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.”
I don’t know how to play chess, and I can’t seem to learn. My son has tried, with uncharacteristic patience, to teach me, but my brain refuses to retain even the most basic information. He explains the names of the pieces and how they move — rook, knight, up and back, L-shape — and the words fall irretrievably out of my head seconds later.
There’s no room for them, of course, because I’m always plotting my next 10 moves in real life.
His Friday night chess tournament on Belmont Boulevard starts at 7 p.m., and he wants to be there 20 minutes early. I’ll start making his dinner at 5:15 so it’s ready at 5:45, so we can walk out the door at 6:25 (which in reality will be 6:32). I’ll need four minutes to go in and pay the entry fee, then five minutes to drive down to 12th Avenue South and find a parking spot, plus another five or so to walk, depending on how crowded the side streets are. This means I need to make our dinner reservation for 7 p.m. at …
Grape leaves
Stop 1: Epice
What a dreamy place to land after a two-hour hustle, with its tree-lined walkway and partially glassed-in covered patio with red metal accents. After settling into our two-top, we locked down our drinks — the Mezcalita with pepper ash and activated charcoal for my husband Dom and the Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-My Paloma for me (which is fun to read but a bit silly to say) — then played our favorite game: Who Are These People and Where Did They Come From?
Arnabeet
Visitors to our fair city coming to the 12South neighborhood from downtown would have to resist the tourist kryptonite of not one, not two, but three scene-y taco bars on the same side of the street, plus Edley’s, before getting to Epice — a Lebanese bistro on the southern end of 12th Avenue South just before Sevier Park. My guess is our fellow diners were locals mixed with recent transplants — people who want to sit and share, not see and be seen. Whoever they are, everyone looks relaxed and happy.
“I feel trampled by the week,” I told Dom. “These people do not look trampled. Do we look trampled?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes we do.”
Lahm
No matter. Everyone looks a little lovelier against Epice’s simultaneously stark and warm backdrop of stacked stone, marble and concrete elements. The place has zero decor, save a few easy-to-miss plates piled high with spices atop the kitchen cabinets, as if the design plan was to let the patrons and plates add the color — like the hot-pink beet tahini drizzle on the arnabeet (aka fried cauliflower) and the deep green of Epice’s freshly made grape leaves, which made me sad for all the times I’ve settled for bloated premade versions that have languished in olive oil and lemon for months. Hummus always feels like a must-have — the calling card of any Mediterranean or Middle Eastern restaurant — but Epice’s serving size is slight for $10, and vegetables are a $2 upcharge. After a few medium-size swipes of pita, it was gone.
Sayadeya
We forgot to order a salad to share, which was fine because we each unexpectedly received a side plate-size version with our entrees. This is not an obligatory salad. It’s a mix of greens with cherry tomatoes, red cabbage slices and radishes and a lemon vinaigrette dressing that, on first bite, makes you raise your eyebrows and wonder what on earth could make it taste so good. Don’t bother guessing: It’s pomegranate molasses, and it is the absolute shit. As was our server, Taylor, who was refreshingly decisive when helping us choose between two entrees. She steered Dom to the lahm, or lamb meatballs with tomato ragout, rice, olives and pine nuts; she pointed me to the sayadeya, which, despite its ho-hum description (aromatic grilled fish, vermicelli rice, grilled vegetables), is topped with an herb tahini that makes every bite 1,000 times more interesting. I could not stop eating it, and was sad when it was over. I’ve never said that about a fish dish in my life.
Grape leaves
It pained me to pass on dessert — the pot de crème, olive oil cake and baklava, which my Syrian jiddu (grandfather) pronounced ba-CLOW-wa. By the time we visited the bathrooms in the back, got a quick update after our son’s first chess match of the night and walked back past our table, two people were settling in, looking decidedly untrampled.
Stop 2: Fryce Cream
Our next stop was directly across the street from Epice, but we walked a few blocks up 12th Avenue just to move our bodies a bit, window-shop the luxury retail and play our other favorite game: Who Can Afford to Shop Here and What Exactly Are They Buying?
During the day, the answer is designer luggage, pink clothing and high-end sportswear. At night, it’s fries and ice cream, or Fryce Cream.
Fryce Cream
Dom wanted to order at the walk-up window, because how often do you get to do that? But I went inside because that’s how you fully immerse yourself in the holy aroma of fried. You can just get french fries, or you can just get the soft serve, but if you like a little sweet with your salty — or if you’re the type who dips your fries in your cream — the namesake combo is the way to go. That’s the first of many fun decisions.
Soft-serve flavors include vanilla, chocolate, swirl, vegan and seasonal (peach on the night of our visit), plus a list of toppings. For the fries, you pick a dust and a dip. I went with vanilla soft serve topped with crispy crumble crunch and fries with malt vinegar dust and green goddess dip. Dom got the chocolate with Butterfinger topping, plus Nash Hot fries and pickle dip. We sat outside at the bar seats that look across the street at Epice and watched the neighborhood pups and their people walk by.
Because of its branding — a surfer-guy French fry with a rad soft-serve hairdo — and the name, Fryce Cream Nashville, I assumed Fryce Cream was a chain, and I’m happy I was wrong. It’s the latest and greatest from local chef Jeremy Barlow, who’s played his own game of culinary chess in Nashville since he opened Tayst, Nashville’s first certified green restaurant, in the early 2000s — when chef-owned spots were just becoming a thing. Barlow’s done everything from fine dining and sandwich shops to pop-ups, making aggressive moves when the market felt right, and retreating and rethinking when things changed. This is joyful, hot summer night food for those of us who want to feel like a kid and eat like a grownup.
