Material Girl

With a voluptuous front awning and swaggering patio, Mad Donna’s restaurant in East Nashville has the bearing of a flamboyant trophy wife filling the shoes of a long-suffering and mousy ex. Unlike the former Mrs. 1313 Woodland St.—the gray and gritty landmark Radio Cafe—Mad Donna’s struts her stuff, toting a bright-orange marquee like a designer handbag and wearing a menu of glorified bar foods like an armful of tennis bracelets.

Owners Rachel Fontenot and Neil Clark, veterans of the music and real estate industries, respectively, set out to fill a void in the neighborhood by introducing a roster of mid-level food that was neither bar fare nor upscale cuisine. They brought in Chip Grant, an alumnus of the T.G.I. Friday’s chain, to man the day-to-day operations and enlisted chef Joyce Maloney, formerly of Tin Angel, Germantown Cafe and Firefly Grille. While the renovation of the building dragged on for months last year, the team devised a menu that meanders through the greatest hits of Mexican, Italian, Middle Eastern, Asian and American cuisines.

With shiny concrete floors, hand-blown glass chandeliers, a sultry upstairs lounge and a cozy tented patio, the new mistress of Woodland and 14th has undeniable sex appeal, the same je ne sais quoi of the sultry Donnas (Mills, Summer and Douglas, among them) whose photographs grace the dining room walls. Her bedroom eyes of live-band karaoke and her come-hither brunch with build-your-own Bloody Marys and two-for-one mimosas practically purr to a neighborhood lusting for dining and drinking options.

But if the best way to your heart is through your stomach, then Mad Donna’s sprawling and inconsistent menu will likely hold little sway over your affections.

On one evening, our table of 12 ordered virtually every appetizer and entrée. Covering a menu so exhaustively offers a rare perspective on a restaurant. First, such a jumbo-size group can really kick the tires on the service, and we agreed that Mad Donna’s rose to the challenge. Our servers delivered our raft of food correctly and extremely courteously, all the while oozing enthusiasm for their new workplace. Furthermore, our hot foods arrived hot and our cold foods arrived cold, a testament to efficient kitchen operations.

Among the more intriguing appetizers were the battered-and-fried green beans with herb aioli—a familiar T.G.I. Friday’s headliner. While the snack offered a creative spin on French fries, the beans, which aren’t prepared from scratch, were overcooked prior to frying, giving them a brown hue and a soggy texture inside the light, crisp coating.

As far as deep-fried snacks with marinara sauce go, we preferred calamari fritti to Radio cheese sticks—Jenga blocks of fried mozzarella named for the former tenant. A plate of hummus and pita fell flat, with no brightness of lemon or zing of garlic to break the pale monotony.

Both the Buffalo and Thai-honey chicken wings had plenty of meat, but lacked any piquant zing and dripped with cloying sauce. (We were later advised to ask for “Rodney’s-style” wings, an extra-hot version.)

If a signature appetizer emerges from the list of bar standards, it will likely be the nachos, piled high with light, flaky house-fried tortilla chips, homemade salsa with corn and peppers, and black beans with hints of cinnamon, coriander and cumin.

While many menus peak in the appetizer course and peter out in the entrées, Mad Donna’s strength was in the main dishes, the majority of which were made in house. With a dozen of us circulating dishes around the table, we quickly isolated our favorite items, including the butternut squash ravioli in a light cream sauce with hints of tarragon and sun-dried tomato; sweet potato enchiladas with black beans, enchilada sauce and corn relish; and shrimp and grits in a tomato-based creole sauce.

By far, our favorite offering was Thai curry salmon, with a pan-seared patina, served on a bed of rice with a coconut curry sauce and a side of delicate steamed green beans. (If only the appetizer of fried green beans retained the same fresh color and crunch.)

At a table where everyone was under instructions to taste and pass, we noticed that we were overly eager to circulate several dishes, as no one really wanted to claim them as their own meal. Fish tacos were one such white elephant: soggy corn tortillas filled with breaded grouper and heavy hush puppies that suffocated any flavor of the avocado salsa or chipotle lime sauce. Similarly, the monochromatic plate of heavily breaded grouper, hush puppies and fries kept going ’round and ’round like a hot potato. Pasta Prima Donna—fettuccine thinly coated in pesto and dotted with vegetables—went back to the kitchen with a meager dent made in the overly generous portion. Even our token vegetarian surrendered the black bean burger, a mushy amalgamation of oatmeal and sauteed onions and carrots that had the consistency of mashed potatoes. At a separate lunch visit, carnivores were equally underwhelmed by the burger, which was dry and coated with a crisp black bark from the grill.