Like hundreds, nay thousands, of Nashvillians before us, my husband and I spent our wedding night at The Hermitage Hotel. I admit, it was my idea—I’m a sucker for tradition.

By the time we arrived at the Hermitage, however, it was well after midnight. We almost had to awaken the desultory night clerk to check us in. There we stood in our wedding finery—tired, cranky and hungry, tapping our toes while the clerk performed his task with sluglike speed. Finally, we took our overnight bags and boarded the elevator for the fifth floor.

The room wasn’t quite as grand as I expected it to be. A bottle of cheap (complimentary) champagne bobbed about in a cardboard bucket filled with melted ice. A droopy, long-stemmed rose lay on the tray. Miraculously, room service, although minimal, was still available. I’ll never forget the bowl of chocolate ice cream Steve requested, since, as he scooped up his final spoonful, he discovered a chunk of broken glass.

Over the next several years, on the infrequent occasions when I visted the Hermitage, it seemed to be getting shabbier and shabbier. Its gradual decline hit rock bottom when protective fencing had to be installed to protect passersby from crumbling plaster. It was a sad sight.

But that was then; this is now. I can happily report that The Hermitage has entered a new era. A $4 million renovation by new owners, The Cooper Companies of Memphis, has given the grand old dame of Nashville hotels a veritable face lift, and dahlings, she looks faboo. The best news for anybody who puts stock in professional service is the fact that hotelier Richard Markham is sitting behind the general manager’s desk.

There is no mistaking the high gloss of the hotel’s redesigned, redecorated main dining room, now known as the Capitol Grille. This sparkling new restaurant may well be the jewel in The Hermitage’s re-glittered crown.

During our dinner visit to Capitol Grille, our party gathered in the cozy bar adjacent to the dining room. From the bar, we peeked into the elegant restaurant, thickly carpeted in a tiny red-and-black check print. Upholstered chairs circle the round tables spaced throughout the room, with its high, arched ceiling. Banquettes line some of the walls and room dividers. The pillows, covered in a nubby fabric, are really too fat to fit comfortably behind one’s back, but they make nifty dividers between you and the diner next door.

Young chef Guillermo Thomas—fondly referred to as “Willie” by the staff—comes to us from Cape Cod, although he has also spent some time in Vail, Colo. His menu, which he worked on for seven months, suggests a multi-cultural frame of reference and a particular affinity for unusual combinations. You will need plenty of time to peruse the choices, but you won’t mind at all once the bread basket has arrived. Still steaming when it reached us, it offered several varieties of breads and rolls, including a delicately herbed focaccia and what we guessed to be crisp Indian pappadam. The breads are accompanied by small dishes of spicy split peas, mashed with olive oil.

You might, as one of our party did, choose the Winemaker’s Dinner, which includes an appetizer, a salad, an entrée and a dessert, accompanied by appropriate wines for each course. Courses change weekly.

Otherwise, you can select a soup—the thick cream soup of roasted onions gets high marks—a salad and/or an appetizer. Three of the four salads were fantastic and of such huge proportions any of them could easily have passed for dinner. We particularly liked the mesclun greens with fried green tomatoes, feta and wild boar bacon—sort of a BLT and cheese without the bread—and the sliced peppered pears with greens, spicy pecans and gorgonzola in a sun-dried cranberry vinaigrette. A cacophony of flavors that rattled most delightfully on the tongue.

From the appetizer selection, the portobello mushroom Napoleon with spinach, grilled onions, pancetta and goat cheese in a veal jus turned out to be a hearty treat. The tower of smoked salmon, potato pancake, watercress salad and crispy red onions was delightful to the eye and divine to the taste. I ate every single bite of my panfried softshell crawfish, served on a medallion of eggplant surrounded by a handful of sweet honey-roasted nuts in a pool of light lemon-butter sauce. We loved the smoked-corn salsa and roasted hazelnuts in lime-butter sauce that accompanied the crabcakes, less so the crabcakes themselves, which were just too fishy.

Eleven entrées are offered, including three fish choices, two steaks, a pork chop, a couple of pastas, chicken and even duck. We tried six—including the quail on the Winemaker’s Dinner menu—and that’s where things just went to hell in a handbasket.

The problem was not in the kitchen, mind you, and it had nothing to do with our excellent server. (I applaud the Capitol Grille for hiring women as servers, which is not the usual practice in some upscale restaurants. If the idea makes you nervous, rest assured that they wear slacks and neckties.) No, the confusion was our own fault. Normally, on our dining excursions, everyone in our party passes his plate so that all of us—and especially me—can sample everything. Well, once the dinner plates landed, this civilized bunch stood guard like a pack of pit bulls. It was all I could do to wrestle a teensy bite of steak (very tasty) and quail (ditto). Laura Lee was much more generous with her grilled duck breast, and May sent over a big forkful of her Vegetarian Purse stuffed with wild mushrooms, leeks, asparagus, barley, wheatberries and tofu—what more could a veggie ask for?

But I didn’t get a bit of the grilled salmon with black-eyed peas, leeks, tomatoes, orzo and potato strands in warm shiitake mushroom vinaigrette. Not a morsel of the sautéed red snapper with garlic mashed potatoes, fresh spinach and crispy onion rings in a red wine butter sauce.

Since everyone else ordered the exotica, I was left with the grilled chicken breast, although this one, served with a slab of great crispy corn polenta, was a substantial dish, especially with the addition of a stout wild mushroom ragout.

We sampled several desserts, each one more impressive than the next, even though the much-touted bread pudding scored the lowest on our satisfaction scale.

I returned for lunch a few days later because I had been told that the Capitol Grille has emerged as THE place for the power crowd to dine midday. The lunch menu offers plenty to sink your teeth into, including a half-pound burger of certified Angus ground beef, smoked chicken and black bean quesadillas, wood-grilled pizza, a peppered sliced Angus steak sandwich, a sourdough club, the red snapper from the dinner menu, and several pastas. The applewood smoked pork sandwich with melted pepper jack cheese was tasty. I know I would have to enter a 12-step program to give up the divinely addictive sweet potato fries, so after two or three I had to push the plate away.

Capitol Grille lunch has become so popular amongst the downtown business crowd that reservations are recommended. Dinner wasn’t quite so busy on the Wednesday night we visited, but I’d bet that once TPAC’s fall season gets under way and the legislators and lobbyists are back in town, the Grille will soon be putting up a no vacancy sign.

Two or maybe three generations ago, hotel dining rooms—among them The Hermitage—were the most reliable places to go for superb food, white-glove service and a memorable occasion. It is comforting that in its most successful renovation, the Hermitage has revived that standard.