With her series “The People’s Places,” contributor Jennifer Justus provides short takes on longtime local restaurants, markets and bars that deserve another look. See more installments at our Bites blog.
Tricia Compton, store manager at Osborne’s Bi-Rite on Belmont Boulevard, says the past year has been “kind of like a snow day that goes on and on and on.”
The shopping frenzy of those early pandemic days at the grocery preceded a long year of increased home cooking. Then — a few weeks ago as we neared the anniversary of the start of lockdown — a string of actual snow days hit too.
“We had people bringing their kids’ sleds to just drag their groceries back home during all that craziness,” says Compton.
Compton praises customers’ kindness to her staff — whether that means wearing a mask like the sign on the front door asks, or being understanding when Bi-Rite needed to close early because second-shift employees couldn’t get to work in the snow. “It’s kind of nice to be in the middle of a residential area,” she says — that’s as opposed to, for instance, big-box stores that tend to be located on busier commercial thoroughfares.
To locals who know about the hidden gem in the back, this Bi-Rite is part of Nashville meat-and-three legend. The hot bar along the back wall existed long before the Osborne family bought the store in 2005. (Within this company, smaller stores are called Bi-Rite, and larger supermarkets are known as Piggly Wiggly.) For years, the steam table has been offering a colorful patchwork of comfort — pans of red-sauce meatloaf next to turnip greens, golden fried catfish alongside okra. For dessert, the bakers in the back turn out chess and pecan pies, sold whole and by the slice. In the cold case, tubs of pimento cheese sit next to chicken salad, deviled eggs and old-fashioned country-ham salad. “Those hams are monsters,” Compton says, describing how dishes get made from fresh in-store ingredients. “You need a huge pot and a very big stove.”
In many ways, Osborne’s Bi-Rite is a bastion of homier Nashville plopped amid a neighborhood deep into an ongoing metamorphosis. Less than a mile from the market, for example, tourists tromp up and down 12th Avenue South, a quieter street not too long ago. And sure, Compton says she sees all the growth on her drive into work, taking the back way from where she lives in Antioch. But she doesn’t see it so much in the store with its brick front, red awning and sign advertising specials for ground round and T-bone steaks. “As far as customers and consistency and the types of folks we have had,” she says, “that doesn’t really seem to have changed.”
Compton transferred to the Bi-Rite location on Belmont 16 years ago when the Osborne family bought it. The hot bar already existed, and many employees stayed on through the transition, giving the food familiar flavor over the years. We’ve lost some meat-and-threes in Nashville — a city famous for its plate lunches — but Bi-Rite’s version remains popular, offering home-style meals to take on the go.
On a recent Monday, David Bixon stopped by the Bi-Rite for one of his almost-daily visits to the hot bar. Why does he come so regularly? “Because I can get a meat-and-three for this,” he says, pointing to the top of his Styrofoam container with “$6.50” scrawled across the top and snug in plastic wrap to keep any drippings from spilling. “The food is good too.”
Compton says consistency of menu feels important. The Bi-Rite employees used to have food ready by 10 a.m., but that began to feel too late — landscaping crews who start work at dawn would already be lined up by that time. Now they have the food hot and ready to be served by 9:30 a.m.
“We don’t change stuff up randomly on a whim,” Compton says. “It’s always the same menu, every day of the week.” That means fried chicken on Tuesdays, catfish on Fridays. “I think the consistency helps people plan a little bit — especially the people who are out working and have 30 or 45 minutes and don’t have the time to drive all over town to decide what they want.”
As the day goes on, the hot bar draws “all walks,” Compton says, from white-collar businesspeople to construction crews in paint-splattered Dickies. She sees neighborhood folks, often seniors, who pick up a lunchtime meal to have for dinner to save them from a night of cooking. A local funeral home orders lunch for its employees two or three times a week.
Many of the Bi-Rite’s recipes originated with longtime cook Mary King, who has since retired and passed away. When I bring up the deli’s popular Coke cake, for example, Compton nods and smiles. “That’s Mary.”
The dessert gets its name from Coca-Cola, a key ingredient in the chocolate cake with a hint of spice and a thick layer of fudge frosting. According to American Cake, a cookbook by local author Anne Byrn, the cake first appeared in print in the 1950s. That’s the same decade the Bi-Rite building was constructed, Compton says, though it originally operated as an H.G. Hill grocery store. The Osborne family, who have been in the grocery business for 35 years, bought the Belmont location in 2005, and now they own four stores in the area.
Noted chef Arnold Myint grew up down the street, where his family opened the groundbreaking International Market & Restaurant in the 1970s and later served Thai and other cuisines from a steam table.
“I would walk or bike past [Bi-Rite] weekly,” Myint says. “My fondest memories are of course food ones.”
He remembers the smell of roasting chickens as he picked up a carton of Purity lemonade. As his palate matured, Myint’s preferred treats became banana pudding or Sara Lee pound cakes from the frozen-foods section. But to this day, his favorite is the pimento-cheese sandwiches from Bi-Rite’s deli case.
“I still stop in and get them on occasion,” Myint says. “Sadly, they never make it home onto a plate. I always devour them in my car in the parking lot. To me, Bi-Rite introduced me to food culture unfamiliar in my household. And I guess since I would wander in there on my own, it was integral in my self-discovery and appreciation for food as a whole. I think it was also the first place I bought a coconut cake.” It was a Pepperidge Farm one, as he recalls.
Beth Downey lived in the neighborhood for about eight years and also has strong Bi-Rite memories — particularly of the homemade chicken and dumplings. “I was probably there at least daily,” she says.
Bi-Rite reminded her of the local grocery in her rural Mississippi hometown, Downey says. “I’d see neighbors and friends, and if a long white Cadillac was parked outside, Cowboy Jack Clement was inside.”
In fact, when Cowboy’s house caught fire just down the street, Downey heard the news at Bi-Rite. It’s a detail that probably wouldn’t surprise Compton.
“Everybody knows a little bit about what everybody else has got going on,” she says. “It kind of has a small-town feel.”
