From green restaurants to black truffles, Nashville's dinner plate was full in 2008

Twenty-aught-eight was a very good year for Nashville restaurants, with a crop of high-end creative independents opening across town, invigorating several sleepy neighborhoods and energizing discerning diners. A few highlights from the culinary year in Nashville:

The newbies:
Several spectacular spots flung open their doors ever so quietly at the end of the 2007, with word of mouth reaching a crescendo in early 2008. When baby-faced Ritz-Carlton alumnus Andrew Chadwick began importing truffles from Périgord and growing melons, herbs and pears in the garden of a stately renovated house on Rutledge Street, the plates of rabbit, turbot and foie gras that emerged from Andrew Chadwick's on Rutledge Hill raised the bar—and the price point—for exquisite food in Nashville.

In midtown, the Virago crew migrated from Asian to Latin cuisine with their second nameplate, Lime. The midtown eatery delivers a sleek menu of nueva Latina fare—including ceviches and moles—in an architectural environment as intoxicating as the citrus-and-mint-infused roster of rum drinks and margaritas at the giant central bar.

In Germantown, Margot Café alumnus Tandy Wilson opened the elegantly rustic-industrial City House. In a former art studio with exposed brick and stone and a gleaming open kitchen, Wilson works his own craft with house-cured meats and a repertoire of dishes inspired by his travels through Italy.

Another familiar face reemerged when Jimmy Phillips and his wife Seema transformed the former Johnson's Meat Market in Sylvan Park into Miel, a much-talked-about sanctuary for gastronomic Francophiles. Phillips, whose résumé includes Midtown Café and Wild Boar, infused the cinder-block building behind Bobbie's Dairy Dip with a sultry menu of classics, including frog legs, rabbit confit and escargots, reprising the French traditions that had been largely absent from the Nashville repertoire since the closings of Julian's and Wild Boar. Meanwhile, Seema landscaped the back garden into an outdoor urban sanctuary that brings a welcome touch of luxury to the gritty Charlotte Pike corridor.

The team that launched Watermark three years ago lured chef Dean Robb from Birmingham to Miro District Food & Drink, an Italian-inspired eatery in the ground floor of the new Adelicia highrise.

Out Williamson County way, restaurant industry newcomer Andrew Siao teamed up with Grand China veteran John Chen to greenfield an indie concept among the sprawling chain-choked dining landscape of Cool Springs. Their flagship store, Wild Ginger, delivers such an inventive and attractive menu of sushi and Asian-influenced dishes, in such an integrated package of architecture, interior design and branding, that Wild Ginger could have the potential to spread like, well, wildfire.

The neighborhoods:
Nothing invigorates a sleepy district like a hot new restaurant or two, and a few mini-dining districts began to emerge in 2008. Most notably, Rutledge Hill, the forgotten rise south of Broadway, made it back onto the map. But it wasn't just thanks to well-heeled truffle-sniffers Mapquesting Andrew Chadwick's. A lot of the buzz came from the caffeinated creativity of Crema coffeehouse, where owners Rachel and Ben Lehman brew confections such as Mayan hot chocolate and café tom ka kai, as well as from the advent of a second Copper Kettle on Peabody Street.

Germantown also gathered critical mass, as word of City House, Lazzaroli Pasta Shoppe, Zackie's Original Hot Dogs, Cocoa Tree and the yellow-and-white jewel box of a coffee shop DrinkHaus began to spread beyond the brick-patterned sidewalks of the North Nashville enclave.

Riverside Village, which started gathering momentum when Castrillo's Pizza and Sip Café set up shop at the East Nashville crossroads of McGavock and Riverside, became an epicenter of eating when David Mitchell and Julia Helton launched the exquisite sandwich factory Mitchell Delicatessen and Matt Charette got the doors open to Watanabe, the sushi sister of his Batter'd &Fried and Beyond the Edge. It's a safe bet that even more people will follow their noses to Riverside Village when chocolatier Scott Witherow fires up the cocoa bean roasters at the Olive & Sinclair Chocolate Co.

The greening
Wherever you looked, the color of 2008 was green. The dining industry was no exception, as restaurants jettisoned bottled water, introduced take-out materials made of sugar cane, and made "locally grown" a watchword on their menus. Riding the green wave all the way to the national stage was Jeremy Barlow at Tayst, which became the first Nashville-based member of the Green Restaurant Association. His efforts to cook sustainably at his 21st Avenue eatery earned him airtime on CNN and the Style Network, not to mention rock-star status at the new East Nashville Farmers' Market.

Further South, newcomer Boxwood Bistro launched a sustainable concept in The Factory at Franklin, where the menu draws on locally grown produce, chickens raised on a nearby farm and Berkshire hogs that the restaurant owns.

The big events
Ever since the Scene launched its food blog, Bites, in 2007, we've heard the culinary conversation getting louder and more fervent, with readers chiming in online to talk about their favorites foods, restaurants and chefs. But no one could have predicted the 2,000-plus crowd that descended on the Scene's inaugural Iron Fork competition, at which Zola chef Deb Paquette beat out a bunch of young bucks in a culinary showdown to prepare fiddlehead ferns.