New Jefferson Street eatery offers a healthy (for once) dose of soul food

If you're headed to this weekend's Jefferson Street Jazz and Blues festival between 26th and 28th avenues, brace yourself for some parking challenges. When the streets east of Tennessee State University fill up with festival traffic, you might find yourself circling the blocks in search of a spot, and if you're still cruising all the way near the 1100 block and it's close to mealtime, you might just consider pulling into the side lot at Jefferson's restaurant and grabbing a table on the patio for a lunch of healthy soul food.

If you travel the Jefferson Street corridor often, you might recognize Jefferson's as the metamorphosis of Aunt Clara's restaurant, which opened in 2006 with a hybrid menu of soul food and African cuisine. According to owner Wilmot Bright, that combo didn't translate to Nashville palates, so he and his family recently reshaped their restaurant into something more straightforward. They cleaned out the African art, toned down the paint colors and shifted the focus onto the history of the neighborhood.

Chef Rodney Conner, an alumnus of Allium and The Pineapple Room at Cheekwood, took over the kitchen, introducing a low-sodium repertoire that skews toward non-fried foods and has a greener hue than you might expect. Collard greens bob with bits of turkey bacon in lieu of fatback, sautéed green beans keep their vibrant color and crisp bite, and grilled Caribbean jerk wings draw their flavor from a thick herb-and-spice rub and a pineapple-juice basting instead of a deep fryer. (That said, while the wings did not lack flavor, they were a tad too pink inside for comfort.) Grilled firecracker shrimp also traded hot grease for hot pepper, smothering a half-dozen plump shrimp in a tangy vinegar-based sauce.

On one visit, Chef Rodney greeted our table with a single large bowl of red bean soup for us to sample. The unusually generous opening could have sufficed as a meal for a single person. Loaded with chicken and smoked sausage—which we confused for bits of the fried bologna we saw on the menu—the thick, spicy soup recalled a gumbo sans okra and reflected the chef's time spent working in New Orleans. On another visit, we were met with a basket of sweet, spongy corn muffins and hot water corn cakes. We never figured out why we got bread one time and not the other, but it's worth asking for those warm muffins.

Given how good the fried chicken was, Jefferson's detour away from the deep-fried staples is even more admirable. Lightly dredged in flour and fried to a perfect juicy doneness, the breast was served with a plate of mashed garlic red potatoes and a choice of sides, including mac-and-cheese, roasted red peppers, collards, Cajun rice, slaw, corn and sweet potato fries. The garlic mashed potatoes had a zesty flavor, but took a few too many revolutions in the blender, arriving at a pasty texture. Given the sugar content of red potatoes, the recipe would benefit from actual smashing in lieu of blending.

Our top choices were the green beans and spinach, both of which were gently cooked and served an enticing green. The whole leaves of baby spinach, speckled with sweet bits of minced onion and garlic and laced with olive oil, were the kind of light, flavorful treatment of fresh vegetables that we'd like to find across more menus. And while it feels a little naughty to say about a place that's taking the nutritional high road, we dug the onion rings. Big cuffs of Vidalia onion soaked in buttermilk and coated in panko, they were fried in clean canola oil, emerging light blond and with a crust that all but melted away on the tongue.

While you're backsliding, check out the Sloppy Joe, a soft grilled wheat or onion bun overflowing with richly seasoned ground beef in a pleasing tomato sauce and studded with sweet minced onions. To its credit, the manly minced meat sandwich, made with lean beef, did not ooze with grease as is so often the case.

On a more refined note, the pork tenderloin, whose diameter led us to believe it was actually a loin, arrived with a chipotle raspberry glaze, which smacked of diluted jelly but was necessary to add moisture to the dry meat.

Momma's meatloaf stood out for its juicy, beefy texture, studded with onions and green peppers but unsullied by spongy breadcrumbs. Our one objection was the overly tart, thick tomato paste-based sauce, which made our lips pucker.

Less overpowering was the sweet and tangy sauce on the slow-cooked Bangin' Ribs, which made for some good finger-lickin' after wrestling the smoky meat from the bones. The weakest link in our meals was the fried catfish, whose golden cornmeal batter gave way to soggy, bland planks of water-logged fish. We also did not love the apple cobblers as much as our server promised, because the dessert turned into a mushy bowl of cinnamon apples somewhere along the way in reheating.

But overall our experience at Jefferson's far exceeded our expectations for a restaurant serving traditional meat-and-three fare. And the variety of food available—including several salads—made it a more versatile stop than a traditional meat-and-three.