Red Restaurant

1517 Church St. 329-2912

Dinner: 5-10 p.m. Mon.-Thurs.; 5-11 p.m. Fri.-Sat. Brunch: 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sun.

Price range: $$-$$$

It was 23 years ago this month that I moved to Nashville from New York City. Joe Galante and Randy Goodman, the hard-charging dynamic duo of Music Row, had targeted me as the person to assume the role of publicity director for RCA Records Nashville. I was a little hesitant about giving up my fabulous Sex and the City lifestyle for Biscuits in the Bible Belt, so they flew me down for a look-see in early July of 1981. I taxied into town, checked into the Spence Manor—then a luxurious all-suite hotel on Music Row with a guitar-shaped swimming pool—and was taken to schmoozy lunch at Maude's, then to the Bluebird Cafe for a show.

What I didn't know at the time was that the biggest challenge facing Galante was where to take me for dinner. A New York native himself, he was painfully aware of the culinary shortcomings of local restaurants. His solution was brilliant: The World's End, Nashville's hippest, most sophisticated and comparatively high-profile gay bar/restaurant. It offered a menu that was creative and contemporary, decent wine, an energetic vibe and a sexually and racially diverse clientele. How was I to know that World's End was the only such place in Nashville at the time? Next thing I knew, I was packing up my apartment, buying a car for the first time in my life and settling in on Belmont Boulevard.

Though the job didn't quite work out, the World's End became one of my favorite hangs for the first few years I lived here. (In fact, it is where, on a cold November night in 1984, I met the man who would become my husband; that didn't exactly work out either, with the notable exception of our two remarkable children.) One of my other favorite restaurants in the dark ages of the Nashville dining industry was B. Palola, owned by the pioneering Barbara Palola and located in a renovated Victorian home on Hayes Street (now occupied by DaVinci's Pizza). Like World's End, B. Palola also had a creative, contemporary menu and was very popular among Nashville's gay community.

How times have changed. The Nashville restaurant industry has undergone a monumental transformation in the last decade, thanks to the emergence of exciting new chefs, independent neighborhood restaurants and the surging ethnic population. Restaurants like World's End and B. Palola are no longer rarities; ironically, both of these visionary establishments are gone.

Though World's End was well-known to the gay community, it didn't exactly broadcast itself to the straight world. By contrast, Tribe began a loud and proud mainstream advertising campaign several months before it opened in the summer of 2002, announcing in no uncertain terms that this club—while not exclusively gay—would appeal to the tastes and interests of a hip, professional, well-heeled, high-profile clientele that also happened to be gay and lesbian. As Bill Ditenhafer wrote in a thoughtful piece for the Scene, "Tribe may well be Nashville's first mainstream gay club." By choosing a prime, and prominent, piece of real estate on Church Street, Tribe's owners made it clear that they were respectful of and thankful to the gay clubs that had paved the way, but they were different. As co-owner David Taylor said, "We thought there was room for a place that catered to an earlier crowd. Lord, I'm nearly 40 years old—I don't like to start my night at midnight."

To attract an earlier crowd, Taylor and co-owner Keith Blaydes offered a restaurant separate from, but still within, the club. I had high hopes for Tribe's restaurant, but sadly those hopes were quashed on my very first—and, until recently, only—visit. Though the club was indeed sleek and modern, the minimalist theme was taken to an extreme in the dining room, which resembled more an employee cafeteria than a restaurant. The general consensus among the stylish group I took was, "eeeew."

The menu, while it had a few interesting appetizers, also had some real oddities, like an American cheese sandwich with fried egg on white bread. Service was horrendous on every front. Thankfully, one of my dining companions knew the Heimlich maneuver, which saved me from an incredibly tough piece of beef that turned out to be one of the few things ever in my life I have not been able to swallow. While the dramatic incident was not technically the kitchen's fault, it did make me hesitant to return, and subsequent reports of disappointing meals kept me away.

Until recently, that is, when I heard that Tribe's proprietors had finally turned their eye to the restaurant, and that a familiar name had taken over the kitchen. About four years ago, Gene Kote and his wife Dawn opened a lovely little neighborhood place on Belmont Boulevard near Bongo Java. Unfortunately, due in large part to an irresolvable dispute with their landlord, Kote's was short-lived, and Chef Kote disappeared into the corporate dining world. Thankfully—for both parties, as it turns out—Tribe retrieved him and installed him as executive chef of Red, the club's recently rechristened restaurant.

Now much warmer and more welcoming since its redo—thanks to swaths of red fabric, a paint job, mirrors and art—Red also got a new menu with Kote's arrival. One side is dubbed Fun Fare—with bar appetizers like sesame chicken fingers, a fried shrimp roll, sandwiches and some pastas—that can be ordered and eaten at the bar next door.

The flip side is titled Fine Fare, and it is from here that my group largely chose their dinner; most of our choices were very successful. I was so very happy to see that Kote brought along my absolutely favorite thing from his Belmont Boulevard restaurant: the lightly fried asparagus appetizer. Spears of fresh asparagus are dredged in buttermilk, rolled in cornmeal, flash-fried, arranged grid-like on a plate and served with horseradish sauce. Other winners among the starters are the teriyaki tuna skewers served with a crispy rice cake and ponzu sauce, and the wedge of polenta—nicely crisped exterior encasing a creamy interior—with a tangy bleu cheese and tomato cream sauce. The crab cakes were flat and listless, but maybe they were just having a bad night. The bruschetta had a nice flavor—rosemary bread with pesto—but was just too much bread, even for a carb-lover like me.

Entrées come with a house salad or cup of soup—a generous gesture, particularly given the reasonable prices ($10.95 to $19.95)—but the corn chowder was thick enough to stand a spoon in. Nice as a light meal with a salad, but heavy with a meal; I'd recommend the simple but very fresh salad.

Two vegetarian dishes and a low-carb mixed grill are thoughtfully included among the eight entrées. Stuffed with cheddar and provolone, the breaded and sautéed eggplant marinara sounded best, but we opted for fowl, fish and beef. Chef Kote woke up the ubiquitous, ho-hum boneless chicken breast by stuffing it with smoked gouda and sun-dried tomatoes, then drizzling it with garlic cream; the roasted potatoes on the side were wonderfully seasoned. The sautéed grouper also pleased; the taste-texture elements of moist, flaky white fish, crunchy crushed-almond crust and spicy pineapple and mango salsa were beautifully balanced.

But the clear winners were the beef dishes, which, after my last experience here, I am pleased to say were very tender. The pan-roasted rib eye and petite filet were of good quality, perfectly cooked, robustly flavorful and wisely sauced and sided. The former was seasoned with a spicy rub, topped with caramelized onions and served on stewed vegetables and roasted potatoes; the latter was topped with hoisin butter and laid atop a mound of wasabi mashed potatoes and sesame spinach. The tenderloin sandwich from the Fun Fare menu was excellent, thick slices piled on a grilled hoagie roll slathered with the fab horseradish sauce and buried under a layer of melted Swiss, sautéed mushrooms and onions. The seasoned fries are the perfect thing to order at the bar once Titans Sundays get under way.

After dining, the cozy area that straddles the space between the restauant and the club might beckon you to sit for a spell on one of the comfortable sofas and chairs arranged for conversation, casual flirtation or more intimate téte-a-tétes. The bar and multileveled lounge are always fun and lively, and the throbbing music on the club's superb—and loud—sound system makes a strong case for the dance floor. Tribe offers its diverse clientele plenty of good reasons to come back, and the transformation of Red into a real restaurant has added another.