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.”
In my house, May is a military obstacle course of a month. We’re scaling the wall of exams, crawling under wires to end-of-school-year events and walking the tightrope of working while also being on a baseball field at 4:30 p.m. — with extra water in case it’s 100 degrees and an umbrella in case it rains. Or there’s hail. Or both.
The very thought of making reservations, dressing up and going out to a dinner during which I need to keep my elbows off the table reminds me of how I felt when my dad took 10-year-old Danny to Home Depot and spent a half-hour talking to a guy in an apron about nails — just completely drained of the will to live. But I also don’t want to cook. Or spend another weekend night eating frozen pizza and listening to my husband Dom tell professional baseball players on our television how to do their job. So I found a way for us to go out without being out-out, if you know what I mean.
Otto’s Bar
Stop 1: Otto’s Bar
Is the name Otto’s a homophonic nod to the Charlotte Avenue building’s previous incarnation as an auto garage? I sure hope so. (I could hunt down the owners and ask, but if they say no, I’ll be so disappointed.)
The pinkish-purple neon sign facing Charlotte gives dive-bar vibes, but that’s only half the story. It’s certainly dive-bar dark when you walk in — the white circular windows that dot the length of the building are opaque and more of a design detail than light source. There are a few strings of strand lights and some votives so you can see the velvet Elvis painting, vintage signs, photo booth and whoever you’re with. On the bright side, there’s a lovely covered patio area, walled off with wooden slats, and a mix of seating options including repurposed oil drums as high-top tables and a view of the (free!) back parking lot and I-40 beyond a tree line. On our visit, the patio also offered both standing patio heaters and cooling fans, because Nashville weather has a hard time making up its mind this time of year.
We bellied up to a coral-colored picnic table a few feet from a college graduation gathering and dipped salty tortilla chips into creamy guac, sharing sips of my frothy, fruity Painkiller (rum, pineapple, orange, coconut, bitter orange and nutmeg) and Dom’s 24 Carrot Magic (mezcal, carrot, cinnamon and lime), in which the carrot was more subtle in taste than color. The Painkiller came with two cherries, and Dom was so off his game he didn’t even remember to tie the stems in a knot with his tongue.
Hometeam Pizza
Stop 2: Hometeam Pizza
“I’ve never been inside this building before.”
This is what Dom said as we walked to the door of Citizen Kitchens — a food-business incubator a half-mile from Otto’s near 46th and Charlotte — to pick up our Hometeam Pizza order.
I’m sorry, what?
Every time we order, which is at least once a month, Dom texts from the car and has Hometeam bring it out. When I pick it up, I park and go in because it feels like I’m inside someone’s dream. I stand in the square of space Hometeam shares with other small food businesses and can smell the pizza sauce, see the balls of dough and watch the staff push pies into the oven. It feels like I’m connected to the process, not just a blind consumer of the product.
If I hadn’t gone in, I wouldn’t have chatted up Kevin Jackson, who was a West End Middle math teacher and coach until mid-COVID, when he decided to teach himself how to make pizza with his wife Samantha. I also wouldn’t have heard the story of them selling so many pizzas to friends and neighbors out of their house in the Nations that they needed a commercial kitchen to be street legal. Or how their goal is to learn and grow and get the basics down so they can create a space where people can hang out and eat pizza. Once I knew the people behind the pizza, they became my go-to for to-go.
Hometeam Pizza
The Jacksons’ dream is becoming a reality: As of this writing, Hometeam has a Kickstarter campaign and a Wefunder campaign to raise money for a brick-and-mortar restaurant in the Belmont area. You could line up every famous chef in the world and have them tell me they’re each putting a restaurant in Nashville, and I wouldn’t be as excited as I am for the Jacksons to fly the Citizen Kitchens nest and open their own Hometeam.
We walked out shortly after we walked in with a stack of boxes containing our Sweet Heat (pepperoni, jalapeño, pineapple, Mike’s Hot Honey); Ultimate Pepperoni; and a create-your-own with red onion and mushrooms; plus Breadstick Bites, which my family calls Dom Bites because Dom suggested them in response to a Hometeam social media post asking for new menu ideas; a few sides of homemade ranch dressing so thick it’s practically a dip; and a dog treat in the shape of a pizza slice, made by another locally owned company, Good Boy Biscuit Co. We discussed finding a bench in Richland Park or McCabe Park to share a few slices, then decided we’d be much more comfortable in a coffee shop/brewery that used to be a church. And where could we find one of those? Another half-mile away.
Living Waters Brewing
Stop 3: Living Waters Brewing — The Garden
This coffee shop and brewery combo, a West Side outpost of Living Waters’ original East Trinity Lane location, opened recently next to Brightside Bakery in the Nations. Living Waters did a phenomenal job of filling the former sanctuary with plants — hence this location’s name, The Garden. The Living Waters folks are buddies with Bad Luck Burger Club, who park their food truck outside when they’re able and will open a kitchen inside this location soon. For now, Living Waters allows outside food when BLBC isn’t on site as long as it’s from a commercial kitchen. As a thank-you, we opened our pizza boxes for the lone barista-bartender on duty and she snagged a slice of Sweet Heat.
We chose a corner table, Dom set his phone up at the far edge of an open pizza box, and we watched baseball, drank Living Waters’ Bier (Kolsch) and Reynard (French pilsner) and ate our ’za the right way — with our elbows on the table.
