Ellendale’s
2739 Old Elm Hill Pk. 884-0171
Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Mon-Thurs.; 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Fri.-Sat.; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Sun.
It was at Ellendale’s restaurant in Donelson, after ordering a bottle of Penfold’s Valley Chardonnay, that we encountered the question that could silence a table of five chattering women. “May I see your IDs, please?” said the young waiter. All of us thirtysomething and fortysomething moms stopped mid-sentence to stare incredulously at the whippersnapper. With 12 children between us, we do not suffer impertinence gladly. He was serious. I made a mental note: big tip.
For all I know, it is customary in Donelson to ask everybody for IDs, but none of us had ever been to Donelson before. (“Does the airport count?” my companion Tracy asked as we drove past the exit on I-40. “No, it doesn’t,” I replied.)
In the quarter-mile from the Donelson Pike exit to Old Elm Hill Pike, we passed a franchise of most every fast-food chain in America: Burger King, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken. But if you’re in the mood for a meal that hasn’t spent a few months in the corporate commissary deep-freeze, then keep driving. Turn left onto Old Elm Hill Pike, and there, sitting serenely atop a sloping green hill, is Ellendale’s. No neon, no arches, no clowns.
Instead, there’s just a pretty, 100-year-old wood-framed house with a wide front porch furnished with a cluster of rocking chairs. Inside are a couple of dining rooms with oilcloth-covered tables, most placed in front of tall windows that offer nice views of the well-tended grounds. Oak sideboards and buffets, curtains (not window treatments), framed black-and-white photographs, and sprays of fresh flowers set a warm stage for a meal you might have at your grandmother’s house, if her recipes include chili-lime mussels, hummus, and mojo shrimp.
In a way, Ellendale’s really is Grandma’s house. Owner Julie Buhler Freeman named the restaurant after her great-great-grandma Ellen Dale Ives, who was born in Vermont, married Douglas Ives, and moved with him to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Mr. Ives became president of a railroad company, and the couple became quite wealthy. Mrs. Ives devoted herself to helping the poor and sick, traveling by rail to other cities. When she died, several towns along the rail line were named for her.
Julie and her husband Michael Freeman moved to Donelson from Milwaukee about six years ago, and Julie started a catering business, Your Place, Not Mine. Just about the time the couple began thinking of opening their own restaurant, the building formerly occupied by Grecian Inn became available for lease. The Freemans grabbed it and began extensive renovations.
Julie’s idea was to provide a reprieve from chain restaurants, cooking from scratch with some subtle Southwestern, Cajun, and Mediterranean influences. “This is Donelson, not Nashville, so we try to strike a balance and push the envelope a little,” she explains.
There are several options for dining at Ellendale’s. The weekday lunch buffet is $7.95 per person, as are the weekday early-bird dinner specials. On Saturdays, the all-you-can-eat prime rib dinner is $15.95, while Sunday brunch is $10.95 per person.
We did the dinner menu and found some hits and some misses, though more of the first than the second. We started our meal with the pecan-barbecue jumbo shrimp; filled with herbed cream cheese, wrapped in bacon, dipped in a tangy pecan-barbecue sauce, and grilled, they were so rich I would’ve been happier eating them for dessert. On the lighter side are plump steamed mussels on the half-shell in a chili-lime broth, or a grilled portabella mushroom and gouda cheese.
The crab cakes were greasy the night we visited; at $7.95, they are too pricey for such a disappointment. The smoked trout and its accoutrements were bland, and the hickory-smoked pork spring rolls proved to be a combo that doesn’t work.
There are several entrée specials every evening. We sampled the seafood pasta in an Alfredo sauce, which had a generous allotment of shellfish atop a mountain of penne pasta. Huge portions of pasta are the norm, as we discovered with the Mediterranean pasta, which consisted of grilled chicken, banana peppers, and kalamata olives in fusille pasta tossed with a hearty roasted red pepper coulis and topped with feta.
Prime rib fans will be pleased with Ellendale’s peppery version; the beef tenderloin was a nice cut and cooked to order, but I am not a fan of raspberry on much of anything, particularly in a sauce for beef. More problematic were the lamb chops, so thoroughly coated in crushed pecans before grilling that the taste of the lamb was impossible to detect. But we loved the cranberry chutney that came with it. I’d suggest ordering the chops sans pecans and with extra chutney. A tip of the hat to Freeman for being neither timid nor overly aggressive with salt in her cooking—a delicate balance too rarely achieved in most restaurants.
We couldn’t decide among the desserts, so we ordered two samplers and dug into cheesecake, chocolate cake, carrot cake, and a tart, all of which pleased the sweet-lovers. I commandeered the heavenly homemade cinnamon ice cream.
Ellendale’s has twice won the Donelson-Hermitage People’s Choice Award, though Freeman says that just as much of her business comes from Nashville as from Donelson. Here’s hoping that more Donelson residents will bypass the countless fast-food restaurants lining their streets and choose instead to mine the treasure in their own backyard.
