During our vacation last fall, we stayed out in Brentwood, TN - a nice upscale area of Nashville. We contemplated going into the city to get something to eat, but we checked with the front desk to see if they had a list of area restaurants. They did, but it was sparse and a couple of the places on the list we had already tried on visits before. We did spy a sushi place on the list - Hanabi - and decided to head over there for dinner.
Hanabi was close to the hotel, but sort of difficult to find. It was back in an office park area in a small strip mall way off the beaten path. (see map) We passed by it once because it was sort of hidden back in a corner. But we were able to find it and we walked in around 7:00 p.m.
We were greeted by Helen, who identified herself as the owner of the restaurant. She said that Hanabi had been open for 9 years. I asked her what Hanabi meant and she said, "Fireworks! It's the Japanese term for fireworks!" Ah! The stuff you learn when you just ask. The dining area was nice and had contemporary light wood tables and chairs.
We asked her if we could sit at the sushi bar in the back of the restaurant and she said it was no problem. Helen gave us a couple of menus to look through. Cindy ordered up some green tea and I got an Asahi beer. Later on she got a glass of the house chardonnay.
Even though they have a kitchen and featured cooked entrees, we were there for the sushi. The first thing we ordered up is a spicy tuna roll and something that we saw on the sushi menu called the "Parthenon" roll. Nashville has a replica of the famed Greek ancient temple with a 42-foot tall statue of the Greek goddess Athena inside. (We went there the next day.)
The Parthenon was a maki roll with a layer of tuna, white tuna, salmon and yellow tail with rice in between. We watched the sushi chef make the Parthenon roll. It was an elaborate production of the sushi chef putting the yellow tail and white tuna on the roll of rice, covering that with another layer of rice before topping it off with the salmon and the regular tuna. It took him awhile to make it, but it was worth the wait.
The spicy tuna roll was flavorful with a hint of spiciness to the taste. But the Parthenon roll was simply outstanding. I could have ordered up another one just to have all the taste sensations going into it. The sushi was fresh without a hint of fishy taste. This was a great start to the dinner.
The sushi chefs knew we were going to spend some money and one of them handed over a barbecued tuna appetizer - for free. It was seared rare and sliced into three pieces. It was topped with freshly chopped green onions. The barbecued tuna was just wonderful.
We ordered up more sushi after that and got six pieces of the smoked salmon. The smoked salmon had a great smoky taste to it, but it was very salty. I would have gotten more of the smoked salmon had it not been so salty. It was some of the saltiest smoked salmon I'd ever had.
We had ordered up four pieces of the tuna at the same time we ordered the smoked salmon. Curiously, they made the tuna separate from the smoked salmon sushi. But that was fine as we found out that the tuna was simply great. With great texture and a wonderful taste, the tuna was also outstanding. We wished we would have ordered more of the tuna instead of the smoked salmon.
I was still sort of hungry and I decided to order more of the great tuna sushi and get a couple pieces of the yellow tail. Yellow tail can be sort of fishy in taste, but the yellow tail they served at Hanabi - as I initially found with the Parthenon roll - was fresh and flavorful. Cindy just had a couple more pieces of the tuna while I finished off the other two pieces and the two pieces of the yellow tail.
After we finished, the sushi chef handed over a small bowl with orange slices. That was a new concept to us. He said it was to refresh the palate after the soy sauce and wasabi. I like orange juice and the taste of orange flavor, but I'm not too big on just eating a plain ol' orange slice. But it was an interesting taste after the saltiness of the soy sauce and the spiciness of the wasabi.
Cindy was thinking about getting ice cream after that and we ventured down the road to downtown Franklin, TN and found a Kilwins ice cream shop. We've been to a couple Kilwins before up in Michigan, but didn't know they were found outside of the state of Michigan. Little did I know as there are over 100 Kilwins locations in 20 states! We got some ice cream and strolled along the main street of the quaint downtown area in Franklin, two owls at night enjoying their ice cream and doing some window shopping. (Hoo! Hoo!)
The sushi at Hanabi was very good. Save for the very salty smoked salmon, all the sushi we had was fresh, savory and delicious. The Parthenon roll was outstanding and the barbecued tuna was a pleasant surprise. Helen checked in on us from time to time to make sure we were happy with our sushi. Our visit to Hanabi was a nice experience. It's a little tough to find, but it's worth the effort if you're looking for sushi in the southern suburbs of Nashville.
When we were in Nashville as part of our vacation last fall, I wanted to take my wife to the Parthenon - a replica of the ancient Greek temple that was originally built in 1897 for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. I had been there once with a colleague when we were in Nashville for a trade show a few years back, but we had never gone into the place to see the 42-foot high statue of the Greek Goddess Athena. But before we got there, we passed an interestingly looking restaurant on Elliston Place near Vanderbilt University that piqued my interest with a stone front and "Steak" and "Sea Food" neon signs in the front windows. After wandering through the Parthenon, we headed back over to Rotier's Restaurant to get some lunch. (see map)
I knew absolutely nothing about Rotier's but found out that the place has been a favorite hang-out for locals since 1945. A who's-who of Nashville celebrities and Vanderbilt students have passed through their doors for the burgers and home-style cooking Rotier's is famous before. A third generation of the Rotier (pronounced ro-TEAR, as tear drop) family now run the restaurant that was started by John and Evelyn Rotier just after World War II. The Rotier's bought a little tavern on Elliston Place - the former Al's Tavern. Al's Tavern was a gambling den and had a number of pinball machines. But it was also only one of three places at the time on the west side of Nashville that served food. To keep the business going after they first bought the place, Evelyn would work the day shift while John would work the evening shift.
Once gambling machines were outlawed in Tennessee, the Rotier's expanded the restaurant and the food they served. They became known as a "meat and three" place - "meat and three" is a Tennessee expression for meat and vegetables. They continued to serve their burgers, but homemade comfort food items were added to the menu.
The spunky Evelyn Rotier was the task-master of the place, correcting the diction of an employee or of a viewpoint of a customer, hiring and firing grill cooks, and not putting up with any guff from mouthy customers. But at the same time, she would be the first to give out a free meal to needy people or playfully dote on the babies that customers would bring in. She spoke her mind and was loved and feared at the same time by her regular customers.
The Rotier's three children - John, Jr., Margaret and Charles - all worked in the restaurant for their parents. John Rotier, Sr. passed away in 1981 and Evelyn kept on working in the restaurant until she retired in 1996. Evelyn passed the restaurant along to her three children to run, but John, Jr. passed away just after Christmas in 1999. Margaret - now Margaret Crouse, and Charles Rotier continued to run the place and today are helped out by their children Jacob Crouse and Charlie Rotier, Jr. And even though she wasn't working at the restaurant any longer, for a number of years Evelyn Rotier would still stop in from time to time to check on things and get caught up with gossip from regular customers. She passed away in 2014 at the age of 94.
A heavy rain storm had come up when we were in the Parthenon and we had to wait to get out to our car. Once that passed around 1:30 in the afternoon, we drove over to Rotier's and found a parking spot out front. We walked in and were greeted by Margaret Crouse seated at the cash register near the bar, just like her mother did for years and years. She told us we could sit in a booth in the bar area up front. The booth was, well, it was old. And it was also sort of tight. These were booths designed for very skinny people, not for a big guy like me. Still, I was able to fit in with not a lot of discomfort.
This was an old school bar. Not very big, but cozy and welcoming enough. The bar seated, maybe 8 patrons. Vintage beer signs, American flags, old pictures and bits of kitsch were on display throughout the bar area. Up front by the front door, a vintage Galaga video game stood like a sentinel. (I tell people I flunked a summer college course one year because I decided to play Galaga at the Airliner in Iowa City instead of going to class.)
The dining area in the back was equally small and cozy. There were tables back there that would have been a little more comfortable to sit in rather than the booth, but we were fine where we were. More vintage beer signs, mirrored signs and pictures hung on the wood paneled walls in the back dining area.
We were given menus by one of the servers. She was a young lady, I'm guessing late 20's, early 30's. She had a slight Southern drawl and kind of a sassy, yet playful demeanor. We ordered up a couple of the Yazoo Brewing Company's pale ale, brewed locally in Nashville.
By the signs in their windows, you'd think there would be a lot of steaks or seafood on Rotier's menu. There isn't. There's a 10 ounce New York strip steak and a hamburger steak on the menu, as well as a fried fish platter and a fried shrimp dinner. Sandwiches included an open faced hot beef sandwich, a classic BLT, and a corned beef or turkey reuben.
Their signature burger is a burger on French bread. I ordered one of those topped with a housemade pimento cheese. Housemade potato chips came with my burger. The French bread was a little too much bread to go with the burger. The burger, itself, was thick and juicy with a good flavor. The French bread - too much of it - didn't really do anything to enhance the taste for me.
Cindy got the grilled cheeseburger on rye. Instead of the housemade chips, she got the onion rings that came with a housemade remoulade sauce. I wish I would have gotten that instead. The burger was grilled, then placed on rye bread with cheddar cheese and they grilled the bread. The burger came with a fresh leaf of lettuce, a sliced tomato and a sliced onion. Cindy thought the burger was delicious.
But the thing that really stood out for us was the housemade remoulade sauce. She let me try a couple of the very good onion rings with the sauce. It had a spicy bite that wasn't overpowering as much as it was sort of refreshing. I could tell there was fresh horseradish in the sauce as it gave me sort of a head rush when I first took a bite of an onion ring with the sauce on it. We were trying to figure out what was in it and Cindy flagged down our server. "We don't want to take any secrets, but we're trying to figure out what is in this delicious sauce," she said.
The waitress told us, "Oh, I just made it today!"
I said, "Oh, it's very good. Some of the best remoulade I've ever had."
She thanked me and said, "It's nothing really special. I just start out with Miracle Whip because it's easier to mix stuff in. Then I add fresh horseradish, then Worcestershire sauce, garlic, cayenne pepper, white pepper and some Creole mustard just to add some color to it." I have to note, she never did give us specific measurements, so if we wanted to make it at home we'd have to do it by taste.
While the French bread burger was unique, I wish I would have gotten what my wife got - the grilled cheeseburger on rye. (They also have classic-style cheeseburgers at Rotier's.) It was just too much bread for me and it masked the good taste of the burger. The remoulade sauce was a big hit with us, it went tremendously well with the good onion rings they served. The service was prompt and efficient, our waitress was fun to talk with. As we paid, we spoke briefly with Margaret Crouse as she pointed out the significance of some of the artifacts and pictures on display around the bar area. Rotier's Restaurant was a pleasant find, one that I wasn't really looking for, but very glad I did.
During our late summer vacation earlier this year, we spent a couple nights in the Nashville area. We stayed down in Brentwood on the south side of the city and spent some time in the quaint little city of Franklin. Looking for a place for breakfast one morning we came across an interesting looking place by the name of J. Christopher's. Here's what we encountered.
It turns out that J. Christopher's is a regional chain based out of Atlanta. In the mid-90's, partners Jay McCann and Chris Brogdon came up with a restaurant concept that would feature breakfasts and lunches made with natural and healthy ingredients with interesting twists on traditional foods. Combining their first two names, they named their restaurant J. Christopher's opening the first location in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta in early 1997. Today, there are nearly two dozen J. Christopher's, primarily throughout the Atlanta area with two in the greater Nashville area.
The J. Christopher's in Franklin is located in a small shopping complex not far from the corner of Mallory Lane and Cool Springs Road. (see map) The lot they share with other businesses in the area was sort of full when we got there around 9:30 that particular morning, but we were able to find a spot not far from the restaurant.
The inside of the restaurant was well lit from both the natural light coming in the east side windows, but from the ceiling lights interspersed throughout the place. One of the noticeable features of the restaurant were the number of pop culture and famous people prints that were hanging on the walls. Many of these pictures - perhaps all of them - were painted by Lee Bivens, an Atlanta artist has been commissioned over the years by both corporate and private interests for his murals and portraits. We lingered after breakfast to take a closer look at some of the paintings.
We were seated in a booth along the wall with Elton John looking down on us. After we got our menus, we were greeted by Jillian, our server that morning, and the restaurant's manager Kenny Henck. He announced to us that not only was it Jillian's first day, but we were going to be her first customers! I don't know if he told us that to warn us or to make us feel sorry for her so we should cut her some slack if she fouled up. Cutting to the chase, it was all for naught - she did a great job and if we hadn't been told it was her first day, we wouldn't have known.
The menu featured quick items for those on the go and well as healthy choices including turkey bacon or sausage, egg white dishes and a South Beach Phase 2 diet plate. They also have a number of omelets, skillet dishes, waffles, "crunch" cakes - basically pancakes with granola, and challah French toast. J. Christopher's is definitely not your average breakfast place.
One of the new things they were trying out was something they called the wren's nest - poached eggs, sundried tomatoes and spinach leaves in a bread bowl. Cindy thought it was interesting and she ended up ordering that. It came with a hollandaise sauce over the top with sprinkles of paprika.
I had the Eggs Benedict with a side of grits and a side of corned beef hash. The Eggs Benedict were your basic kind of E.B.'s, thick hollandaise sauce cover the top of the poached eggs on top of Canadian bacon and a half of an English muffin. They were good, but nothing special. The grits were also fine, not the best I've had, but all right. The corned beef hash looked to have been made in-house and was pretty tasty. The only problem was that it was a pretty small side for corned beef hash. Four or five forkfuls and it was gone.
The manager, Kenny Henck, came over to check on us wanting to know how Jillian was working out (she was doing fine - she had to have some previous waitressing experience, I'm guessing), and he also wanted to know how Cindy liked her Wren's Nest breakfast. "We just put that on the menu and we're giving it a try," he told us. She told him that it was fine, but it was lacking something in flavor. She said that something like - maybe - avocado slices might liven up the taste. And she thought it was too much bread - but she doesn't eat a lot of bread, anyhow. He appreciated the feedback and thought the avocado slices would be a nice addition.
The one thing about J. Christopher's - be prepared to spend a lot of money. I thought our breakfast was on the high-end of the price of what a normal breakfast should be. Still, they had some unique items and it was definitely more upscale of a breakfast place than your usual chain places. Jillian - even for her first day - did a fine job for us. It was nice that the manager came over to check on us a couple of times. Other than being a little expensive, we thought our breakfast at J. Christopher's was fine.
After getting into our hotel on the first Saturday night of our vacation, Cindy was looking something up on line. She finally said, "OK, here it is. I want to go here for breakfast tomorrow morning." She was on the web site of the Loveless Cafe located on the southwest side of Nashville. It turned out that it was about a 10 to 15 minute drive from our hotel. I told her that we could certainly do that before we went on our way to Florida the next morning.
The Loveless Cafe is a culinary institution in the greater Nashville area. Even though I'd heard of the place, I had sort of forgotten about it. But seeing it on the Internet again, I remembered seeing it highlighted on food and travel shows on television and articles that I'd read in magazines and on-line. I remember reading that their salt-cured country ham was world class.
Lon and Annie Loveless lived in nearby Lyles, TN - a small town in Hickman County where Lon was once the sheriff. In 1936, they opened the Beacon Light Tea Room in Lyles selling fried chicken and biscuits. When Lon retired as sheriff, the Loveless' bought a house and motel a few miles away. The house had a large wooden floor and it was known as the local "fun house" where people would come and dance in the 1940's. The Loveless' began to make their fried chicken and biscuits and sold them out of the front door of the house to travelers who would eat the food on picnic tables in front of the house. The Loveless' eventually expanded the house to include inside dining.
The kitchen and restaurant was run by Annie Loveless, but Lon Loveless took care of the small hotel on the grounds of the house. It quickly became known as a "no tell" motel with garages attached to the rooms where people could drive in an conceal their cars. The Loveless Cafe and Motel became a favorite of the stars of the Grand Ole Opry - both for the food and for the discretion shown by the Loveless' with the motel.
Due to Lon Loveless' declining health, the Loveless Cafe and Motel was purchased by Cordell and Stella Maynard in 1959. The Maynard's continued with Annie Loveless' fried chicken and mouth-watering biscuits for 14 years.
In 1973, the Maynard's sold the business to Charles and Donna McCabe. The recipes stayed with the restaurant and the McCabe's ran the place until Charles died in 1982. Their son George had grown up with the business - mowing the grounds, cleaning hotel rooms, clearing tables - since he was 12 years old. George partnered with her mother and took control of many aspects of the business, closing the motel in 1985, starting a mail order business for their country smoked hams and homemade jams, and turning the restaurant into a nationally known destination.
It was during the McCabe family's ownership that a young 18-year-old girl by the name of Carol Fay Ellison came to work for the restaurant in 1979. She started off as a dishwasher, but quickly figured out her way around the kitchen. Carol Fay soon became known as the "Biscuit Lady", the person responsible for making the famous biscuits at the Loveless Cafe. Carol Fay was sort of a character and she appeared on a number of national network and syndicated shows demonstrating how she made the biscuits. She quickly became the face of the Loveless Cafe, continuing with the company when George McCabe sold the restaurant to health care realtor Charles Elcan and his wife Tricia, and managing partner Tom Morales in 2003. Sadly, Carol Fay Ellison died in 2010 at the age of 48 after a short illness.
After the new ownership group took over, they knew that the whole place needed a massive overhaul. The Loveless Cafe was closed in January 2004 and underwent extensive renovations. The old hotel rooms - once used as storage for the McCabe's - were turned into small shops and private reception rooms. They built a smoke house, as well as a large barn in the back to handle weddings and corporate events, and expanded the kitchen to provide more menu items and housemade desserts. Today, the Loveless Cafe serves about 450,000 people annually.
And because of that we didn't know if there would be a line when we set out for the restaurant just after 7:30 that particular Sunday morning. The Loveless Cafe is located on Tennessee State Highway 100 just east of the northern point of the famous Natchez Trace Parkway. (see map) We pulled into the parking lot about 15 minutes later and found only a handful of cars in the parking lot. We walked in and saw that there was no one waiting in the lobby area. In the lobby, there are dozens of pictures from celebrities - mostly older Country and Western stars - plastered on the walls. The Loveless Cafe has hosted musicians as diverse as George Jones to Paul McCartney and from Kenny Rogers to Robert Plant, as well as a slew of mainly "B" grade stars of television and movies. I certainly didn't see many pictures of contemporary C&W artists on the walls. But, then again, I wasn't looking hard.
A guy came out to greet us and he showed us to a table in the small dining area to the right of the lobby. We were given menus and a bit later our server, Amber, came over to greet us. "Y'all ever been here before," she asked in a slight Southern drawl. When we told her that we hadn't, she gave us a hearty welcome. She told us a bit about the menu and some of the things that they were famous for, then she told us that she'd get some biscuits out to us in a moment.
The biscuits came out - 4 of them - and they were accompanied by small plastic containers, each with a different type of preserve - peach, strawberry and blackberry. Now, I'm not much of a biscuit kind of guy - I find them to be rather dry and boring in taste. But there is something about the ones at the Loveless Cafe that make them light and moist. Adding the blackberry jam to the biscuits made them more than tolerable for me.
The small dining room we were in opened into a larger dining room - quite possibly part of the room where they used to hold dances in back in the 40's. It was a long and narrow room with artwork on the walls and French doors along the east side. Slat wood ceilings and large decorative beams hovered above the dining room.
They served breakfast all day at the Loveless Cafe. (The supper menu begins at 11 a.m.) It's an extensive menu featuring just about anything you can think of for breakfast. At the top of the menu are two dishes featuring Loveless Cafe's famous country ham. But purchased ala carte, a half cut went for $6.95 or a full cut for $10.95. I wanted to try some of the ham, but I was think more along the lines of getting French toast or an omelet and $6.95 to try the ham was sort of expensive.
Cindy was also thinking about getting the ham and when Amber came back to take our breakfast order she got the half slab of ham with two eggs over easy. She had her choice of grits, a hash brown casserole or home-fried potatoes for a side. I wanted to try their grits, but she ended up ordering the hash brown casserole.
I ordered the French toast and I asked Amber if I could get some blueberries with that. (I figured a place like the Loveless Cafe - which had blueberry pancakes on the menu - probably had fresh blueberries.) She said, "Ohhh, blueberries with French toast. That sounds great!" I told her that I wanted a small cut of the ham. "OK, tell you what. Why don't you get the full cut with your eggs," she said to Cindy. "Then you can just split the ham in half," she explained to me. "It's cheaper that way." I also wanted to try some of their applewood smoked bacon.
In one of the all-time quickest turnarounds from ordering to having the food to the table, Amber brought out our food. Cindy's plate featured a full cut of ham that dominated the plate. It was probably about 1/4" thick and was served with a small bowl of the red eye gravy - drippings from the ham, sort of like an au jus for beef.
The French toast featured three thick cut slices of bread, batter, griddled and sprinkled with powered sugar. An ample amount of blueberries in their natural juices came with in a small bowl along side the syrup. Three thick cuts of the applewood bacon was on the side. Amber wanted to know if we wanted more biscuits and I was tempted because the blackberry jam was pretty damn good. But we said "No thanks" because there was a lot of food on our plates.
I cut some of the country ham off of what was on Cindy's plate and put it on the side plate that I had from the biscuits. The ham was somewhat salty and a little tough. It was, well, just all right. Honestly, I couldn't really tell if it was outstanding or not. To me, it just tasted like any other ham that I'd get anywhere.
The French toast was, also, just all right. It was a little mushy - especially in the middle of the slices - and rather bland in taste. The blueberries helped tremendously, but I wasn't quite blown away with the taste as I thought I would be.
Cindy, too, thought the ham was "OK". She also couldn't figure out why people would make such a fuss over the ham, so much that it's shipped all over the U.S. She did like her hash brown casserole, however. It's made with cheddar cheese, cream of chicken soup, onions and sour cream. (Click here for the recipe.) I'm guessing you can add ham to it and make it a meal, if you want.
My hands were sticky and I needed to use the restroom to wash up. I went down the hallway toward the restroom and on the right was a large window that looked into the area where they baked the biscuits. I can almost imagine the show that Carol Fay Ellison put on for the customers at the Loveless Cafe behind this big window. A young lady was making the biscuits this morning, placing them in large pans. A young man was manning the oven, putting in and pulling out the trays of biscuits.
After getting back to the table, a man - who I guessed was a manager - came over to see how our breakfast was. After we told him it was fine, he asked where we were from. After we told him we were from Iowa, he asked if we were in town for awhile. I told him that we were just passing through going to Florida, down to Destin. He said, "Oh, y'all are going to the Redneck Riviera! You'll have fun down there!"
After settling up with Amber, we took a look around the grounds of the place. To the immediate west of the restaurant, the open pit smoke house that was built about 10 years ago was up and running. The pit master was in there smoking pork ribs, pork butts and turkey legs. The barbecue is ready at 11 a.m. each day and there's a couple parking spots near the building that are designated for people just stopping in to get barbecue only out of the smoke house.
The smoke house has a rather large smoke pit with a back access to be able to put the hickory wood on the fire. It was as impressive a smoking operation that I've seen from any restaurant.
I wanted to pick up a jar of the blackberry preserves and they have a gift shop across the parking lot from the restaurant and smoke house. Cindy also wanted to pick something up for my cousin's wife since we were going to stay at their house for a couple three days when we got down to Florida. The sign on the door said that they opened at 8 a.m., but the place was locked up tight.
We walked around behind and on the side of the restaurant to peer into the small shops that were part of the old motel which were also closed on that Sunday morning. I don't know if the owners of the Loveless Cafe run these shops or if they lease them out to people. But when the Loveless Cafe gets cranking, the overflow of people will spend their time looking through the shops waiting for a table.
I will say that the Loveless Cafe was pretty interesting. But the breakfast was pretty average and I'm still trying to figure out what was so special about the ham. The service we got from Amber was very good and I suppose it was worth the trip this one time to see what it was all about. But I can probably say that it didn't grab me enough that I'd have to absolutely go back at some point.
During our first night of our vacation, we had made it to Nashville and were staying at the Hilton hotel in south suburban Brentwood. Cindy had wondered why we weren't going to stay downtown. When we got into Nashville I took her up and down Broadway, the entertainment and tourist area of Nashville. The street was crawling with people on the sidewalks, going in and out of many of the Country and Western clubs that cater to tourists and parties. She said, "I had no idea Nashville was like this! It's sort of like Las Vegas only without gambling!" (Well, fortunately it's only one small section of Nashville that is like this.)
When we got checked into the Hilton in Brentwood, I asked the young lady at the front desk if they had a list of restaurants in the area. She pulled out a sheet and there had to be dozens listed. Somewhat exasperated, I asked her what her favorite restaurant was in the area. She immediately told me The Local Taco. When I asked if they had good margaritas, she said, "They have GREAT margaritas! In fact, I was just there last night with a friend." It was less than two minutes away from the hotel and when I proposed going there with Cindy, she eagerly accepted.
The Local Taco is unique for a Mexican restaurant. Actually, it's more of a Mexican "farm-to-fork" restaurant - the first of its kind that I've encountered ever since the fresh and locally grown restaurant craze came into play a few years ago.
I also found out that Local Taco is a local chain based out of Nashville. Managing owner John Ko - who was in commercial real estate - partnered with Jay Pennington in 2009 to open the first Local Taco location in the Sylvan Park area of Nashville. Pennington had restaurant experience previously owning South Street, Bound'ry and a handful of other Nashville eateries. He was responsible for the creation of many of the food items on the menu, as well as designing the restaurants for The Local Taco. A third owner - Michael Sloane - also had restaurant experience, but on a much larger scale. Sloane has owned over 70 restaurants throughout the Southeast - primarily Papa John's franchises. Sloane was the one who put up the initial cash for Ko and Pennington and lent his expertise in branding the Local Taco concept.
After opening their first location in the late spring of 2009, The Local Taco garnered "Best New Restaurant" in a local "Best of Nashville" survey. They opened their second location in south suburban Brentwood in 2010 making that location their flagship restaurant. Ko and Pennington then opened restaurants in Lexington, KY, Greenville, SC, and added their fifth location in Asheville, NC last summer. They're looking to open their sixth location - and third in Nashville - sometime next month.
The Brentwood location is located on Pewitt Drive, a small street off E. Church in Brentwood, south of Old Hickory Blvd. (see map) It was around 8 p.m when we got into the place. We immediately saw a chalkboard on the wall above the hostess station listing the local farms that supplied produce to The Local Taco. A bar was on the left as we came in and the main dining room was on the right.
We were met by a guy who came out from behind the bar asking us if we wanted to sit in the bar area or in the main dining room. Cindy took the lead and asked to be seated in the dining room. He took us a table near the back corner of the dining room. He dropped off a couple menus for us and said our server would be with us in a moment.
The main dining room had garage doors that opened to an outdoor seating area when the weather was nicer. The temperatures were unseasonably cool when we were in Nashville and the doors were closed that evening. The room had a nice contemporary and vibrant feel.
Not long after we were seated, our server - a young woman by the name of Bailie - came over to greet us. They had a well over two dozen tequilas on their drink menu that you could choose either straight up or for on-the-rocks margaritas mixed with hand-pressed lime juice, organic agave nectar and Patron Citronge orange liqueur. I ordered a Corzo margarita on the rocks, Cindy got one with Herradura tequila.
We also ordered some chips - which appeared to be free - but the salsa was not. Bailie asked if we wanted the roja salsa and we said, "Sure!" It wasn't until we dug a little deeper into the menu that we found out that we could have ordered three of the four salsas they had for a cost of $5.50 instead of $2.00 for one choice. When she came back with the chips and salsa, I told her that we weren't familiar with the drill at The Local Taco and wondered if we could get some pico de gallo and some of the salsa verde to go along with the salsa roja we got. She said it wouldn't be a problem.
The chips were fresh and a little warm as they were served to us. The salsa roja was all right, but the salsa verde had a nice little spicy kick to it. Interestingly, the pico de gallo was rather lifeless. The onions and cilantro seemed to be bland in taste.
The margaritas were wonderful, however. After a long day of driving, my first one went down pretty smooth. When Bailie came back to take our order for food, I was ready to have another.
Tacos, fajitas and enchiladas were the primary food on the menu. They had a dozen different types of eclectic tacos to choose from. They had a Buffalo Chicken taco with Southern fried chicken, Buffalo hot sauce, bleu cheese, pickled celery, lettuce and tomato. The spicy shrimp featured deep fried buttermilk soaked shrimp topped with jalapeno cole slaw and a spicy remoulade. And, as a nod to John Ko's Korean heritage, they a Korean BBQ taco made with Korean sesame-seared short beef rib with Asian slaw, toasted sesame seeds and chopped green onions.
I was interested in three different tacos - the smoked salmon taco featured in-house alder smoked salmon topped with a horseradish crema, pickled onions, cilantro, chopped cucumber, and capers; the smoked brisket had a mole rojo with pickled onions and cilantro; and the steak taco that featured a chile spice rubbed Black Angus steak with the horseradish crema and pico de gallo. I could get a plate with three tacos and a side. For my side, I got the Mexican tater-tots. (They had slices of jalapenos in them with some Mexican seasonings.)
Cindy ordered two tacos ala carte - the fish taco that featured a lightly fried haddock with a tarragon tartar sauce, with pickled jalapenos and shredded lettuce; and the brisket taco. We both asked for corn tortillas instead of a locally source flour taco shell.
It didn't take long to get the tacos to the table. My tacos were circled around a small bowl of the Mexican tater tots that were topped with a sort of cumin-sour cream drizzle. The tacos were chock full of ingredients and smelled wonderful. In the picture on the left going clockwise, the smoked salmon taco is at the 12 o'clock position, the steak taco is at 4 o'clock and the brisket taco is at 8 o'clock. (As always, click on the picture to get a larger view.)
The first thing I tried were the Mexican tater tots. They were a little over done for me, but had a hint of spicy jalapeno in the bite. The cumin-based sauce they put on top of the tater tots was all right, but there were only six or seven of them in the small bowl. It wasn't much of a side. Cindy tried one and she said, "Eh! They're all right." And she was right.
But that's OK - I was much more interested in the tacos. I took a bite of the brisket taco and found the meat to be more like a shredded beef. But it was tender and juicy, the pickled onions were prevalent, but not so much the mole rojo sauce or cilantro.
I then went with the smoked salmon. Now, THIS is what I'm talking about. This was a taste explosion in my mouth. The smoked salmon was a tad fishy, but still had a nice smoked taste to the fish. But the combination of the creamy horseradish sauce, capers and chopped cucumbers gave it an exquisite taste. I sort of wished I had gotten three of these instead.
The steak taco that I had after I finished the smoked salmon was anticlimactic. Actually, the steak was a little tough and the pico de gallo was just as weak as the stuff they served us to dip our chips into. The steak taco was disappointing, but after having the smoked salmon taco not much could have surpassed that.
We normally don't get fried fish tacos and I was somewhat surprised that Cindy didn't opt for the smoked salmon over the fried haddock. But she said that it was very good. She said the breading was light and not overpowering. The tarragon tartar sauce went well with the fish. She also liked the brisket taco, though not as much as the fish taco.
The tacos were small and we made quick work of what we had on our plate. I was raving about the smoked salmon taco so much that Cindy wanted to get one for herself. When Bailie came back to check on us, I told her that we both wanted a smoked salmon taco.
After she brought them to us and dug in, Cindy said she didn't care for the smoked salmon as much as the fried haddock taco. In fact, she ranked her tacos from best to worst as the fried haddock, brisket and smoked salmon. I was the opposite - I thought the smoked salmon was the best, followed by the brisket and the steak taco pulling up in last. The steak taco was highly disappointing.
Curiously, as we were eating our smoked salmon tacos, Bailie brought over our check and placed it on the table. "I'll take that for you whenever you're ready," she said.
My wife was sort of incredulous. "I guess we're done," she said in mock anger. "I was thinking about getting another margarita!" When I told her that we could at the bar, she said, "No, one is enough for me."
The Local Taco was, well, good. I liked the concept very much and their execution of the concept was fine. The food was interesting, but the tacos ranged from very good to not so good. The Local Taco is not your typical Mexican restaurant - either American-ized or truly authentic Mexican. If you're looking for Mexican food with a fresh twist, The Local Taco would be worth a try if you get to Nashville.
On our final night in Nashville, Brian from Lauten Audio was going to take my colleague, Ian, and me out for another dinner. After looking up the name of the place he was proposing - Wild Bill's Cajun Cafe - we found that most of the food was deep friend Southern-style food. I don't like to go hog wild with deep fried food and it appeared that nearly everything on the menu was deep fried. Ian made an executive decision and said, "You know, Brian took us out the last couple of nights. We should take him out tonight." And Ian knew exactly where he wanted to go - the Stock-Yard Restaurant, an elegant steak house north of the downtown area of Nashville.
Ian had eaten at the Stock-Yard in the past and said it was well above average for steaks. Well, this would be the fourth night in a row that I was having steak and I was getting a tad burned out on eating more beef. But Ian assured me that this would be on par or even above Merchants Restaurant or The Capitol Grill, two of the previous steak houses that we'd eaten at that week.
The Stock-Yard Restaurant is located in what was the old stockyard area of Nashville (see map). The building the restaurant is housed in opened in 1924 as the main office for the Nashville stockyards. The ornate building featured Italian marble and cherry wood in the main entrance area - the same as it is today. The Nashville stockyards was the main distribution point for cattle, sheep, hogs, horses and mules for most of Tennessee, Northern Alabama and Southern Kentucky. Cattlemen and pig farmers would come to the stockyards to sell their stock, but the main building for the stockyards was a luxurious destination for those men, as well. The main floor featured a saloon, a barber shop, a private gambling club, as well as a bank and a Western Union office. Offices were on the second floor of the restaurant, while the lower level was the area where farm animals were auctioned off.
For fifty years, the Nashville stockyards were an important cog in moving cattle and hogs in the Southeast. But as transportation and distribution hubs improved in the second part of the century, it became apparent that the Nashville stockyards were no longer needed. The stockyards eventually closed in 1974.
In 1979, the building reopened as a beautiful restaurant under the ownership of William D. "Buddy" Killen. If you're familiar with the music scene in Nashville in the 50's, 60's and 70's, there's a good chance you've heard the name of Buddy Killen. I had not and I was somewhat surprised to find out that he was a famous music publisher, songwriter, producer and musician who had worked with performers such as Dolly Parton, Dottie West, Roger Miller and Joe Tex.
Buddy Killen started out playing bass in a comedic group at the Grand Ole Opry. He worked as a session musician and songwriter in the 50's. He became involved with Tree Publishing which published songs that became country classics such as "Green Green Grass of Home", "Dang Me" and "D-I-V-O-R-C-E". One other famous song that Tree Publishing published was "Heartbreak Hotel" which, of course, became a platinum selling hit for Elvis Presley. Killen was solely responsible for bringing that song to Tree Publishing.
Killen eventually became the owner of Tree Publishing in the 70's, growing it into the largest publishing house in the world with 13 offices worldwide. Sony/CBS bought out Tree Publishing in 1989 and Killen started a new company - The Killen Music Group - that published and recorded a diverse list of musical acts from country to rap to contemporary Christian music. Unfortunately, Killen died in 2006 from pancreatic cancer at the age of 73.
Killen's vision for the Stock-Yard Restaurant was to bring back some of the old time flair to Nashville. Killen used three levels of the restaurant for dining areas and brought back the old time bar area. The old shops on the main floor became dining rooms. The offices on the upper floor became large banquet rooms (pictured right) and the lower level where the auctions were held became private dining and banquet areas. A few years before Killen passed away, he sold his interest in the Stock-Yard to Charles Patel.
Being that the Stock-Yard Restaurant is only about a block away from the Cumberland River, the bottom level suffered severe damage during the great Nashville Flood of 2010. We were told the downstairs area is still not fully cleaned up and renovated yet, but they hoped to have it reopened by the end of the summer.
One of the great things about the Stock-Yard restaurant is that they offer free shuttle service between the restaurant and downtown hotels. Ian said that he had taken advantage of that in the past and suggested we do the same. I called over to the restaurant and made reservations for three at 6:30 that evening with a shuttle van to come pick us up at our hotel at 6:15. Brian met us at the hotel and we hopped in a Stock-Yard van for a short ride to the restaurant. Ample parking is available around the restaurant if you wish to drive, but having a van come to our hotel to pick us up and take us back was too good to pass up.
After checking in with the hostess at the front, we were taken down a long hallway on the main floor to a dining room back in the southwest corner of the building. The room we were in was probably an office of some sort years ago as it only had room for about five tables with four chairs each. Two other parties were in the room dining at the same time.
Our waiter came to the table to drop off menus and to introduce himself. For some reason, I could have sworn he said his name was Isaac, but according to the name on the bill, his name was Steven. Either way, Isaac/Steven was the guy who was going to take care of us that night.
Steak rules the menu at the Stock-Yard Restaurant. They specially cut their steaks, age them, then cook them over hickory charcoal for that great flavor. They had 11 different types of steaks to choose from on the menu (12, if you count the special they had that evening - a 16 oz. barrel cut filet). The restaurant also features a number of seafood entrees as well as chicken dishes and pork chops.
Ian looked through the extensive wine listand found a nice French wine that he thought we'd like. He ordered that up from Isaac, I mean, Steven, and then we were ready to order dinner.
I had been looking hard at the Filet Mignon au Poivre - a 10 oz. filet rolled in peppercorns and topped with a creamy madeira sauce infused with mushrooms. I asked Steven if there was a way that I could get the madeira/mushroom sauce with the 16 oz. barrel cut special they had that night. He said, "Absolutely, sir!" I ordered that rare.
Well, that got Ian thinking, as well. He said, "I'm intrigued by this barrel cut steak, too. What exactly is a barrel cut?"
Steven explained that it was a nearly round cut that they have from the tenderloin, taking most of the outer layer off the meat to make it look like a little barrel of steak. They had a 10 oz. barrel cut on the menu, but the 16 oz. was the special that evening. Ian ordered that with the au Poivre sauce and got his medium-rare.
Not to upset the apple cart, Brian also ordered the 16 oz. barrel cut with the au Poivre sauce. "Not to be a copy cat, guys," he apologized. "But that just sounds damn good!"
For starters, we ordered some of the calamari and an order of escargot in a garlic butter sauce with homemade croutons. I wanted a salad with that, so I ordered the iceberg wedge salad. Ian ordered up a Caesar Salad and Brian passed on the greens, concentrating only on the seafood appetizers. A number of large sides are available with the dinners including mac and cheese, sauteed mushrooms, 1 lb. loaded baked potatoes (that could probably feed three people), creamy spinach with crispy shallots, and asparagus with a hollandaise sauce. We settled on two sides - the sauteed green beans with red peppers, and their famous five cheese potatoes au gratin. We were set.
The appetizers came out and the escargot was extraordinarily great. The butter garlic sauce was just so sinfully good that I was taking some of the homemade bread that Steven brought to the table and was soaking up the sauce from the serving bowl. The calamari was excellent, as well. I usually like to dip my calamari in some marinara sauce, but it was so good on its own that it didn't need anything to go with it.
My iceberg wedge came out next. It was a large wedge of lettuce topped with large chunks of hickory smoked bacon, and a creamy bleu cheese dressing with large chunks of bleu cheese. It was also excellent.
By now, you've probably noticed that I don't have any pictures of the food. The room was very dark and the only way that I could get a shot of the food was if I used my flash on my camera phone. The only problem was that it was too bright for good shots, and it disturbed people sitting around us. I thought I'd just do my best in trying to describe what I was eating that evening.
After a bit, our steaks came to the table. The steaks were coated with a thick layer of cracked black peppercorns and swimming in the creamy madeira sauce with large chunks of fresh mushrooms. Now I wish I would have gotten a picture of my steak because it looked great. And it tasted even better. The center of my steak was a cool red and tender as all get out. The peppercorns gave the steak a nice zippy taste and the sauce and mushrooms were an excellent taste combo with the beef. It was just an excellent, excellent steak.
I also have to say the sides were very good, too. I like sauteed green beans and the ones at the Stock-Yard Restaurant were top notch. They were fully cooked, yet still had that little "snap" to them when you bit in. And the 5 cheese potatoes au gratin - oh man! Those things were so great, but - oh! - so rich. I could only eat a couple bites of the potatoes or I would have blown up.
I didn't think that I could eat another bite until Steven showed up with the dessert tray. I about got up and punched him. Between the appetizers, the wedge salad, the 16 oz. steak WITH the madeira sauce and mushrooms, and the bites of the green beans and the potatoes au gratin, I was stuffed. However, Ian kept hounding me, knowing my penchant for a good Key Lime pie. He kept egging me on and I kept saying, "No!" Finally, he ordered a piece of the Key Lime pie fully knowing that I'd have a couple bites, and a piece of the Southern pecan pie. Brian wanted the pecan pie more than the Key Lime slice. And since it was still rather early - around 8:30 - I ordered an espresso, something I rarely get. I don't drink coffee or many caffeinated beverages any longer, but I do like an espresso or cappuccino from time to time after a good meal. But if its too late it keeps me up from the caffeine buzz.
I did have a couple bites of the Key Lime pie and it was, also, very good. And, of course, very rich. I just wanted to stop and burst on the spot.
When we were finished with the meal, Steven arranged for transportation back to our hotel. We were talking with the driver on the way back and I asked him about the free transportation the Stock-Yard provides. He said, "We started doing it a few years ago when some of the big name national steak houses (Morton's, Ruth's Chris, The Palm) came to town. They are all downtown and it's sort of a walk from there to here. So we provide the free shuttle service. It really helps our business."
Ian remarked, "Yeah, and you can drink a lot and not have to worry about driving."
The shuttle driver exclaimed, "That, too! I seem to take a lot of drunk people back to the hotels after dinner."
We ate at some very fine steak houses during our time in Nashville and it would be difficult to say which one of the three good ones were the best out of Merchants, The Capitol Grill or the Stock-Yard Restaurant. Each had excellent food. They all had great wine lists. The service was top notch. But for some reason, I liked the Stock-Yard the best for the overall quality of appetizers, salad and steaks. The service was also top-notch. It was off the beaten path, but was a great find on Ian's part. I don't know when we'll be back to Nashville, but if we're there for more than a couple days, the Stock-Yard has to be high on the list to return to. (Photo courtesy of infousa.com)
(Update - At the end of June in 2015, the Stock-Yard closed after the building was bought by some developers from North Carolina who planned on turning the 3.3 acres the restaurant and surrounding land sat into high-end apartments and condos.)
During my trip to Nashville for the 2011 Summer NAMM show, my colleague, Ian, and I were invited to dinner by Brian Loudenslager, the founder and president of Lauten Audio, makers of high quality microphones for the professional music industry. Brian picked out the place and it was a good one - the Capitol Grill inside the historic and prestigious Hermitage Hotel in downtown Nashville (see map).
When I found out we were going to eat at the Capitol Grill, I immediately looked up the restaurant on the Internet. Not seeing the subtle difference in spelling (Capitol versus Capital) I went to the web site for the Capital Grille chain of upscale steakhouses. I had never been to a Capital Grille restaurant and I was sort of excited to finally eat at one. However, when I was trying to find the Nashville location on their web site, I was surprised to see that it was not listed. That's when I figured out that the Capitol Grill in Nashville is not connected with the Capital Grille chain.
The Capitol Grill in Nashville takes its name from the state capitol building in Nashville, located just a stone's throw from the restaurant. The Hermitage Hotel, which houses, the Capitol Grill, is one of the finest hotels in the south. First opened in 1910, the Hermitage has hosted politicians, famous actors, and the elite of the country music scene over the past 100 years. By the late 1990's, however, the hotel was tired and in need of some TLC. In 2000, a group calling themselves Historic Hotels of Nashville bought the property and went head to toe in redesigning and updating rooms and the other amenities of the hotel. Gone was the old Hermitage Grill and in came the Capitol Grill. They also updated the bar area of the place - simply called the Oak Bar. In 2003, the Hermitage reopened and it was soon awarded five stars by both AAA and Forbes Travel Guide for the comfort, technology and luxury each room offers.
Tyler Brown (left) is the executive chef at the Capitol Grill. His nickname is "Farmer Brown" as he uses a number of locally grown, farm fresh foods and ingredients in his work. Brown is a 1997 magna cum laude graduate from Johnson and Wales University's School of Culinary Artsin Charleston, SC. His first job was at the Peninsula Grill in Charleston, SC, before moving on to the Fearrington House in Chapel Hill, NC. He then became a partner and executive chef at Southern Comforts BBQ and Soul, an upscale comfort food restaurant in Charlotte, NC.
After the Capitol Grill opened in 2003, he was named the chef de cuisine at the restaurant working under the nationally recognized chef Sean Brock. Brock was the executive chef at the Peninsula Grill and hired Brown directly out of school. Brock stuck around for three years at the Capitol Grill before moving on to become the executive chef at the newly renovated McCrady's Restaurant in Charleston, SC, leaving the Capitol Grill in Tyler Brown's capable hands.
The Capitol Grill does have a sister restaurant out in Cheyenne, Wyoming, of all places. The Cheyenne Capitol Grill is located in the historic Plains Hotel in Cheyenne. Similar to its Nashville location, the Capitol Grill in Cheyenne specializes in what they call Western High Style cuisine with many of the foods on the menu locally grown. It's easily one of the finest restaurants in the whole state of Wyoming.
We met Brian in the outer lobby of the Hermitage Hotel around 7:30 and walked down a flight of stairs into the spacious dining room of the Capitol Grill. We were seating at a table toward the back corner, not far from the kitchen. The dining room was elegant with soft lighting from sconces and antique lamps. The chair backs were a woven pattern and rich to the touch. Small lamps sat a top the sturdy tables covered with thick white tablecloths. I was immediately impressed with the place and knew it wouldn't be a cheap meal.
We were given menus and Ian took a gander at the extensive wine list the Capitol Grill has to offer. Many of the vegetables the restaurant has to offer comes from the Farm at Glen Leven, a historic site that is maintained by the Land Trust for Tennessee. In 2010, the Land Trust allowed Tyler Brown to use some of the land as a garden growing heirloom tomatoes, potatoes (lots of potatoes!), squash, watermelon and other food items that he uses in his kitchen at the Capitol Grill. Brown even maintains much of the growing plants at the farm and will expand the land use for honey bees and has just begun to raise cattle at the farm for his own fresh beef.
While the menu isn't extensive, it is interesting with a handful of items such as roasted chicken and roasted domestic lamb, a grouper fish with something called butterbean chow chow and cucumber dashi on the side, as well as a vegetarian plate that featured Glen Leven-raised veggies with artichokes covered in a curry emulsion. Of course, there were steaks on the menu and that's sort of what all three of us were looking at getting.
Ian is much better versed in French and Italian wines than I and he picked out a bottle of the French Cote de Nuits Villages burgundy. Actually, that is one of the few French wines I'm somewhat familiar with and it is very good.
Each of us ended up getting a steak - I got the Painted Hillsribeye. It's a 16 oz. cut of naturally grown beef from Oregon. Of course, I ordered mine rare. Brian got the 10 oz. Painted Hills filet and Ian got the ribeye. The sides at the Capitol Grill come family style so more than one person can enjoy them. We ordered some of the truffles with mac and cheese, peas and cornbread, and fingerling potatoes confit to go with our meals.
For starters, Brian and I both got the Hunter's Plate - a mix of smoked and pickled foods including meats and vegetables. Ian, as always, got the Caesar Salad.
Before our food began to show up, I excused myself and went to the men's restroom. On the outside of the restroom, there was this plaque (pictured below) that touted the men's room as being rather unique. During the renovation at the hotel in 2003, the men's room was remodeled to be nearly the same as it was back in the 1930's.
Inside, the black and green color scheme accented the decor with art deco lighting and fixtures in the bathroom. Women are encouraged to take a look inside the men's room and as I was washing my hands after using the facilities, a man with a thick German accent yelled in the door, " 'allo? Anybody in zere?" I let him know that I was in there and he came in and said, "You donze mind if I bringz my vife in zere, do you? I vantz to getz a picturez of herz in ze menz roomz."
I said, "As long as I can get a picture of her, too."
He said, "No, go rightz aheadz!" So, that's the picture of the German guys wife in the men's room at the Hermitage Hotel above right.
Ian's salad and Brian's and my Hunter's Plate come out to the table not long after I returned. The Hunter's Plate had a mix of ham's, prosciutto and salami, along with small containers of pickled vegetable confit and some lettuce greens on the side with some pickled onions on top. Grilled homemade bread came with the plate and I have to say that it was very good. It was light, yet had a great taste to the smoked and cured meats. Brian was more than impressed with the Hunter's Plate. "It's like they just took the meat out of the smokehouse," he said.
Time marched on into the night after we finished our first courses. Not knowing Brian very well (we met for the first time that evening) and trying to learn about his product made the time pass rather easily. But after awhile, we noticed that it was getting close to 9 p.m. and our steaks had not shown up. It wasn't long after that that our waiter came up and apologized for the delay in our meals. A couple large parties where in the restaurant (including a large table of loud and somewhat obnoxious women seated not far from our table) and they were getting behind in the kitchen. We told them that we understood, but that we were getting pretty hungry.
Our food finally made it to the table and this is my ribeye served in a small cast iron dish. A cream sauce was on top and it was laying in it's own juices. From the first bite, I was in ecstasy. The steak was juicy, tender and overly flavorful. It was cooked exactly as I wanted, red rare. It was a large steak that had a lot of marbling in it, so the taste was exquisite.
Brian and Ian were both impressed with their steaks. Brain's filet was literally falling apart with each stroke of his knife. Ian said that his steak was even better than the ribeye he got at Merchants Restaurant the night before. "And that was a great steak at Merchants, too" Ian exclaimed.
The sides were also very good. I did get a hint of a truffle taste with the truffle, mac and cheese. I'm not big on peas or cornbread, but it's a good Southern dish that Brian wanted to try. He said the bread were wonderful and the peas were cooked perfectly. I tried a couple three bites of the fingerling potatoes confit - basically mashed potatoes. And they were pretty good, as well. The truffles with mac and cheese was a big hit at the table.
After we finished our meal, the restaurants manager, a very petite young lady named Hannah, came by to apologize for the delay in our meal. She offered each of us free dessert and coffee, but I was so stuffed from the huge steak that there was no way I could eat anything else. Brian and Ian were in the same boat and we declined her offer. When the bill was brought out, Brian picked it up and Hannah came over to explain that she had directed our waiter to take 15% off the price of the meal for being so late in coming to the table. That was a generous token on her part for something that really didn't detract from the meal.
The Capitol Grill isn't overly cheap, but if you want to get a great meal in a great setting with great service in Nashville, it's going to be tough to find a place finer. Just going for a drink at the Oak Bar and then stealing a quick look at the men's room would still be enough for most people to try. The Capitol Grill was one of the finest dining experiences I've enjoyed over the past few years.
After we finished setting up our small booth at the 2011 Summer NAMM show at the Nashville Convention Center, my colleague, Ian, and I began to walk back toward our hotel thinking about getting something to eat. Mexican sounded good, especially a cold margarita. We came upon an old alley way off 4th St. called The Arcade. It housed some tourist shops and restaurants and we found a Mexican restaurant called La Playa about 3/4's down the way from the 4th St. entrance (see map). We decided to give La Playa a try.
The Arcade, itself, is the oldest shopping complex in Nashville, and quite possibly the South. It was built in 1902 and designed after a similar shopping arcade in Italy. It's located in what was formerly the Overton alley and is in between 4th and 5th Streets in downtown Nashville. It went through a major renovation in the past few years, but it's still somewhat of a tourist trap with trinket shops and specialty food outlets.
The Arcade is two stories high and is covered with a glass roof the length of the building. State flags hang from the upper walls of the Arcade. And the thing that sort of amazed Ian and me was the fact that many of the restaurants in The Arcade were only open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. (In fact, as a testament to how Nashville rolls up the streets at night, many restaurants that we saw away from the Lower Broadway area had limited their open hours to daytime only.) It was getting close to 2 p.m. when we got into La Playa.
The inside of LaPlaya is brightly colored with murals painted on stucco walls of a Mexican village courtyard on the main level. But it's pretty small and I'm sure there could be some long waits for tables. There are a handful of tables on the first floor and a couple outside the front, but there are a larger number of booths and tables on the second level. The upper level is where we were shepherded to and were placed in a booth.
The first thing we found out was that LaPlaya didn't have margaritas. Or beer, for that matter. It was a non-alcoholic restaurant. Well, so much for our plan of getting a margarita after set up at the convention center. Ian got a soft drink and I just opted for water.
The menu at La Playa was also pretty limited and it wasn't all that adventurous. It was the typical burritos, enchiladas, tacos - that sort of thing. Chips and salsa were provided, but they didn't have much pizazz to the taste.
I ended up ordering a beef burrito. Ian - you know, I don't remember what Ian got because I was so hungry and sort of upset that I couldn't get at least a beer with my meal. We ordered up and in typical Mexican restaurant fashion the food came to us pretty quick. Or it came out quick because they wanted us to eat up and get the hell out.
And, quite actually, my burrito was pretty good. No, it was damn good. It was large, full of seasoned beef and topped with a creamy white cheese that didn't hinder the taste of the meat. The burrito was surprisingly good and I normally don't go for burritos all that often.
Our lunch at La Playa was pretty cheap, too. Even with a drink and a tip, the bill came to just a bit over 20 bucks. It was a lot of food for a low price. La Playa was a good value with above average food. The only strikes against it that it doesn't serve alcohol. Still, for a lunch place that is only open 3 hours a day, it probably doesn't need to serve alcohol to make money. La Playa was a good find for a good and quick Mexican meal.
During my trip to Nashville for the 2011 Summer NAMM show, my colleague, Ian, and I found a pretty good place to eat in downtown Nashville on the touristy Broadway St. called Merchants Restaurant. We went there for dinner after doing a little driving around the greater Nashville area earlier in the day.
The Merchants Restaurant is housed in a building that dates back to just after the Civil War. In 1892, what was once a pharmacy on the street level, a hardware manufacturer on the second level and a wholesale drug distributor on the third floor, the Merchants Hotel came into being. Each room was 25 cents and with the European plan you could also get a meal for a quarter. Over the years with it's close proximity to the Ryman Auditorium and the honky tonks up and down Broadway, the Merchants Hotel became the place for country music's elite to stay when they were in town.
Once the Grand Ole Opry moved out to Opryland in the 70's, the area up and down Broadway became rather seedy with strip bars replacing the old honky tonks. The Merchants Hotel became just as seedy, becoming a flop house hotel and a front for downtown prostitution. When the city of Nashville moved to shut down the adult clubs and take back Broadway as a tourist destination in the mid-80's, Merchants reopened as a restaurant. As Nashville began to grow again in the 90's and professional sports began to come to town, more upscale restaurants came into town pushing Merchants into the afterthought category for fine dining in town. After floundering for nearly a decade, two brothers who grew up in Nashville, Max and Ben Goldberg, bought the Merchants Restaurant in April of 2010 and gave it a clear vision path of what it is today.
The Goldbergs are no strangers to the restaurant and hospitality industry. They already had created and oversaw some of the better niche restaurants and bars in the greater Nashville area such as Aerial, Patterson House and the somewhat kitschy Southern-fried food outlet named Paradise Park Trailer Resort. As their executive chef at Merchants, they brought in Clayton Rollison who previously was the sous chef at the Capitol Grille at the Hermitage hotel, and before that had worked at Gramercy Tavern in New York City after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America.
The first floor of Merchants Restaurant is more of a bistro with black and white tiled floors, waiters in bow-ties and suspenders and sort of a quasi-art deco theme to the place (below left). It's a little more rowdy and loud in the main floor part of Merchants, sort of like the people that are walking by on Broadway.
The second floor is the fine dining area where there's dark green wall paper, dark wood paneling, subdued lighting and the waiters are all in suspenders and long ties. The downstairs menu is different from the upstairs menu. Downstairs in the bistro, Merchants features sandwiches, burgers, appetizers, salads and basic entrees such as pan roasted chicken, fish tacos, smoked brisket and rainbow trout. Upstairs, it gets more eclectic with sockeye salmon, a low country shrimp platter, a rack of pork and various types of aged steaks.
It was less than a 10 minute walk from our hotel straight down 4th Street to the corner of Broadway (see map). Lower Broadway is now this huge tourist and entertainment district, similar to Beale Street in Memphis. It features restaurants, bars, honky tonks, tourist traps and most anything that you'd find that has to do with country music. This was the first and only time I was on Lower Broadway during our trip to Nashville.
We got into the restaurant and went to the servers stand toward the back of the bistro, in a lobby area with an elevator and a wonderful winding staircase. I had made reservations for us at 8 p.m., but it was evident that we probably didn't need them as some people were coming in and getting seated upstairs right away. We waited in the lobby area for about 10 minutes while they got our table fixed up.
When we were taken upstairs via the elevator we were asked if we wanted a table near the windows or one in the middle of the dining area. Considering the tables near the windows were smaller - and that the shades were drawn - we opted for one of the larger tables in the middle of the room. Our waiter, Porter, came over to greet us and he had a helper in tow with him most of the evening. We knew the service was going to be very good.
I started out with a beer to wet my whistle and I asked Porter if they had Sweetwater 420, the great pale ale from Atlanta. (I had found a liquor store in Nashville earlier in the day that had Sweetwater 420 and I thought some of the bars or restaurants would have it, as well.) He said he did not, but they had a local pale ale - Yazoo Pale Ale- on tap. I decided to give that a try and it was pretty good. Ian took a glass of the Oak Knoll cabernet for his initial drink.
Because Merchants has a number of different steaks to choose from, I didn't even consider getting anything else that evening. Ian was pretty much thinking along the same lines. They featured natural raised beef from farms in Kansas and Oregon, as well as good ol' Angus beef including a 14 oz. New York Strip and a 16 oz. Delmonico ribeye, both of which were aged for 28 days. It didn't take Ian and I very long to figure out what we wanted - he took the ribeye, I got the strip.
Some interesting sides are available at Merchants. Sweet potato hash was on the menu, as were duck fat fries. There was poached asparagus in a truffle cream sauce, as well as gnocchi mac and cheese. I went with the sweet potato hash for my side and Ian got the duck fat fries. For a starter, I got the iceberg wedge salad and Ian went with their Caesar salad.
Porter brought out our salads and I had him put a lot of ground black pepper on my iceberg wedge. I usually joke with wait staff people that I like a lot of pepper on my food and that they'll end up getting carpal tunnel from twisting so much pepper out of the pepper cellar. After I stopped him, he said, "Boy, you DO like a lot of pepper! I ought to just leave this thing at the table."
My wedge salad was outstanding. It had fresh chunks of tomatoes, real bacon and chunks of avocado that were swimming in a creamy buttermilk/bleu cheese dressing. It wasn't all that large, but the taste sensation was excellent. Ian proclaimed his Caesar salad as being very good, as well.
Just before Porter brought out our steaks, I had ordered a glass of the Kenwood cabernet from him. Ian got another glass of the Oak Knoll. Porter's assistant brought out our glasses of wine, then for some reason, Porter brought Ian out ANOTHER glass of wine. He sort of stopped and said, "Oh, boy. I messed that one up. I thought he was getting the Kenwood for you (looking at me), and I was going to get the Oak Knoll for you (looking at Ian). I guess he got them both. Oh well, I'll leave this one for you and if you want it, fine. It's on the house."
Ian said, "I doubt it will go to waste..."
Porter and his helper brought out our steaks and the presentation looked delectable. My New York strip (below left) was sitting on a small bed of the sweet potato hash. The steak was covered with a demi-glace sauce that was light, but had a good flavor with the meat. The steak was cooked perfectly to my liking - rare to rare plus - but the cut had a far amount of gristle in it. I'd say that about 20 percent of it was inedible due to the gristle. That's not to say the steak wasn't outstanding, because it was. I've had enough steaks to know that you get a gristly one from time to time, even at the finest restaurants.
The sweet potato hash was pretty pedestrian, I'd have to say. There wasn't much flavor to them and they just sort of sat there in dull fashion on my plate. The steak definitely trumped the side. Now I wish I would have gotten some other side instead of the sweet potato hash.
Ian's Delmonico ribeye (above right) was a full 16 ounces and literally eclipsed the duck fat fries that it sat upon. He likes his medium rare and he was happy with how it turned out. It was obviously juicy when he would cut into it. He said it was tender and very flavorful. "A good piece of meat," Ian observed.
After dinner, Porter tried to entice us with Merchants dessert tray. Although the desserts looked tempting, there was no way that I was going to be able to have anything else that evening. I was full and looking to wind down for the evening.
Merchants Restaurant went through some hard times, but the Goldberg brothers have turned it into something special. They're doing their best to make it a destination for not only the tourists, but to bring back some of the locals who have gotten away from the downtown area for being too touristy. If the food and service is any indication, Nashville has a gem of a restaurant in Merchants.
When I found out that I was going to Nashville for the 2011 Summer NAMM show, my colleague Ian told me, "The first meal we have to go to is Neely's for barbecue." Well, that was certainly fine with me. Ian picked me up at the airport and we immediately went to Neely's, just north of the downtown Nashville area just off of Rosa Parks Blvd. (see map).
Neely's is a Memphis-based family-owned barbecue restaurant. After their father died, the five Neely brothers and their sister learned the art of slow-cooking barbecue from their uncle, Jim Neely, who ran his own barbecue joint in Memphis - Interstate Barbecue. After getting a $20,000 loan from their grandmother, four of the Neely brothers - Gaelin, Tony, Mark and Pat (below left) -opened their first restaurant in downtown Memphis in 1988. It was a small place with folding chairs and tables and only one barbecue pit. Through hard work and mostly word of mouth advertising, their business grew by leaps and bounds. In 1992, they opened a second location on the east side of Memphis that helped grow their business even more. In 2001, the Neely's expanded to the Nashville location and immediately became a favorite with the locals in Music City.
In the early 90's, Pat's fiancee, Gina, joined the brothers in the business. Pat and Gina (above right) were sweethearts in high school, but both married other people after they got out of school. However, both divorced their original spouses and hooked up again after running into each other at their 10 year high school reunion. Pat and Gina were married in the 1994 and are now the stars of the highly popular Food Network program, "Down Home with the Neely's." Earlier this year, Pat and Gina Neely partnered with New York City restaurateur Abraham Merchant - whose company, Merchant's Hospitality, oversees nine New York area restaurants - to open Neely's Barbecue Parlor on the upper east side of Manhattan. Compared to the other Neely restaurants, the New York City location is much more upscale and teeters on the edge of fine dining.
I was expecting to find something of a rib joint shack when Ian drove us to Neely's in Nashville. But I was sort of surprised to find a somewhat modern looking building in the midst of an office park called Waterfront Plaza. It's sort of tucked in a bit and you have to turn off of Rosa Parks Blvd. into a spacious parking lot and it's located right on the water of North Rhodes lake. There's a deck off the back of the restaurant that has a great view of the little lake. Part of the deck is covered for outdoor dining, but it was pretty hot and humid that evening so no one was seated outside. Inside, it looks like any typical barbecue place - heavy on the wood floors and paneling, many lighted beer signs, checkered plastic tablecloths. There were pictures of Pat and Gina Neely with nearly every other Food Network show host who has visited their restaurants.
The menu at Neely's in Nashville is on the wall behind the cash register. You order first, get a number, then sit down at one of the tables. The waitresses will bring your food out to you. Being that it was my first visit to Neely's, I really didn't know what I wanted. They had barbecue sandwiches, Memphis-style ribs, rib tips, smoked turkey, Texas-chunk style brisket and pulled pork. They even have Barbecued Spaghetti - a combination of a marinara and barbecue sauce on top of spaghetti pasta and pulled pork. Ian immediately signed up for his favorite - beef ribs. He got a side of cole slaw and fries with his dinner.
I was sort of stuck between the pulled pork and the brisket, then I saw the sampler platter - brisket, smoked turkey, pulled pork, or pork ribs with two sides and bread. I ordered the sampler, along with a side of baked beans and macaroni and cheese. The lady behind the cash register said, "I hope you're hungry. That's a lot of food. Usually, two people will get that and split it." I figured that I could probably put a good sized dent into it, but wouldn't be able to eat it all.
The cooking line at Neely's is right out in the open. One of the cooks hollered at me, "This your first time at Neely's?" I told him it was for me, but my colleague had been there a few times before. "Get ready to get a taste delight," he hollered back.
We sat at a table in the middle of the dining area, but near the front counter. Being that we're both in the audio/video industry, Ian and I immediately noticed that the televisions Neely's were using were old tube style TV's with one rather large rear projection television up on a high shelf. The picture quality on all the televisions was pretty bad. Ian said, "I don't think people come here to watch television."
It was at that point in time that my wife called from back home to inform me that our air conditioner had gone out. We knew we were riding on borrowed time with both our furnace (over 25 years old) and A/C (over 20 years old) and the blower motor died on the furnace. It was 82 degrees in the house and rising. The A/C at our house had been working almost non-stop for quite sometime trying to keep up with a stretch of hot weather, including three days in a row where the overnight temperature didn't get any cooler than 78 degrees with humidity percentages in the upper 80's to lower 90's at night. I told her to shut the A/C off as it was beginning to frost up outside the house and see if she could get hold of any repair people to come over to take a look at the blower. She was stressing and I was feeling overly guilty that I was getting ready to have barbecue in Nashville while she was simmering in 100 degree heat back home.
It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time before our food finally made it to the table. Maybe I was focused on worrying about what was happening back in Iowa, but it was about 20 minutes from the time we ordered until the food showed up. And the girl behind the counter was right - my combination dinner WAS a lot of food (below left.) It was a generous helping of beef brisket, pulled pork, pork ribs and the pulled smoked turkey. All but the ribs had a sauce on the top, the ribs were cooked with Neely's own Memphis-style rub on them. They didn't bring any extra sauce so I went up and got a couple small 2 oz. tubs - one mild and the other hot. Quite honestly, they didn't add much to the taste of the meat and were a little weak.
The ribs, to me, were a little dry. Oh, they pulled off the bone fine and dandy, but I found them to be a little chewy. I concentrated on the pulled pork and brisket more, though. The pulled pork was juicy and tender, and had a very good flavor to it. The brisket wasn't the best I'd ever had, and I wasn't sure I liked it served in chunks rather than cut into slices like I normally have. The outside of the brisket chunks were tough to chew, but inside the meat was more tender. It tasted good, but not great. And the smoked turkey, I think I had one bite of that and it was OK. I'm not big on turkey or chicken that is smoked, then pulled apart.
The two sides were also plentiful (above right). The mac and cheese had a little bit of paprika mixed in with it and it helped zip up the taste a bit. But the baked beans were worth the price of admission. Many times, I have to add barbecue sauce to baked beans I have at other barbecue places, but Neely's baked beans were just great as they were. They featured large chunks of beef in with the beans and it had a thick and deep smoky taste to each bite I had. The beans at Neely's were simply outstanding.
Ian's beef ribs were meaty, juicy and plentiful (pictured left). He, too, knew that there would be no way he would be able to finish his whole meal, but he made a gallant effort in doing so. His cole slaw, he said, we pretty good. But the French fries were just basic fries and nothing that was extraordinary.
I think I left a little bit of everything on my plate before I finally decided that I'd had enough. Dents were made in each of the meats, save the turkey. I'm not a big fan of dry ribs and even with the mediocre sauce that Neely's provide, it didn't help the dryness of the meat. But the brisket was above average and the pulled pork was the best of all the meats I tried. The mac and cheese was good, but the beans were, well, like I said, outstanding. They were some of the best baked beans I've ever had in a barbecue restaurant.
Overall, I'd have to say that Neely's was good, but not worth the hype I've heard about the place. It was a little expensive - $45 bucks for our two dinners and three beers. My sampler platter alone was $22.95 and I was able to eat a little more than half of the food I was served. I was completely stuffed as we went out on the deck to watch the school of catfish swim around the turtles treading water just under the deck railing. Ian said that he'd had better meals at Neely's in the past, so it may have been an off night. One of these days, I want to go back to Memphis for a long weekend and check out the Neely's there. Maybe I'll get a better impression of the place.
(UPDATE - I've been informed that the Neely's have shut down this location as well as their Memphis locations.)
The reason I went to Nashville recently was to work our company's booth at the Summer 2011 National Association of Music Merchants show, or simply known as NAMM. NAMM is an organization that, according to their web site, is a "not-for-profit association that unifies, leads and strengthens the $17 billion global music products industry." The NAMM organization serves as a hub for those looking to find the newest in musical products, recording technology, and professional sound and lighting. Whether you're working in a small recording studio, a music store vendor, or a touring professional, NAMM is the organization that helps showcase the gear that keeps musicians in business. From amps to instruments, lighting to P.A. systems, publishing to promotions, NAMM allows companies to showcase their gear at two annual shows.
The Summer NAMM show in Nashville is significantly smaller than its winter counterpart that is held in early January in Anaheim, CA. The Winter NAMM is six times larger in terms of companies that show, and the people attending are, well, more colorful than the more conservative-minded people who attend the show in Tennessee. But there were some people at the Summer NAMM who were dressed rather flamboyantly, literally screaming, "Look at me! I'm trying to be somebody!" You could tell the "wanna-bes" who came to our booth by the number of big names they would casually drop in conversation trying to impress you with how important they are because they had had their picture taken one time with Elton, Reba or Phil. (I never did figure out which Phil it was, though...)
The Summer NAMM is housed in the Nashville Convention Center, just north of Bridgestone Arena in downtown Nashville (see map). The Summer NAMM, at one point, was a pretty good sized show with exhibits in both the convention center and in the arena. The show was expanding so fast that they needed more room to show exhibits. Summer NAMM moved to Indianapolis about seven years ago and attendance plummeted. A number of large exhibitors quit showing at NAMM during the years they showed in Indy because of poor attendance. The eventually moved the Summer NAMM to Austin, TX, but it was during the economic downturn of 2008 and 2009. With the show downsized by nearly 2/3rds, Summer NAMM moved back to Nashville last year. But even with it being back in Nashville, attendance is still down and a number of the large companies have not come back to Summer NAMM.
They are building a new and larger convention center to the south of Bridgestone Arena and it will more than triple the existing exhibition space that is in the current convention center. The new convention center should be open in time for Summer NAMM next year and show organizers are hoping the new facility will bring back some of the companies that have skipped the summer show for the past few years.
We were there showing products from Lauten Audio, a San Jose-based vendor of high-end studio and performance microphones; Vovox Cables, a Swiss manufacturer of high-end instrument, microphone and power cables; and Focal Pro, the leading near-field recording studio speakers on the market today. We were in a small booth - 10' X 10' - and it didn't give us much room to properly demonstrate products. At right is a picture of our booth with my colleague, Ian, doing some last minute clean up during set up the day before the show began. The only active demonstration we had was with a Wechter guitar and an Orange amp and bottom where we showed the difference between the Vovox guitar cables versus other cables that are more well-known name brands, including Monster Cable. Although it was tough to hear with all the ambient noise and other demos going on around us, those musicians who we did the demo for were overly impressed with how much better the guitar sounded with the Vovox cables. The rest of the equipment we showed was in static displays. You could look at the microphones and speakers, but you couldn't hear them. That somewhat hampered us in our efforts for people to stop in.
The Summer NAMM show was heavily skewed toward instruments that most country music people would use - mainly acoustic, electric and resonator guitars. Something I learned from the people at Wechter Guitars who were right across the aisle from us (pictured below left) was that the term "dobro" is a licensed trademark of Gibson, and other companies cannot call their metal topped guitars a dobro. Hence, they are called resonator guitars by the dozens of other guitar manufacturers who make that style of guitar. But even if they're not made by Gibson, dobro is still the common term for the guitars among musicians who play them.
Another thing that was interesting at the Summer NAMM were the number of vendors and distributors showing ukuleles (above right). There must have been six to eight different manufacturers/distributors showing everything from cheap, Japanese-made beginner ukuleles made out of bamboo, to hand-made exotic wood high-end ukuleles that fetched thousands of dollars. I was pretty amazed by the amount of uke's on display.
Now, if I haven't lost you already by this point, please bear with me just a while longer. I'm not going to get into the equipment at the show, but more the personalities that I saw, met and talked to.
Next to us was the Pigtronix booth. Pigtronix is a Long Island-based company that specializes in effect boxes for guitar players. David Koltai is the young owner of Pigtronix and he and a couple of his guys were on hand to demonstrate their "toys" to dozens of guitarists - both well-known and neophytes - who were in attendance at Summer NAMM. Pictured at left are two of David's guys who were pretty damned good guitarists in their own right. And David was no slouch on the fretboard, himself. Their booth was always busy - and loud. The NAMM officials came by about a half-dozen times during the show to tell them to turn it down. If they were hacks at the guitar, it would have been worse. But they were good players as well as good guys and were fun to be next to.
Between Pigtronix and Wechter guitars across the way from us, it was very difficult to hear our Vovox cable demo from all the playing going on between the two booths. It was actually sort of comical to watch some of the guys trying to hear the tonality and intricacies of a Wechter acoustic guitar while they had their ear right up next to the upper body of the guitar as they played.
This little kid below to the left is a young bluegrass performer from Indiana - Isaac Moore. He stopped by the Wechter booth on Thursday to play a little guitar for them. At first, I was a little skeptical, but once he sat down and started to pick out some songs, I was pretty amazed. He was there with his dad who looked like any other schlub from anywhere. But 8-year-old Isaac was playin' the part with his cowboy boots and hat, his pressed jeans and western shirt. I saw the kid the next day over at the Martin guitar booth in a western-style suit, complete with a matching cowboy hat.
Above right is a guitarist named Steve Hunter who stopped by the Pigtronix booth to try out some of the effects pedals. Steve Hunter isn't a household name, but he is very well known among guitar aficionados as "The Deacon" and is one of the very best in the business over the past 30+ years. He has played with a "whos-who" of musicians, performers and bands including Mitch Ryder, Alice Cooper, Peter Gabriel, Bette Midler, Lou Reed, Meat Loaf, Julian Lennon and David Lee Roth. My friend, Leo Kelly - a very good guitarist in his own right - told me that Hunter "ghosted" on guitar for Joe Perry from Aerosmith on the song "Train Kept a Rollin" on their "Get Your Wings" album. David Koltai from Pigtronix, standing in the black shirt to the right of Hunter, let him sit down with a guitar and have at it. It was about 20 minutes of jamming on Hunter's part, trying out each different effect box in Pigtronix's arsenal. When he was done, he ended up buying two of the effects boxes that he said he would use when he plays with Alice Cooper on his upcoming tour. Now, that was pretty cool.
Another cool thing for me was seeing one of my all-time guitar heroes at the Pigtronix booth, Adrian Belew. Belew has had a storied solo career, but I first knew of him from working with King Crimson starting back in the 80's. He also played with The Bears, a very underrated group from Cincinnati that Belew had produced their first album when they were known as the Raisins. Belew joined up with them, they changed their name, and their first album - simply called "The Bears" - is one of my all-time favorite albums. Belew has also played with Frank Zappa and David Bowie.
More recently, Belew had been playing with bassist Julie Slick and her brother, Eric Slick, in Adrian Belew Power Trio. And Belew was checking out new effects boxes at Pigtronix for his upcoming Power Trio/Stick Men tour that features Julie Slick, and King Crimson bandmates Tony Levin and Pat Mastelotto. Belew sat there as David Koltai played his guitar and went through all the different effects he had. Belew would lean back and laugh heartily when he heard something that he really liked. And he lauged a lot.
I had taken this picture of Belew as he was sitting with David. It wasn't a very good picture to begin with. He looked up and mugged for the camera as I went to take a second picture, but my camera phone's battery suddenly went low and it wouldn't let me take a picture. I cut David out of this photo because he was blurry. I was pretty upset that I couldn't get a better picture of Adrian Belew. But it was just sort of neat that I got to see him up close.
A few other guitarists that came through the Pigtronix booth included George Marinelli, the original guitarist for Bruce Hornsby, and who now plays with Bonnie Raitt. "Burnin' " Vernon Reid from Living Colour played guitars at both the Pigtronix booth and over at the HeliArc guitars booth that was about 30 feet away from us. I also saw Bob Welch, the former Fleetwood Mac guitarist before they got REALLY big in the 70's, and who also had a somewhat successful solo career in the late 70's. I'm sure there were many others who dropped by and played who I didn't know or recognize because there were a LOT of good guitar players stopping and playing guitars with effects at Pigtronix.
One guy that stopped in to look at the Lauten microphones was some guy named Eddie Reasoner. He was dressed like a tastefully aging rock star and immediately gave me his card and started dropping names. I thought this guy was a phony, but after going to his web site - NashAngeles Music - it appears he's a player in the music business of some significance. Or he's one helluva self-promoter.
But quite possibly the highlight of the show actually happened at a dinner that Lauten Audio founder and president Brian Loudenslager invited Ian and me to on Friday night. It took place at the Speakers Bistro at the Sheraton Nashville - a dinner that was so pedestrian I'm not even going to write about it on Road Tips. Brian also invited Grammy award winning engineer/producer Randy Kohrs and his wife, Ashley; and Mark Capps, a four-time Grammy award winning engineer/producer. Both Kohrs and Capps use Lauten microphones in their studios.
In the picture at left, from left to right is Randy Kohrs, his wife Ashley, Brian from Lauten Audio and Mark Capps. Ian took the picture and I declined to get in the shot.
It turns out that Kohrs is an Iowa native, so we had something very much in common with that. He grew up in New Virginia just south of Des Moines and began to play in a bluegrass band at the age of 15. He made it to Nashville and became known as one of the best resonator guitar players in town. He ended up playing for the likes of Dolly Parton, Tom T. Hall, Dierks Bentley, Jim Lauderdale, and Hank Williams III. Kohrs also has a pretty good solo career going and has released six bluegrass themed albums in his career.
When he isn't performing music, he's behind the sound console recording and mixing other artists around Nashville in his home studio, Slack Key Studio. The recording studio is literally a good portion of the main floor of his home with Ashley and Randy living on the second floor. In fact, their kitchen is somewhat unique in that they decorated it with a diner theme. Randy told me that the hanging pot holder is actually the rear bumper of a 70's era Cadillac that they brought home with them from Iowa. The seats around the table are reconstructed backseats out of a 64 Impala.
Their kitchen is so unique that Randy was featured on Rachael Ray's showin a segment called "The Coolest Kitchens in America." Below is a short You Tube video that tours Slack Key Studios and shows the unique kitchen in their house.
Mark Capps has worked side by side with dozens of producers and has worked with an equally impressive list of performers. Ironically, three of his four Grammy awards were for engineering the best polka albums from 2005 to 2007. In fact, the list of producers and artists that Capps has worked with over the years is too numerous to mention. To see a list of all who has worked with, click here and scroll down.
Ashley Kohrs (pictured right with Randy Kohrs) is a very good musician in her own right. She played fiddle on a number of bluegrass albums and played with Randy's back up band, the Lites. She currently is a self-employed public relations person, but also runs the business side of Slack Key Studios and Randy Kohrs' Left of Center record company. She is also an accomplished vocalist who has appeared on Kohrs' studio albums. They just got married in late April at their studio/home in Nashville and are a very nice couple.
What struck me about listening to Mark and Randy compare notes about the music industry in Nashville is how competitive it has gotten. Not only with musicians, but with recording studios as well. Given Nashville's low cost of living, a number of west coast engineers and producers have relocated to Nashville over the past few years. Randy estimated there were now over 10,000 studios in the greater Nashville area. "Digital recording and Pro Tools has turned bedrooms all over Nashville into recording studios," he said. "The biggest problem is that a lot of these guys are only charging $15 bucks an hour to record musicians. And it's usually bad."
Randy said that he usually charges about $150 to $300 an hour for his sessions, depending upon what is needed, but he's getting severely undercut with a lot of the competition. He said that he's had musicians who have gone elsewhere after getting a lower quote for studio time, but end up coming back to him to fix the recording because it doesn't sound good. "I usually tell them that it will cost them $800 bucks for me to fix the recording," he told us. "But then I tell them, 'Or for $500 bucks, you can just bring the whole band into my studio and we'll record it and make it sound good right from the start." He said that usually gets them to come back.
Mark told stories of musicians coming back to him with their tails between their legs after they went elsewhere to record, only to have the sound be wrecked by an inexperienced engineer/mixer. "That's why Randy and I continue to be busy," Mark explained to us. "We do it right the first time and you aren't throwing good money at bad with us trying to fix bad recordings."
Both talked about the idiosyncrasies and egos of both producers and artists. Without naming names - except one, Mutt Lange (the iconic producer who was once married to Shania Twain) - they told some great stories of working with producers and artists. Mark said, "Mutt is Mutt. He has the magic and it's like his ears are attached to his fingers. But he can be pretty difficult to work with."
Mark told a story about how he was working with Lange on an album in the Bahamas and how he would work 48 hours non-stop once he got in the groove. "He'd call musicians at 1:30 in the morning, getting them up out of bed and say, 'OK, you're on!' ", Mark told us. "Mutt was an animal when it came to recording."
We were discussing the amount of name-dropping that goes on at shows like Summer NAMM. Mark said, "I'll guarantee you, the more names that a person drops in the course of the conversation, the more unimportant they are in Nashville."
Mark and Randy talked about how the big Nashville flood affected them last year. Randy and Ashley said they had about four inches of water on their ground level. They, along with a couple friends, kept bailing water - for twelve hours. Ashley said, "I finally turned to Randy about 11:30 at night and said, 'I don't think I can lift my arms any more.' They hurt so bad."
Soundcheckin Nashville is a very well known storage warehouse and rehearsal space for many of Nashville's top musicians. The facility was inundated with water from the Cumberland River with up to 4 feet of muddy sludge inside the facility. Mark was telling us about friends who lost a lot of gear in the floods, and of some artists, such as Vince Gill, who lost vintage guitars that he had stored at Soundcheck. Many were salvageable through time and hard work, but there were items such as vintage tweed covered Fender amps that couldn't be repaired or replaced. Mark said that while some of the musicians had insurance, many did not. He said, "I had a friend who heard that the river was rising and he went down to Soundcheck to get his stuff out. He got to the road that Soundcheck sits on and couldn't believe how fast the water had come up. Everything he had for equipment got wet. He was able to save his guitars, but not his amps and accessories."
Randy said, "Oh, yeah. It was a mess in there after the water went down. Snakes were coiled up inside the back of Fender amps, there was four inches of mud everywhere and the smell was just horrific. I know someone who works in the office there and she says she can still smell the stench of the flood waters in the place." He said they cleaned and disinfected the buildings, replaced the drywall and it looks brand new. "But she can still smell it," he said. "I can't, but it must be burned into her memory."
Both guys were down to earth, no pretensions between the two, provided a load of information about the recording industry, and Ian and I both learned a lot from just sitting there with them for nearly three hours. Although the dinner at the Speakers Bistro wasn't all that great, the conversation absolutely was. When we split up for the evening, Randy and Ashley both invited Ian and me to stop by their studio on our next trip to Nashville. Nashville is Ian's territory and I have a dealer who is only 60 miles away in Bowling Green, KY. I may just swing down to Nashville at some point and get hold of Randy to take him up on that offer.
Even though this looks like a big crowd at the Summer NAMM in Nashville, this was actually a picture of the attendees at the top of the escalator getting ready to go down to the exhibit hall at the convention center before the doors opened on the first day of the show. Traffic was light again and this year they decided to open the doors to the public on the last day of the show. For $20 bucks a head, the public could come in and take a look at all the neat instruments, amplifiers and other musical toys on display at Summer NAMM. Only about 1100 people paid to get in on the last day of the show, but compared to the previous two days, traffic was up significantly that one day. Still, it wasn't enough to convince us to come back to Nashville for the 2012 Summer NAMM. We'll just concentrate on going to the big one in Anaheim in January. And even though I'd like to do that show at some point, I'm sure that I probably won't have the chance.
I recently had the chance to go to Nashville, TN to help work the 2011 Summer National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) show. It had been years since I'd been to Nashville, and when I'd been there in the past it was just an in-and-out situation. I never had a chance to get to know the city, so on this trip I had some time to do a little sight-seeing and to have some good meals while I was in town.
Nashville, of course, is Music City U.S.A. and working the NAMM show, which is primarily geared toward professional music people, I had the chance to meet some music industry people, to learn more about the business side of what goes on in Nashville, and get some inside stories of some personalities who live and work in the Nashville area.
The trip to Nashville almost ended as soon as I got there. As we sat down for dinner after I landed in Nashville, my wife called to tell me that the blower motor on our ancient furnace (over 25 years old) had gone out. We knew we were living on borrowed time when it came to our furnace and air conditioner (which also was over 20 years old) and it just had to go out during the hottest day of the summer with heat indexes in the Quad Cities well into the 110's. Long story short, my wife was able to coordinate getting quotes, getting financing, and setting up the installation schedule on her own so I was able to stay in Nashville for the duration of my scheduled trip. I have to say that I was extremely proud of her for keeping it together during a stressful time. I came about *this* close to having to get back to help out, but she pulled through with flying colors.
The Summer NAMM show was held at the Nashville Convention Center, right in the heart of downtown Nashville (see map). After set up on Wednesday, my colleague Ian and I had some time to drive around the area and take a look at a few things in Nashville. As we walked out of the east doors of the convention center, I looked over and saw the iconic Ryman Auditorium, home of the weekly broadcasts of the "Grand Ole Opry" from 1943 to 1974. This is truly a mecca for country music fans and having some sense of history when it comes to music I was kind of like, "Wow! The Ryman! I didn't know it was right there!"
The building opened in 1892 and was originally known as the Union Gospel Tabernacle, built by Nashville entrepreneur Thomas Ryman. Ryman, a riverboat captain who also owned saloons in and around Nashville, built the building for influential evangelist/revivalist Samuel Porter Jones. It was said that Ryman went to heckle Jones at a revival meeting in 1885, but instead got "saved" that day. To show his appreciation to Jones, Ryman designed and built the huge church. After Ryman died in 1904, they changed the name to the Ryman Auditorium.
In addition to the weekly broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry, the stage at the Ryman Auditorium also hosted the Johnny Cash Show from 1969 to 1971. Cash's television program was groundbreaking in that it featured a diverse collection of musicians that crossed the boundaries of rock, folk, bluegrass, jazz and country music. As an early teen, the Johnny Cash Show from the Ryman opened my eyes to a wide array of music. Some of the musicians and bands that played on Cash's show from the Ryman included Derek and the Dominoes (Eric Clapton), Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong, James Brown, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jose Feliciano, Ray Charles and about any "name" country music performer during that period. And that was just in the FIRST SEASON! If you're a true music fan, I suggest you run out and buy "The Best of the Johnny Cash Show" on DVD. It has some amazing performances on it. .
After the Gaylord Entertainment Corporation moved the Grand Ole Opry to its present day location east of downtown Nashville in 1974, the Ryman was used sporadically and fell into a state of disrepair and neglect. It wasn't until nearly 20 years later that a series of concerts by Emmy Lou Harris spurred an interest in renovating the 100 year old building. After a full renovation, the Ryman reopened in 1994 as a music venue and museum. The original pews of the Union Gospel Tabernacle are still used by people who watch shows at the small venue.
Driving out south toward Brentwood and Franklin, part of the high dollar housing area of Nashville, we were struck at how many large homes were for sale. My colleague, Ian, who travels to Nashville as part of his territory, told me how the city has hit hard economic times in all sectors. A lot of people think of Nashville as "Music City", but it's actually health care that makes up the largest industry in town. Over 250 health care related companies are located in and around Nashville. Nissan has a large plant in suburban Smyrna, and Vanderbilt University (pictured right) is the largest employer in the area with over 24,000 people working for both the school and the medical facility. With all that thriving business going on, you'd think the city would be in fine shape. But like any other place in America, the economic downturn of 2008/09 hurt Nashville, probably more than others. Over the past year, the unemployment rate in Metro Nashville has hovered between 8.5 and 9.0 percent. And with more people moving in due to Nashville's relative low cost of living, it puts more pressure on the private and public sectors to create more jobs in the area.
After touring parts of Franklin and Brentwood as Ian showed me where a handful of his dealers used to be before they went out of business, we made our way over toward Opryland, the hotel/entertainment and former theme park complex built by the Gaylord Corporation to showcase the Grand Ole Opry (see map). The Opryland USA theme park opened in 1975 and was a thriving entity until the mid 90's when it became apparent that it was running out of room to expand and to keep up with other theme parks throughout the Southeast. Limited on space because of its geography and the fact that it was a seasonal theme park, Gaylord Entertainment decided to shutter the park in 1997 when it determined that it needed the land to expand the Opryland Resort and Convention Center complex. After the turn of the century, Opry Mills, a single level mall with over 200 stores, opened on the spot of Opryland USA.
In 2010, a devastating flood hit Nashvilleafter a 13 inch rainfall over a 48 hour period. The Opryland Resort and Convention Center is located right next to the Cumberland River which rose to over 12 feet above flood stage, inundating the Opryland complex and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of guests that particular weekend. Parts of the Opryland hotel were under 10 feet of water for a long period of time. The flood forced the relocation of the Grand Ole Opry back to the Ryman Auditorium for a period of time. The hotel complex eventually reopened after six months of renovation and clean up, but plans to make Opryland the largest hotel/convention center outside of Las Vegas were put on indefinite hold due to the economic downturn and the subsequent flood.
Opry Mills is still trying to get back on its feet well over a year past the flood. Parts of the complex also saw flood waters as deep as 10 feet and the whole mall had to basically be environmentally remediated before construction could begin. In September of 2010, work completely stopped on much of the mall as insurance claim disputes ended up in court. Litigation drug out for months and it pushed back Opry Mills projected reopening from August of this year to some time in 2012. In the meantime, Bass Pro Shops opened a new store on the site that is seperate from the mall, itself. And many of the stores that were once in Opry Mills have either relocated temporarily - or in some cases, permanently - to other areas of Nashville.
One place that I wanted to see while in Nashville was the Parthenon - a whole replica of the Greek Parthenon that was built on the grounds of Centennial Park for the 1897 Centennial Exposition (see map). As the original Parthenon in Athens, Greece, once did, this Parthenon houses a huge statue of the goddess Athena. The Parthenon in Nashville also serves as the city's art museum with a number of paintings and sculptures on display inside.
We walked around the building and found the main entrance on the east side and we contemplated going in to look around. However, it was 4:20 in the afternoon and the museum closed at 4:30. We saved a few bucks, but just seeing the Parthenon up close was kind of cool. Large halogen flood lamps were positioned out from the corners of the building and it would have been neat to see it lit up at night, but we never made it back.
Ian also drove me down Music Square West, home of the world famous Music Row of publishing and production houses and recording studios. Nearly every major record label has an office and studio in the Music Row area (see map). There are also a number of recording studios including the famous RCA Studio B that recorded the likes of Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton and Jim Reeves. The studio is now leased out to the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum for $1.00 a year and tours are available.
Right next to the Studio B museum is Starstruck Entertainment, the complex that houses Reba McEntire's offices and recording studio (pictured left). The recording studio at Starstruck is one of the most advanced in all of Nashville and a number of big name entertainers have recorded there.
As we were headed back to the hotel, Ian remarked, "You know, if someone put a gun to my head and said, 'You've got to move to Nashville', I could probably do it." Ian lives in Toronto, but simply loves the trees and rolling hills found all throughout Central Tennessee. We took a drive outside the city on Sunday before we both flew home and we came upon a vista that had small tree-covered mountains and a vast green valley before us, he said, "This is what I mean. I think this is just gorgeous."
This may have been my only trip to Nashville for business, but I wouldn't mind coming back for a visit at some point just to be able to check out more of the city. And, quite actually, I wouldn't mind going through the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum if I make it back. While country music isn't what I listen to, I still have enough sense of history to pay homage to the pioneers of the musical genre which is the most popular form of music in America today. Maybe one of these days...
