Tacos y Mariscos Lindo Mexico
When you’re driving north on Gallatin Pike, it’s easy to think you’re wheeling ever further from the trendy restaurants and award-winning eateries of downtown and East Nashville into a culinary dead zone of fast-food spots and chains.
But look beyond the Golden Arches: Madison is establishing itself as a destination for great local eats. Drive up to Tacos y Mariscos Lindo Mexico and pick up the pollo asado al carbon (a favorite of Scene editor-in-chief D. Patrick Rodgers) or a spread of tacos for just $2 each. Just barely over the Goodlettsville city limits you’ll find Green Chili serving a delicious tandoori chicken and other Indian staples. Even the music venue Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge features solid dishes you can munch on during a show, including its beloved Frito pie.
Now new restaurateurs are planting their own flags in the northeast Nashville neighborhood’s culinary scene.
“Creating more options that are not fast food — and it doesn’t have to be all fine dining — and just breaking that mold of rubber-stamped food, especially out this way, is really exciting,” says Bill Laviolette, who is set to relocate Texas barbecue spot Shotgun Willie’s to Madison later this year.
Laviolette opened Shotgun Willie’s less than a mile away from his Inglewood home in 2018. His choice in location was easy: He wanted to feed his neighbors in the cozy East Nashville neighborhood.
“I look at this in some ways like you’re just coming to my house for a cookout,” Laviolette says. He laughs, then adds: “But I’ve got to charge you.”
Shotgun Willie’s
As word spread about the wonderfully smoked brisket from Shotgun Willie’s, more folks from outside the neighborhood started to visit. Laviolette announced in April he would be moving the store into a larger space just a few minutes north on Gallatin Pike. It’ll stand next to Eastside Bowl, a former Kmart converted into a bowling alley and concert venue by a pair of similarly minded entrepreneurs who saw potential in Madison.
Laviolette jokes that the extra 1.3 miles have tripled his commute, but he expects the same neighborhood vibe at the new location.
“Where I’m going is kind of where I wanted to go four years ago, but my mentality at the time was, ‘I need to be closer to downtown,’” Laviolette says. “Now as we’ve grown as a business, we’ve become a destination. Whether I put this five miles closer to Nashville or five miles further away from where I’m going now, people are going to find us.”
But there’s always room for completely new additions to the area.Right now, East Nashvillians have to drive across the Cumberland to pick up imported snacks, kitchen staples and specialty products from an Asian grocery store. Chriss Goyenechea, owner of La Vergne’s Filipino grocery store MaeMax Market, says that gives him an opportunity.
“For Filipino cuisine to thrive, those things have to go hand in hand — the grocery store and the restaurant,” Goyenechea says.
MaeMax’s second location is slated to open in a nearly 9,000-square-foot space at 2106 Gallatin Pike N. this summer and will include retail space, backroom storage and a restaurant. It’s closer to Nashville’s urban core than the La Vergne location but will still have lots of room to cook up lumpia, longanisa and adobo.
“The kitchen we have in Madison is at least four times bigger than the one we have in La Vergne, so we could basically crank out a lot of Filipino food,” Goyenechea says.
Pinky Ring Pizza
Don Hernandez, a Nashville restaurant biz veteran with experience at places like The Patterson House, opened the first restaurant he’s ever owned personally back in November. Pinky Ring Pizza is his spin on the idyllic neighborhood pizza place, where folks wander in and hang out over slices of pepperoni and Parmesan.
The restaurant isn’t quite the same as the old Sir Pizza, whose building it occupies: The main dining space is an outdoor deck, and Hernandez prides himself on the restaurant’s extensive nonalcoholic beverage options, including craft mocktails. Yet again, the whole place represents a restaurateur finding their own lane in the Madison community.
“Sometimes you may feel uncomfortable around drinkers because you don’t have a drink in your hand,” Hernandez told the Scene in November. “We’re looking at how we can meet in the middle and bring everyone together.”
There is of course one decidedly nonlocal restaurant that’s opened on Gallatin recently: Whataburger, the Texas-based chain serving the decent fast-food burgers that your friend from Houston raves about. The restaurant is the chain’s closest location to Nashville proper, and its opening in June raises an important question: When California fast-food phenom In-N-Out comes to Nashville, will it open its own location here in Madison?
For those who prefer chains, there may be no more eagerly awaited restaurant opening in the entire Madison area. As for us, we’ll keep working our way through the ever-growing menu of great local spots.
