly Food Hall in downtown Nashville. And after a renovation and expansion of the Nashville International Airport, a third Pharmacy Burger opened in the terminal in 2023.
Pictured right - Cees Brinkman. Photo courtesy LinkedIn.
The original Pharmacy Burger Parlor & Beer Garden is located along McFerrin Ave. between W. Eastland Ave./Cleveland St. and Chicamauga Ave. in East Nashville. (see map) Parking is a little "iffy" (as in, the lack of it) in the area, but I was able to find a parking space just behind the building.
Inside Pharmacy Burger, the decor hearkened back to an early 1920's pharmacy or retail establishment with exposed beams and antique light fixtures hanging from squares of tin panels. The long and narrow room had a community table down the middle with dark wood paneled supports running the length of the building. Exposed ductwork also ran the length of the restaurant. Sconce lighting fixtures were above tables along the wall. Without the lighting in the place, it would have been dark and somewhat dingy.
The L-shaped bar had the old style wooden stools on swivels. A row of tables along the wall provided more seating in the bar area. 70's R&B/Funk music from the likes of Chaka Khan, Parliament, Ben E. King and the J.B.'s (James Brown's back-up band) was playing in the background in the restaurant.
Out back is the beer garden. It featured low-slung bushes bordering the walkways and the individual patios in the beer garden. The leafy trees over the beer garden provided abundant shade in the hot and humid Nashville midday weather. It was definitely a popular place, but I didn't feel comfortable taking up a table by myself with groups of people coming in.
Just between the beer garden and the main building at Pharmacy Burger is a step-up covered patio with picnic tables. On the backside of the building was a bar with a concrete top that had some stools in front of an opening to the inside bar.
I ended up sitting at the inside bar and was greeted by a pleasant young lady who handed me a food menu. She asked what I wanted to drink and she handed me a beer menu. They had a pretty impressive menu of craft beers and imports including beers and ciders from Belgium, Spain, Germany, France and the UK. On tap, they had Duvel Golden Ale, the only bar/restaurant in Tennessee that had the beer available. They also had the Gaffel kölsch on tap and I considered getting that. But I saw that they had my new favorite beer from the Bearded Iris brewery in Nashville - the Homestyle hazy IPA. I made it a point to stop at a liquor store before I left Nashville to get a couple six packs of the Homestyle beer.
After she placed my beer in front of me, I asked the bartender if this was really an old pharmacy. "This was a day care center," she said. "There was a pharmacy up the street and the owner salvaged a bunch of old pharmacy bottles out of the place." She pointed to the wall behind me and showed me a row of antique pharmacy bottles on a wooden shelf above the mirror.
Burgers were the main item on the menu, but grilled chicken sandwiches, kielbasa and wursts were also available. Ground turkey, ground chicken, black bean and impossible burgers were also available for the beef/meat averse. They had some interesting burgers including the stroganoff burger with a mushroom bechamel sauce and sour cream topping with Swiss cheese. The Slap burger was topped with American cheese, a chipotle/avocado aioli and grilled jalapeños; and the White Oak BBQ burger was topped with a house-made Coca-Cola barbecue sauce, smoked barbecue onions, bacon, onion straws and provolone cheese.
The wursts they had on the menu were all ground, cased, and smoked in house. The jagerwurst pork sausage was mixed with coriander, garlic, mustard seed, nutmeg and ginger. If I wasn't in the mood for a burger, I may have gotten that.
They had a couple specials that day - burger tacos and a cream cheese burger. I got a chuckle out of the cream cheese burger special as it reminded me of the time a colleague of mine ordered a cream cheese burger at the Cherry Cricket in Denver a number of years ago and I rode him unmercifully for that - well, ever since then! The burger tacos were just that - burger meat in tacos topped with lettuce, tomato and a pico de gallo.
I settled on getting the Pharmacy burger - a half-pound burger patty that was cooked medium-well, topped with yellow cheddar cheese, shredded lettuce, a tomato slice, onions, pickles and yellow mustard. Sides available included hand-cut fries, cole slaw, German potato salad, and pasta salad. But, of course, I got tots to go along with my burger. They didn't have Cholula at Pharmacy Burger, but they had Crystal hot sauce and that worked fine on the tots.
The burger was good - not great, but good. I mean, it didn't seem like it was anything special to me. The bun was a little dry and the toppings made it a mess, but the bartender/server provided me with a pile of napkins to help clean up. I had to go to the restroom afterward just to wash my hands from all the mess on them the napkins didn't quite catch. The tots were a great complement to the burger - crispy on the outside with a soft flaky inner core.
While I enjoyed the experience at Pharmacy Burger Parlor and Beer Garden, I thought the burger was just all right. It was nothing that really grabbed hold of me and made me go, "Mmmmm...." after the first bite. The service I had from the bartender that day was very good as she was friendly and efficient. The beer garden at Pharmacy Burger is top-notch and it would be a great place to go to hang with friends on a warm afternoon to get a burger and a cold beer from a great selection of craft and imported beers. Pharmacy Burger was a good find for a burger and beer joint on Nashville's east side.
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