The first issue of the Nashville Scene carried a review of The Broadway Dinner Train by Mike Pigott. With few exceptions, a restaurant review has run weekly in the Scene ever since. That’s a good thing, because as I have found ever since I started writing this column in 1993, people love to read about food. But being a food critic isn’t always easy; Nashville isn’t exactly on the cutting edge of national culinary trends. And new restaurants—the ones people want to read about anyway—lag far behind other signs of progress in Nashville, such as new Walgreen drugstores or another nudie showgirl club.

Still, it would be grossly unfair to say that the local restaurant scene has been stagnant in the last decade. Ten years of weekly columns would indicate that something had to be going on, even if it wasn’t at a clip as fast as some of us would like. It’s rather like watching your children grow or watching a parent age: If you see it every day, you are hardly aware of the difference a year or two or five can make. But look at a snapshot taken 10 years ago, and you’ll be amazed at the difference.

A decade ago, Nashville’s restaurant scene could be easily defined by a very narrow range of choices: There were fine-dining restaurants, among them Mario’s and Arthur’s, that carried a hefty price tag few could afford. There were old-Nashville places like Sperry’s and Jimmy Kelly’s, which might as well have posted “For Members Only” signs on their front doors. There were fern bars—TGI Friday’s, Ruby Tuesday’s, etc.—that introduced chicken fingers, cheese sticks, and spinach dip to the masses. There were meat-and-threes, there was fast food, and there was Shoney’s.

And then there was Faison’s, which opened in 1981 and offered an alternative to the four-stars and fern bars: creative, gourmet food, with good wines and moderate prices. In 1989, Faison’s popularity was matched only by 12th & Porter, which had started serving dinner in 1987.

Another early alternative for adventurous eaters was Third Coast restaurant, located where Bound’ry is now, and the breeding ground for such big names in Nashville’s restaurant biz as Randy Rayburn and Deb Paquette. By 1987, Paquette was installed at the brand-new Cakewalk restaurant, owned by Rick and Vicki Bolsam. Randy Rayburn was at F. Scott’s in Green Hills; he hired Anita Hartell, another culinary maverick who made several notable kitchen stops through the ’90s.

From the inside, things were looking up, but in 1989, the restaurant scene in Nashville was defined as much—if not more—by what there wasn’t as by what there was. There were no coffee shops, there were no artisan bread stores, and there were very few dining choices in fringe neighborhoods. There was a near complete lack of ethnic dining diversity—no Indian, Vietnamese, Middle Eastern, or African restaurants. There was only one restaurant devoted to sushi, a couple of awful Tex-Mex chains, and two Thai offerings.

Looking back at the past decade, some highlights and milestones come to mind. In 1989, Mad Platter opened in Germantown, a section of town that most West Nashvillians had never heard of, much less visited. Like Faison’s before it, the Mad Platter renovated an older, existing space and was owned by the chef, Craig Jervis, along with his wife Marcia. It’s hard to believe that Sunset Grill, a fixture on the Nashville dining scene, has been open less than 10 years, but thanks to Randy Rayburn, it was in 1990 that Nashville was introduced to the concept of late-night dining, California cuisine, and excellent wines by the glass.

Bread & Company was opened in 1992 by Anne Clay, Kelly Price, and Terri Carr-Hall. It offered Nashville’s first real brush with freshly baked sourdough and posed the question, “Would you like that sliced?” In 1996, after spending several weeks immersed in the epicenter of bread-making in France, Carr-Hall and partner Brent Polk opened Provence in Hillsboro Village, helping move along the revitalization of that Vandy-area neighborhood.

On Belmont Boulevard, another neighborhood then jumping on the bandwagon of rejuvenation, Bob Bernstein opened Bongo Java coffeehouse in 1993, and hundreds of Nashvillians learned to say “latté” with authority.

Cakewalk’s Rick and Vicki Bolsam opened Tin Angel in 1993, with the vision of providing contemporary comfort food in a neighborhood bistro setting. Then there was a flurry of activity in late 1994 and early 1995: Deb Paquette left Cakewalk after seven years and opened the kitchen at Bound’ry for Jay Pennington and Dan Goosetree. Jody Faison expanded his empire with Cafe 123 and Jules in Cummins Station (now Jody’s). The historic Hermitage Hotel was renovated and reopened with the gorgeous Capitol Grille. Sole Mio offered a taste of Italy at affordable prices and with a gleaming view of the burgeoning Nashville skyline.

In 1996, Noshville opened, and Jews and goyim alike celebrated the arrival of a real New York deli. The following year, Carlo and Marie Giordano opened Taste of Italy, offering imported meats and cheeses and panini sandwiches in their little market on White Bridge Road. 1997 ended with the opening of Nashville’s newest buzz place—The Trace. Slightly less ostentatious, but just as noteworthy, were the opening of Louis Fonseca’s Basante’s and the transformation of Cakewalk into Zola, heralding the return of chef Paquette, who co-owns the restaurant with husband Ernie and the Bolsams.

The end of 1998 saw the city’s food offerings expanding in several ways. With the opening of Sasso, which reunited chefs Anita Hartell and Corey Griffith, East Nashvillians no longer had to cross the Cumberland to find a pleasurable dining experience. Yet the most compelling development on Nashville’s culinary horizon has to be the growth of ethnic eateries, spurred by the tremendous growth of Nashville’s ethnic population. Not only are sushi, Thai, and Indian restaurants nearly as plentiful as meat-and-threes, but eaters can now choose between four Vietnamese restaurants, a load of Mexican and Central American taquerias, a full range of Middle Eastern and Asian offerings, and at least two African restaurants—the Somali Salama Market and the Ethiopian Addis Ababa.

Rereading six years of food columns brought back plenty of memories—wonderful meals, horrid meals, delightful discoveries, exquisite indulgences, quirky holes-in-the-wall, lost causes, and passionate chefs. With nearly every review, I could remember exactly who I brought along to share the pleasure or the pain. Each of them made even the most awful food experience a delightful social one, which is what enjoying food is all about—breaking bread around a table with good friends.

In closing, I have to repeat one admonition: I can hardly believe we are still lacking what seems the simplest of all restaurant concepts—a French bistro. But I have high hopes for the next 10 years, and, more importantly, a nearly insatiable appetite.