Walking up to the house on Louise Avenue, I was looking for some outward sign. I half-expected the bricks at Jimmy Kelly's to be glowing, radiating in some fashion, evidence of the power the steakhouse holds over Nashville.
It was almost two years ago, at the beginning of the mayor's race, when former Scene editor Bruce Dobie, hanging out a temporary shingle in The Tennessean, cast aspersions on Megan Barry's nascent mayoral campaign and her image as a progressive goo-goo who pushed living wages and anti-discrimination bills.
"Such accomplishments have prompted the Jimmy Kelly's biz crowd to order a second martini and continue the search," Dobie wrote.
Among Nashville's political chattering class, the restaurant is a kind of code for the people who are perceived to run the city — a kind of Watauga Lite now that Nashville is too big to be run by a shadowy club of 20 or so CEOs. These are the guys who build convention centers, make sure the legislature doesn't do anything too stupid, and keep the city's climate business-friendly.
This is the restaurant where the deal was cut to bring the Titans to Nashville. And if you believe Mike Kelly, the affable third-generation proprietor, the place where Ned McWherter cut a deal for the Democratic nomination for governor. Now, some of Ned's people dispute this, but standing in the foyer, surrounded by oak trim, dark walls and oil paintings of Cornelius Vanderbilt and the like, I want to believe Kelly. There is literally an upstairs backroom where you could horse-trade votes in private.
The last time I was at Jimmy Kelly's was 20 years ago, when my girlfriend — now my wife — and I came in for a last meal before leaving town for another newspaper job. I wanted a special place for dinner, and nothing would do but beef.
"If you want to celebrate something really big, you want a steak — nothing says celebration or a big deal like a steak," says Kelly, explaining the allure of a place that's been open, in one location or another, since 1934. "I think there's this huge search for authentic; people that want something real, something Nashville."
Kelly's fits that bill. Mike Kelly has faced a spate of competition for the steakhouse dollar over the past couple of decades. Depending on how you count, there are 15 or so competitors between downtown and where West End meets I-440, a kind of Steak Zone with Jimmy Kelly's near the geographic center. That's a lot of white tablecloths and à la carte sides.
The menu hasn't changed dramatically since 1995. People don't come in to hear the new stuff, they come to hear the hits. There are filets (standard, $32.75; stuffed with bleu cheese, $34.75) and strips ($36.75), Chateaubriand with burgundy and mushroom sauce ($84), and surf and turf ($48.75). Kelly brings in a limited fresh catch every day, usually sea bass, which is so popular that it generally sells out before the late arrivals come in after 9 p.m.
On a recent visit, we went classic. I got the strip and my better half got the filet, because after all, we're not here to eat chicken (although more than a couple of people recommended it, grilled with lemon and fresh tarragon, $32.75). Both pieces of beef were butchered well — Kelly's buys primal cuts from a small cattle operation out of Omaha, ages them here in Nashville and cuts each steak on site — and cooked precisely medium-rare. The aging brings out a beefiness even in the sometimes-nondescript filet, adding a little heft to the buttery slab.
I don't really love steakhouses. I find them a little boring, which may explain why it's taken me 20 years to return to Jimmy Kelly's. Personally, if I'm spending my hard-earned dollars, I want something a little more creative. But sitting there with a slab of perfect New York strip sirloin by itself, I understand the allure. Red meat on a white plate. It's primal.
You get a baked potato with your meat (or fish or chicken), but we subbed in au gratin potatoes ($8.75), a quite beautiful cross section of slabs of potato and cheese. If you're worried about how much beef or starch you're ingesting, you can assuage your guilt with asparagus ($7.25) or stir-fry vegetables ($4.25). Or you can take a different tack, waistline be damned, and go for the creamed spinach ($4.25) or mac-and-cheese ($8.75). But no matter which side you pick, order the shrimp cocktail or shrimp remoulade (both $12.75) — the shrimp that Kelly's serves are monsters.
I asked Kelly if he was still serving meat from Walmart, referring to a commercial campaign that ran a few years ago wherein the big-box store changed the beef in his restaurant for one night as a hidden-camera stunt. He laughed. For as much grief as friends have given him over the years, the ad still pops up sometimes, giving the restaurant free advertising in a national campaign.
"It's a 30-second commercial, and the first 15 seconds say, 'Here we are at the world-famous Jimmy Kelly's Steakhouse in Nashville, Tennessee,' " says Kelly. "It worked out pretty well."
One of the charms of Kelly's is how it picks up through the evening. Where many restaurants see their peak at 7 or 7:30 p.m., Kelly's doesn't really get rolling until well after 8, with people arriving for a drink at the cozy bar before slipping into one of the well-worn, quite comfortable chairs for dinner. In the back corner of the bar, you can find Tom Ingram's table, where the political consultant and kingmaker holds court when he's in town. Well into his fourth decade as a regular, Ingram says a lot of deals have been made at Kelly's; it's been a magnet for the people who run this town.
"Historically, I would expect to see several members of the legislature," Ingram says. "I would not be surprised to see the mayor. I would expect to see a number of business people and some people from the music industry.
"Before a lot of the chain steakhouses moved in here, like Ruth's Chris, Kelly's was the steakhouse in Nashville. A lot of business and a lot of politics got done here over the years."
And still do. Ingram has a horse in the mayor's race, Charles Robert Bone, and he and the campaign staff spent part of their initial weekend of planning at the restaurant, plotting political strategy in a place where plotting feels natural.
But even for those of us who have no stake in the city's power structure, Jimmy Kelly's retains the charm of a bygone era, where men in white coats bring out plates of corn cakes between courses, where the bar is stocked with bourbon and the wine list is mostly red.
It won't take me 20 more years to return.
Email arts@nashvillescene.com
