Date Night: Marsh House, Nashville Sundae Club and JMAS Breakfast Burritos

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.”

“We should go to dinner somewhere nice.” 

That was my husband Dom’s response when I told him our teenager was invited to spend a recent Friday night at a friend’s house. One of the many unspoken rules of parenting is that, if your children aren’t home, you should leave the house. It’s an affront to all other parents making their millionth box of mac-and-cheese to squander your precious hall pass sitting on the couch in your saggy-ass sweats, burning your tongue on pizza rolls. There should be reservations involved — hand holding and conversations that focus on connection, not whose car is more in need of new tires. 

While I agree with this theory in general, should-ing always puts me in an awkward spot between the woman I am and the woman I feel pressure to be: We should go somewhere nice. We should dress up a little. We should go to the Gulch because I write about food and can’t avoid a restaurant-packed part of town, even though every time I venture in, I swear I’m never going back. 

Stop 1: Marsh House

We arrived at Marsh House in the Thompson Hotel at 6:56 p.m., four minutes before happy hour ended. Without saying anything, two hostesses communicated about whether the happy hour menu should go with us to the table and decided against it. Shortly after we were seated, a server arrived and said, “You only have a couple minutes left to order off the happy hour menu. Want to take a quick look?” Yes, I most certainly do. There was something called “Happiest Chambong” on the menu. Could that really be a bong full of sparkling wine? Yes. We bypassed that and got a dozen raw oysters along with the barbecue Gulf shrimp and crab ravigote from the main menu. If this sounds like Louisiana to you, it’s because the Thompson partnered with notable New Orleans chef John Besh on its food and beverage back in 2017 when it was the second hotel to open in the Gulch. 

Sometimes barbecue shrimp just means shrimp lacquered with barbecue sauce; this wasn’t one of those times. The Marsh House version comes in a smoky, spicy sauce that I wanted to sop up with the accompanying baguette, but it was coated with some sort of herb spread that we both found oddly off-putting. The crab ravigote, a mix of raw lump crab with lemon and chives, sounded light and lovely but lacked any discernible flavor. How disorienting to eat something and not taste anything at all. 

Strangely, the Caesar — which our server kindly had the kitchen split into two plates without us asking — was the sleeper hit of starters, with cornbread crumbles, toasted pepitas and grilled red onion that I spent half the salad swearing was bacon bits.    

In terms of ambience, Marsh House feels forgettable in the way most hotel restaurants do, so the wall-to-wall windows and large patio would normally be a good way to make it feel more alive … except that an amateur strip show on wheels rolls by every 30 seconds. I realize party buses/barges/tractors are unavoidable when you’re out and about in the Gulch, but Marsh House’s windows bring it right to the edge of the table. 

When my Lobster Fra Diavolo arrived and I took that first bite, I wanted to exist in a bubble of pleasure for a few seconds, with all my senses fully focused on how well the ridges of the spinach creste de gallo (rooster’s crest) noodles stood up to the big chunks of butter-poached lobster: its barely restrained heat; the way the Sicilian bread crumbs melted on my tongue. That was hard to do with a flatbed of butts bouncing in my periphery. 

Now listen. I am not aghast or offended. I bared my boobs a time or 12 at many a Mardi Gras back in the day for anyone with a shiny string of beads (including Drew Carey one time, randomly). But the hey-don’t-you-want-to-see-my-hoo-ha experience cheapens the we’re-adults-trying-to-enjoy-an-expensive-upscale-dinner experience, and I can’t pretend otherwise. 

Stop 2: Nashville Sundae Club

Most of the boutiques along the two-minute walk between Marsh House and our second stop close at dusk, which is fine — I don’t need a custom-fitted cowboy hat. But it was fun to window shop and daydream our way to the drippy white, blue, hot-pink and yellow stripes painted across the front of Nashville Sundae Club. 

NSC is branded for the inner children of affluent adults. Far from the Baskin-Robbins of my youth, where you could perform brain surgery beside a frosty bin of rainbow sherbet, NSC’s lighting is low, neon signs abound, and pop music makes it feel like a party where everyone just happens to be eating ice cream or drinking alcohol or both. 

It’s a house of sugary vices where excess is encouraged. Don’t have just a scoop of ice cream — have a triple and add cereal! Don’t just order soft serve — make it a blue-raspberry-dipped cake cone! You could have a regular old milkshake — but you could also have one with locally made whiskey, caramel-pecan coffee, vanilla soft serve and some caramel popcorn on top. Not into that? Have a cookie, ice cream sandwich, selection from the rack of candy, cocktail, frozen drink, High Noon or one of the namesake sundaes. 

I was excited to try the cinnamon roll sundae, which includes ice cream, caramel sauce and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but they were out the night of our visit. So I went with the classic brownie sundae, but the star of the show erred on the side of airy and spongy instead of rich and dense. I kept eating it, thinking it would eventually get better, but it never did, just as I keep returning to the Gulch thinking it’ll eventually feel like a place I want to be, and it never does.  

Stop 3: JMAS Breakfast Burritos (the morning after)

The next morning we had just enough time for a quick breakfast before going to get the teen. Neither of us wanted to sit and be served again, or have one of those heavy, gravy-laden meals that ends the day just as it’s getting started. Breakfast burritos squeeze nicely into the space in between. 

JMAS Breakfast Burritos is a food truck on the gravel drive behind Tabla Rasa Toys at the corner of Porter Road and Greenwood Avenue in East Nashville. Dom ordered the B3 (bacon, eggs, cheddar, tots), and I settled on the Gnome (egg, cheddar, tots). We found an empty umbrella-covered outdoor table and sat in glorious silence until they called my name six minutes later.  

Unlike other burritos, in which you can distinguish one ingredient from the other, JMAS’ version is all mixed together. I’m not mad about it. I like my potatoes spread out evenly, not in big chunks, and a strategically placed dot of Hot Sauce Nashville’s hot garlic sauce kept every bite interesting. I could’ve sat there all day, watching wildflowers along the sidewalk sway in the late-summer morning breeze. But before long it was time to ball up our burrito wrappers and return to real life.