Date Night is a multipart road map for everyone who wants a nice evening out, but has no time to plan it. It’s for people who want to do more than just go to one restaurant and call it a night. It’s for overwhelmed parents who don’t get out often; for friends who visit the same three restaurants because they’re too afraid to try someplace new; and for busy folks who keep forgetting all the places they’ve driven past, heard about, seen on social and said, “Let’s remember that place next time we go out.”
When my family and I left for spring break, there were only condiments and my emergency can of Canada Dry ginger ale in the fridge. For days I’d cobbled together a mishmash of meals, using up all the leftovers — or ’tovers, as my husband Dom annoyingly calls them, forming a backwards “c” with his right hand to make an air apostrophe — so we could return to a clean slate.
The downside of the clean slate is a long grocery list: I might as well have typed “buy everything” into the Google Doc we share for such things. In our house, I make the meal plan and grocery list and Dom shops — but I like to go every once in a while to see what’s new and seasonal in the (I’m almost embarrassed to say) three grocery stores to which we hand hundreds of dollars every week. Most of the time, grocery shopping is a necessary evil. But with the right circumstances and mindset, it can be a surprisingly delightful (and productive) Date Night.
Stop 1: GreenHouse
If Green Hills were a person, it’d be the kind of person who’s had every implant and form of plastic surgery, perhaps to the point of being unrecognizable. And GreenHouse would be the quiet inner beauty known only to those willing to look beyond the surface. Tucked in beside The Food Company on Bandywood, it’s the kind of place you could pass hundreds of times and never know existed.
Marley’s Paradise, Blood Orange Mezcal-ita and bacon popcorn at GreenHouse
If you’re unfamiliar with GreenHouse, let me be clear: It’s a bar in what was, decades ago, a working greenhouse. It’s not a house that’s green or a fun play on words like when college bars are named something like The Library. It is also one of the dreamier places to have a drink in all of Nashville. There are varieties of cacti and succulents on benches and shelves, in big pots and small ones; orchids on the bar; branches jutting out from here and there, some wrapped with soft string lights; leafy vines of pothos, raspberry-colored bromeliads hanging from the ceiling in moss-covered bowls — and so much more, but that’s where my ability to identify plants ends.
At 5 p.m. on a Saturday, there was a nice flow of people, but GreenHouse hadn’t yet filled up to the point where we needed to stalk seats. This meant we had our choice of seating, from interior high-top tables to the bar to what feel like endless nooks and seating areas inside and on the front and back patios. I chose a high-top near the part of the bar where patrons order drinks and food. While Dom watched college basketball on the TV, I watched couples corralling little kids while having an early dinner (GreenHouse is all-ages until 8 p.m.); a large round table of parents and college-age kids having drinks and snacks; young women in maxi sundresses having a bridal shower or birthday party; a couple in Preds gear getting a pregame drink; and a woman at the bar with her big-eyed lap dog.
We took turns sharing sips of our Marley’s Paradise (rum, passionfruit and pineapple liqueurs) and Blood Orange Mezcal-ita (mezcal, blood orange liqueur, chile liqueur, lime juice) while making a plate piled high with bacon popcorn disappear quickly. Everyone knows you should never grocery shop on an empty stomach.
Say what you will about Green Hills — I have much to say when I’m stuck there in traffic — but it is convenient for big-box grocery shopping with Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Kroger within a few hundred feet of each other (even if you have to drive to and park at each one). Because I avoid the Whole Foods covered parking at all costs, we found a spot behind West Elm and first walked to Anthropologie to see if I needed a coir doormat in the shape of a farfalle pasta noodle, which of course I do, then whipped through Whole Foods. Despite two toothpicks of sample cheese cubes, we were hungry when we left but decided to hit Trader Joe’s before dinner since they close at 9 p.m.
Enchiladas banderas at El Palenque
Stop 2: El Palenque
Because there was still one more leg of our grocery list to finish, we needed a get-in-and-get-out Date Night dinner. No lengthy description of the chef’s specials. No craft cocktails with fussy garnishes I have to remove in order to drink my drink. No amuse bouche.
Any time I suggest meeting someone at El Palenque, they either say, “Oh, I love that place,” or, “Where is that?” It’s been in the same blink-or-you’ll-miss-it strip of businesses on Crestmoor Avenue for 36 years, next to what used to be F. Scott’s Restaurant and Jazz Bar and what is now the Bank of Tennessee. More importantly, it’s one of three places to get Mexican food in Green Hills — and the only one that’s not a chain.
Chips, salsa and two waters arrived quickly, followed by a bowl of white queso, followed by our usual order: chicken chimichanga for Dom and enchiladas banderas (three rolls covered left to right with salsa verde, queso and ranchero sauce in honor of the Mexican flag) for me. We wolfed it down while keeping one eye on a soccer game neither one of us cared about. At the host stand by the front door, I handed my credit card to the same man I’ve been handing it to for more than three decades, owner Jesus Medina, and for the millionth time Dom asked him to add a York Peppermint Patty to the total, even though he knows I detest the smell of chocolate mint. He does this to annoy me and you can’t convince me otherwise.
It was everything it needed to be.
I’m not going to pretend we had all the energy in the world to tackle our Kroger list after all that queso, but it was late enough that the store was gloriously devoid of people. This allowed us to practically sail through the aisles. Predictably, Dom said, “Do we need this?” while pointing at a bag of Froot Loops roughly the shape of a king-size bed pillow, and predictably I said we did not. I texted our teen from the ride home to help carry bags in the house, and predictably he said no — but was standing at the door when we arrived. This kind of Date Night doesn’t come with the same new-experience high that others sometimes do, but there is something low-key lovely about the rhythms of regular life.
