For the love of all that is peaceful, unified and harmonious, let the election be over already. Here at the Scene office, the crescendo of political rhetoric, with all its bloated he-said-she-said-that-one-said sniping, has infiltrated even our most mundane water-cooler conversation. Nowadays, we can hardly discuss whether High School Musical 3 is better than the original without someone calling someone else a libtard. Even the simplest discussion of where to eat lunch is now guaranteed to polarize, antagonize or disenfranchise, with accusations of culinary elitism, vegetarian discrimination and anti-chain bias flying faster than you can field-dress a moose.

With just days to go in what might be the most exhausting election cycle of our lifetime, we've decided to channel our combative energy into a debate that really matters—the question of our favorite foods. Forget about bailouts and air space, we're talking about pizza and ice cream, fish tacos and BLTs. Let the blue team and the red team battle for your hearts and minds. We want your stomachs.

We admit that—like much of the national election reporting—the Scene's Food & Drink issue is full of media bias. But at least in our showdown—unlike on the Nov. 4 presidential ballot—we believe that every contender is fit to serve.

FRIED FISH
The Contenders: Dan McGuinness Irish Pub vs. Eastside Fish

Dan McGuinness Irish Pub
1538 Demonbreun St.
The ancient philosophers will tell you that bar food is little more than McDonald's served with superior cutlery. But the ancient philosophers are morons.

Were they to be reincarnated—and lose the bedsheets and bad hairdos—I would take them to Dan McGuinness for fish-and-chips. They would weep and seek penance for their childish views. For they would be confronting the greatest fish ever cooked—at least in Nashville.

Surely Eastside Fish makes a fine slab of aquatic creature, as my colleague Mr. Ridley will attest. It is light and tasty and, most important, big. But it cannot hold a candle to the Irish pub on Demonbreun. When it comes to the most pressing aspect of culinary pursuit—volume—McGuinness rules a land of its own.

The three-piece fish-and-chips ($12) is large enough that it must be carried to your table by a team of unemployed longshoremen. (We're just making that last part up, but it would be cool if it was true.) These are fish of such magnitude they refer to Moby Dick as "little fella." I can only imagine the crew's fear when the captain informed them that stormy day on the North Atlantic, "Boys, we gotta catch the fish for Dan McGuinness today." The largest nets and harpoons were pulled from storage. Many rosaries were said. Lives were undoubtedly lost.

But it's not just volume that sets McGuinness apart. The pub cooks its fish as God intended: simple. This isn't the Mrs. Paul's variety you find at many bars, entrées breaded so thick you need an arc welder and some battle axes to reach the interior. Nor is it the effete version you'll find at yuppie joints, where microscopic pieces are doused with alien spices in a covert attempt to make you turn French.

This is lightly breaded, slightly greasy, basic fried fish, in portions large enough to provide fuel for 40 days and 40 nights. (Though there is a $9 "wee order" for indie rockers and Californians.) It could be said that if Napoleon's army stopped by Dan McGuinness before invading Russia, they would never have retreated.

It should also be noted that, unlike Eastside, McGuinness is a bar. Which means that after this feast of a lifetime, you may order a delicious dessert, which consists of a pint of Guinness ($4.75), a shot of Jameson ($6) and a tasty American tobacco product (priceless).

Tell me, Ridley: How you gonna beat that? —PETE KOTZ

Eastside Fish
2617 Gallatin Pike
Sorry, Cap'n Pete, but your trawler just met the Perfect Storm. If it's fish you're wanting—not guppies you nibble with pinkie extended, not something you watch in a dentist's office, but sail-finned, steel-tailed monsters of the deep—take a ride to the East Side, where Bo Boatright wrestles the Deadliest Catch every day between two straining slices of Colonial Bread. Let us not mince words: You don't go to Bo's to find Nemo. At Eastside Fish, a.k.a. "The Crunkest Fish in Town," Bo offers what is bar none the biggest, baddest, best fish in Nashville.

That is not to knock Dan McGuinness, whose $6 fish-and-chips special on Thursdays is a boon to cheapskate Music City landlubbers: three big honkin' hunks of battered cod run aground on a heap of fries. It's the best fake-British pub grub you'll find hereabouts, and on those days you're so desperate for a taste of Ye Olde England you'd nuke cafeteria fishsticks and cue up a Benny Hill rerun, it's a godsend.

What it isn't, though, is Nashville. No, to get a culinary sensation that lets you know you're nowhere but the Big Nasty, you need the hot fish sandwich: an indigenous behemoth of piled-high whiting or catfish planks, fried up crunchy brown with a cornmeal crust, then doused with pickle, yellow mustard and hot sauce until it cries for mama. And Eastside Fish has the champ, on any playing field you'd care to pick.

Toothpicks? Hell, you need railroad spikes to hold Bo's fish together. Serving size? The bad boys Bo serves are still laughing about the time they ate Robert Shaw. Flavor? That cornmeal breading is the taste of Sunday go-to-meetin's, of all-day fish fries at the fire hall, of whiskery old cats dancing on the end of a line. Tartar sauce is an insult. Lemon just makes it mad. True, you can't get a brew at Eastside—but beer just takes up valuable fish space in the Davy Jones' Locker of your gut.

And the price? Five bucks gets you the loaves and fishes that fed the multitudes. Eight bucks gets you a sandwich your grandkids will eat as a dowry. You can even frame the grease-stained paper sack on the wall—all the proof you'll ever need of the one that didn't get away. —JIM RIDLEY

BLT
The Contenders: Mitchell Delicatessen vs. Marché

Mitchell Delicatessen
1402 McGavock Pike
Ever since a teenage summer when I ate a BLT every day on my lunch break at the small-town diner where I washed dishes—and had a terrible crush on a certain waitress—I've had one major complaint with the sandwich: After I finish one, the roof of my mouth feels like it's been dragged over gravel, thanks to the scratchy white-bread toast that is a staple of the genre. OK, two complaints: The tomato's usually mealy. And there's often way too much mayo. I guess that makes three. And the thing always falls apart as soon as you take the toothpicks out.

In any case, what's great about the BLT served at East Nashville's Mitchell Delicatessen is that it's just better, in every way, than your average specimen. Instead of abrasive scorched Wonder Bread, you get a delicious, buttery Silke's roll, lightly toasted on one side. It's easy on the palate in more ways than one. Playing the part of "B" is not the oily, cardboardy sticks that sometimes get cast in this role, but rather extra-thick slices of Benton's bacon—salty, smoky and "it blew my mind" good. (That's a direct quote from a friend who recently tried one.) Fresh, tasty yellow tomato and crisp lettuce, along with just the right amount of mayo—what people who watch the Food Network and pretend they live in Williamsburg call "aioli"—seal the deal. (Williamsburg is so over, by the way.)

The other nice thing about the Mitchell BLT is that it's gourmet—in the sense that there's real attention being paid to the quality of the ingredients, but not in the pretentious, dusted-with-lavender-infused-desert-blooming-baby-sage-harvested-by-virgins-who-were-raised-in-a-seaside-village-by-blind-artisanal-crouton-makers way that so-called gourmet food sometimes is. It's not too fancy—unlike a certain other BLT in town that will go unmentioned but which is served at a place that could accurately be called "the hipster Cracker Barrel" and may in fact appear somewhere on this page along with the endorsement of a certain fashion-conscious Scene writer who will also go unnamed. All said, the Mitchell BLT strikes the perfect balance: It upgrades a classic sandwich. Without trying too hard. —STEVE HARUCH

Marché
1000 Main St.
Who among us still possesses the courage and moxie to eat bacon? And I'm not talking about the fake stuff—the rubbery Play-Doh of Smart Bacon, or the paper-thin scorch of turkey bacon, which, no matter how slowly you cook it, still seems burnt. I'm talking about the real stuff—a slab of thick, chewy, greasy and salty-as-hell heaven. If you order a side of it in the wrong company, you may as well admit you still eat canned bean dip.

Today's citizens of the world are apparently so health-obsessed that even our video games test our fit levels—thanks, Wii. Add to that the whole locavore organic craze, and we baconistas are left out in the nitrate-free cold. But don't call us Philistines—the BLT, for instance, was once a Victorian tearoom staple. It isn't our fault it ditched the high-society parlor for the diner lunch counter. So what's a bacon lover to do?

You're probably thinking, "Hell, I'll just head to the latest deli hotspot. A place like Mitchell Deli, where everyone keeps talking about how great the sandwiches are and how it's always packed and everybody loves it. They'll have a BLT."

I would respond: But are people wearing cool clothes at Mitchell Deli? Does it feel like you're in Los Angeles? Or Williamsburg? Does the guy who wrote "Private Eyes" hang out there? Exactly. They probably put yellow tomatoes on their BLT. I bet it's even on a hoagie. Philistines.

So if you still want to eat bacon and keep your good name and be seen by cool people, you'll want to leave the deli counter behind and find the undercover stuff. The stuff you can serve at a grown-up party. The stuff you can eat at the sort of established hotspot that feels more like a cosmopolitan café than a commoner's deli.

Enter Marché. You won't find the BLT your mama made you here—white bread, Hellman's and a few slabs of Oscar Mayer. This is the fancy stuff: sun-dried tomatoes, fat applewood-smoked bacon, Tuscan Hearth toasted bread, all finished off with a coating of aioli—that's some kind of garlic mayo. So when asked by your foodie dining companion if you're really going to eat "that bacon," you can wipe the grease from your lips and say, "Oh that? Why, it's gourmet." —TRACY MOORE

FISH TACOS
The Contenders: Baja Burrito vs. La Hacienda

Baja Burrito
722 Thompson Lane
Conventional wisdom may vary on where the fish taco originated, but regardless of which postal code in Mexico spawned the near-perfect handheld medley of sweet fish, cool vegetables and warm tortilla, it's in America now—the land of golden-dipped excess and supersized combos, a place where Baja Burrito's rendition of the classic road food reigns supreme because it's bigger and has more stuff.

Rolen, that elegantly streamlined specimen of yours is hardly strong enough to shovel salsa onto my gloriously deep-fried and sauce-slathered contender. Sure, La Hacienda provides the fresh tortillas that give Baja's fish tacos that simultaneously soft and nutty texture—but so what? It takes more than a steamed loincloth of corn to contain the magic of Baja's recipe: cool cream with a hint of peppery heat, cubes of crisp-fried sweet cod, tangles of crunchy cabbage, smoky salsa with charred freckles of tomato skin, brazen piles of chopped cilantro and onion, and a single sassy sliver of lime.

The bundle of perfectly balanced flavors, temperatures and textures needs a backup wrapper of aluminum foil. After all, this is America—why not add an extra layer of packaging? And plenty of salsa from the salsa bar. (I like the green stuff, but I hear owner Troy Smith likes the pineapple.) Either way, the salsa is bottomless and free, so get your money's worth and pile it on—if only because you can. Same with the gum. That crappy flavorless chicle tastes like a chewable eraser when you have to shell out two dimes for it, but when it's free—as it is at Baja—it's good as gold. (Please take one, the sign on the gum basket says. Yeah, right. Just like I'm only going to drive in the HOV lane when I have a passenger.)

And another thing: Baja is fast. It's fast, fast, fast. It's not fast food, per se, but the line moves so quickly, with such American-engineered assembly line efficiency, that you better be ready with your order or you'll screw it up for everyone. If anyone asks if you want a combo—three fish tacos with chips and a drink for 7 bucks—just say "Yes." It's more food than you need. Two fish tacos would be plenty, but what the hell, this is America, and these are the best fish tacos around. —CARRINGTON FOX

La Hacienda
2615 Nolensville Pike
First, I'd like to thank the Scene for hosting this great debate and giving me an opportunity to tell you why La Hacienda delivers the fish taco best suited to lead Nashvillians into the next culinary year. My opponent may tout the fried fish taco from Baja Burrito as the traditional choice with the most experience, but in this uncertain economic time, the price of health care is on everyone's mind. Affordable health care begins with healthy eating, and for the fish taco, this means change:

• Unlike Baja Burrito, which smothers its cod in carbs and dunks it in a deep-fryer, La Hacienda grills nude catfish, then carefully sets it on a double stack of homemade corn tortillas cooked fresh in the tortilleria out back.

• For those of you with environmental concerns, consider this: Baja Burrito uses the same tortillas but must transport them along Thompson Lane. This means Baja leaves a carbon footprint as well as a grease stain.

• Where Baja's fish taco is topped with cabbage—which, I admit, is more nutritious than La Hacienda's lettuce garnish—any nutritional advantage is drowned in Baja's fatty sauce. By contrast, LaHa's taco package is finished off with freshly chopped pico de gallo: a piquant powerhouse of preventative antioxidants and phytonutrients with tomatoes toting lycopene, peppers packing capsaicin and onions adding quercetin.

Now let's look at the whole package. When it comes to getting tacos from kitchen to table, Fox touts Baja's shiny aluminum wrapper. But all I see is a fish taco cloaked in landfill fodder, stuffed to the gills with fat and netted in a petroleum-based basket. La Hacienda uses reusable ceramic plates to present its fish taco open-faced, so you can actually see what you're getting. The price tag of a buck ninety-nine means you can get two for under a fin, along with all you can eat of the best chips and salsa in town. But that's another debate. —BRENT ROLEN

PIZZA
The Contenders: House of Pizza vs. Pizza Perfect

House of Pizza
15 Arcade
House of Pizza in the downtown arcade is the best New York-style pizza in Nashville. This is not an opinion, it is a statement of fact. While Pizza Perfect is good—even great on some days—it is nothing like what you will find in the New York-New Jersey pizza corridor. House of Pizza, on the other hand, comes almost "perfectly" close.

Fine, white flour dusts the bottom of each pie, adding a textural dimension to the crust that is the signature of pizza found in both the Empire and Garden States. Another note about the crust: There isn't too much of it. A New York crust doesn't protrude two inches out from the sauce line, like a sun-baked beach at low tide. Rather, a half-inch of crispy, naked dough provides plenty of handle.

As for cheese, House of Pizza nails it. A hot, thin blanket hugs the top of each pie, and the cheese isn't so overloaded that it all slides off in a greasy sheet with one bite. Some—I'm looking at you, Rob Williams—might squawk at the standard toppings offered at the House. But any real-deal NY pizza joint isn't offering pesto and sun-dried tomatoes as toppings. If I wanted that stuff, I would have ordered a salad. Or moved to Cool Springs.

Anyway, the sauce at House of Pizza offers plenty of salty tang with notes of black pepper, making any further accoutrements—especially arugula or whatever—unnecessary.

Finally, there's the location. The arcade in mid-afternoon is full of bustle—office workers tucking ties into dress shirts to avoid sauce stains, pretty career women reapplying lipstick after enjoying a slice, and high school kids in baggy clothes and backpacks on lunch break. And nothing will put you in a New York state of mind faster than Manny Macca barking orders behind the counter, hustling the line along Brooklyn-style. In short, it makes you feel as though you're in a thriving metropolis. The kind of place with real, authentic pizza. —P.J. TOBIA

Pizza Perfect
1602 21st Ave. S.
Nashville, too much is at stake in this battle for your palate and stomach. Pizza is the rare food that can be eaten at any meal and under any influence, and that's why this debate is so important. As someone who has eaten pizza for most of my life, I understand what it takes to make a great slice of pizza. I recognize those qualities in Pizza Perfect. The fundamentals of their pies are strong, beginning with thin crust, herbalicious sauce and a roster of 25 toppings.

Let's examine one particular pizza to explore the qualities that make Pizza Perfect the best choice in this competition. The namesake "Perfect" features hot-and-sweet pepperoni, spicy sausage, fresh mushrooms, sliced red onions, crisp green peppers and black olives. (In the interest of full disclosure, I don't eat black olives.) While this combination of fresh toppings is simple on its face, the explosion of flavors rises above your average pie.

My opponent lauds the NY/NJ style of pizza at House of Pizza, and to him I say, "Keep your Northeastern-elite bias." While HoP may make a good slice of pie, the Arcade dough-slingers are not there to answer the red pizza phone at 7, 8, 9, 10 or 11 p.m. The reason: House of Pizza closes at 6 p.m., while Pizza Perfect is open until midnight during the week to serve the munchie-stricken masses.

During these uncertain times, we need things we can count on. Pizza Perfect is the perfect pizza for Main Street. House of Pizza isn't even on a street—it's in the Arcade. —ROB WILLIAMS

ICE CREAM
The Contenders: Mike's Ice Cream vs. Pied Piper Creamery

Mike's Ice Cream
1402 McGavock Pike
Don't get me wrong: The folks at Pied Piper Creamery know a thing or two about making a tasty frozen treat. But the Five Points neighborhood is sooo last year. Bongo, Schmongo. 3 Crow, Schmee Schmo. Red Door East, Schmed Schmoor Schmeast. For those who wish to remain at the trendsetting forefront, who like to have a finger on the pulse of Nashville, who want to live on the cutting edge, who prefer to discover hotspots before they're "cool," who can't think of anything else to say so they wax redundant to fill their editor's assigned word count, Riverside Village is the latest frontier in the Wild Wild East.

And filling Riverside Village's insatiable need for sublimely decadent globs of sugary, saturated fat is Mike's Ice Cream. Mike Duguay already had several years' experience running a combo ice cream parlor-coffeehouse on Lower Broadway, so his move several months ago to buy Riverside's Sip Cafe and to add ice cream to the mix made perfect sense.

With the fabulous sandwiches of Mitchell Delicatessen next door, book-and-record store Inglewood Backs and Tracks just a few doors down, and a lovely outdoor patio in the rear, a Mike's Ice Cream cone can put the perfect exclamation point on a Riverside Village afternoon.

All of Mike's homemade creations are concocted in a basement just a few buildings away. Highlights include a divine pistachio, an intoxicating rum-raisin, a lip-smacking peanut butter and an oh-so-indulgent cookie dough. My hands-down faves, though, are the red velvet (which tastes almost exactly like its namesake cake), the cake batter (which ups the ante on the cookie-dough concept, taking it to its shameless, irresistible conclusion) and the to-die-for (most likely by arterial disease) raspberry cheesecake.

And does Pied Piper have its own coffee shop? No, and you have to walk all the way across the street to Bongo (at least 50 yards) and wade through the throngs of disaffected hipsters to indulge your need for joe. If your goal is indulgence, why complicate it with physical exertion, no matter how minimal? Not to mention that Mike's cohabitation with Sip Cafe (featuring some of the best coffee in town, incidentally) has led to a depraved synergy of ingredients that rivals Reese's Cups or crack cocaine—the butter-pecan milkshake with two shots of espresso, quite possibly the most diabolical caffeinated beverage ever devised. —JACK SILVERMAN

Pied Piper Creamery
114 S. 11th St.
The names of Pied Piper's flavors alone deliver a knockout punch to any ice cream challenger. Playful titles such as "Are You There God? It's Me Margarita," "Oatmeal Raisin in the Sun," "My Cherry Amour" and "I Can't Believe It's Not Butterfinger" already put the Piper's frozen treats in a class all of their own. Just look at the store names. Jenny Piper names a store for herself and comes up with a clever pun that sums up the kid-friendly spirit of the place. Mike Duguay names a store after himself, and what does he call it? Brace yourself: Mike's. Thanks, Mr. Imagination.

But Piper's East Nashville creamery boasts more than just wit, and her flavors are as delicious as their names are amusing and creative. In addition to whimsical combinations such as "Smurfberry Crunch"—Nerds candy and sherbet—Pied Piper stocks plenty of delicious standards, including chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and cookie dough.

As though this charming little place needed an extra reason to visit, Pied Piper also features a boutique with children's clothing, shower gifts, toys and novelties. Couple that retail attraction with the fact that the Piper makes custom ice cream cakes, and you've got yourself a one-stop spot for all your baby-shower needs. Not into babies? Pied Piper also has a used-book exchange, so you can peruse the titles or enjoy the atmosphere on the porch while scarfing down a sundae.

Sure, Mike Duguay provided a must-stop ice cream shop down on Broadway for the 10-gallon hat set, and he's proven to be quite a brave East Side trailblazer with his new shop in Riverside Village. But good luck finding a place to have a cocktail in the no-man's-land that is South Inglewood, where the inconvenient location of schools makes it virtually impossible to get a beer or liquor license. Located in Five Points, Pied Piper is walking distance from a handful of the coolest bars and restaurants Nashville has to offer, not to mention the vinyl-savvy music mecca that is The Groove New and Used CDs and LPs. And when the hullabaloo dies down over which burgeoning East Nashville district is the hippest, Pied Piper will remain the glistening, tasty jewel in the crown that is Five Points. —D. PATRICK RODGERS