Way back in 1969, Jaime Camara and the late Walter Thrailkill were vacationing at the Greenbriar Hotel in West Virginia. The two restaurateurs, who at that time were partners in a place on Hilton Head island called The Overlook, were quite taken with a dining room employee named Arthur. “He was what was known as a bread and butter boy,” recalls Camara. “He was about as fine a person as you would ever want to meet. Walter gave him his card and told him that if he ever wanted to get out of the West Virginia mountains and come to the ocean, we’d have a job for him. He called us a few months later and came to work for us.” During his tenure at The Overlook, Arthur served as bread and butter boy, waiter, host and even babysitter. Seven years after he arrived, he dropped dead of a stroke. Camara and Thrailkill closed the restaurant for three days in tribute to him, and when they reopened, it was with a new name, Arthur’s Overlook.
When the duo came to Nashville in 1979, they opened Arthur’s restaurant in Belle Meade Plaza, hanging the original sign that said “Arthur’s Overlook.” When they moved a couple years later to the Mall at Green Hills, they weren’t permitted to hang the sign, but they kept the name. Thrailkill has since passed away, as did his widow Sheila recently. Camara still runs Arthur’s, which has been in the Union Station Hotel since 1990.
That’s just one of the inside Nashville stories uncovered by Marc Silverstein, co-host of the Food Network’s The Best Of magazine show, when he came to town for a week of tapings March 18-22. And he’s not even from here.
“Well, that’s one of the things we try to do,” he explains during a telephone interview from his home in Baltimore. “We come into a city with no preconceived notions, and that lets us uncover some pretty cool stories in your own backyard. We are always pleasantly surprised at what we find.”
The Best Of covers one topic per show, spotlighting a restaurant, market, chef or food item in five different towns. Recent episodes have spotlighted Best Latino, Best Barbecue, Best Casual and Best Breakfast.
In Nashville, Silverstein and the Food Network crew visited six different restaurants for six different topics and six different shows. Long before Silverstein checks into his home away from home for the week, the show’s researchers are calling food people in the destination city, culling opinions and advice before deciding on the particular spots and chefs.
The topics and their corresponding restaurants in Nashville were Best Cookies (Provence Breads & Cafe), Best Train Station Dining (Arthur’s), Best Delicious Dives (Fat Mo’s), Best Waffles/Pancakes (Loveless Cafe), Best French Fries (Mirror) and Best Historic Tables (Martha’s at the Plantation).
The restaurant that Silverstein visits isn’t always the most obvious choice. “When we tell local people where we’re going and why, we sometimes get that tilted-head look that your dog gives you,” he says with a laugh. One particular Southern specialty elicited the same reaction from the host himself. “What was the name of that weird stuff they fed us at the Loveless? Did it have coffee in it?” he asks. When redeye gravy was mentioned as the most likely answer, he responded emphatically, “Yes! Redeye gravy. What a weird thing. I think it’s one of those things that’s an acquired taste, but I don’t know that I would ever acquire a taste for it.”
This was not Silverstein’s first visit to Nashville, or to the Loveless. When he was living in Columbus, Ohio, he and his then-girlfriend (now wife) took off on a peripatetic adventure south of the Mason-Dixon. Nashville was on their Rand-McNally, and they ended up spending a couple of days here. “We did the usual tourist stuff, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Opry, and we went to the Loveless,” he remembers. On his most recent trip, Nashville was not quite what he remembered. “There’s the new Hall of Fame, which is incredible. And the skyline is totally different. And I had told our crew that the Loveless was out in the middle of nowhere, that we would drive and drive through nothing. Except that we’re on our way out there, and we’re passing big houses, subdivisions, grocery stores and convenience markets. My crew is looking at me like I’m crazy. It’s definitely not in the middle of nowhere anymore.”
In Nashville, most people think of bread when they think of Provence, but Silverstein says their cookies were a marvel. “We went to their retail store in that Village place, then we went to their production facility in, what’s it called, The Gulch? Funny name. But the cookies were incredible. They were works of art, just beautiful.”
Silverstein was also astounded and amazed at the Fat Mo Super Deluxe Burger, 27 ounces of beef with grilled mushrooms and onions, barbecue sauce, bacon, jalapeños, mustard, mayo, ketchup, lettuce, tomato, pickles and raw onion. “That guy was great! What a character! And his burgers are unreal. I’m still getting the smell out of my hands.”
Most likely, he’s getting the smell out of his clothes, hair and shoes as well, as he spends a good amount of time with his subjects, interviewing them to get that memorable story and find out just what makes them unique. Martha Stamps, proprietress and chef at Martha’s at the Plantation, shared with Silverstein her collection of old cookbooks. “She really knows her stuff,” he says. “She had all these old cookbooks and family recipes that she uses. There’s a real purity to how she cooks. She doesn’t have to do that, but she does. And people around here love her for that. Her place was packed, and she knew everybody.”
The crew’s favorite stop was Mirror, which was chosen for its fries—not your regulation deep-fried Idaho potato fries, but chef Michael DeGregory’s signature bleu cheese polenta fries, which are on the 12 South restaurant’s tapas menu. “Man, that guy can cook! We went there late in the day, so we got to have dinner there. We have eaten in a lot of places since we started this show, all over the country, and he ranks right up there with the best.”
As with any food reporter, eating—or more accurately, overeating—is a professional hazard for Silverstein. “We go into the place, get to know the people, schmooze some. Then we go in the kitchen and watch them cook. By then, we’re pretty hungry, so we eat what they cook. It’s not too bad if we do one a day, but sometimes we go to two places in one day. I have to pack a few different sets of clothes: one I start the week with, and one I end the week with. I’m going to end up eventually wearing nothing but sweatpants.”
It’s not a bad job for someone with “no food background whatsoever,” as Silverstein puts it. He was a television consumer reporter in Columbus before moving to Baltimore, where he promptly got fired. “That was the best thing that happened to me. I started freelancing in the Washington market, and was seen by someone with Food Network, which at the time was expanding their programming. I sent them some of my consumer reporting stuff, and they liked it. I’ve been eating my entire life, but I have no professional food background. Of course, I’ve learned a lot on the job.”
One of the harsh realities he has learned is that there is no accounting for taste. “We live in Baltimore, which besides crabs has a fantastic Little Italy where you can get some of the most amazing fresh Italian food in these great little, unique restaurants. But it’s Macaroni Grill that has the two-hour wait. It blows my mind. Go figure.”
The Nashville segments of The Best Of will air intermittently in the coming six months. Food Network is carried by Comcast on channel 54.
