Photography by Eric England
When I first moved here, I went in search of Mexican food. The year was 1983. I could just as easily have found truffles on the moon. Friends gave me the names of two restaurants. First, there was the rather joyful sounding La Fiesta of Mexican Food on Murfreesboro Road, a place favored by the staffers from Channel 2 who worked across the street. It was about what you’d expect from a Mexican restaurant that claimed to be the oldest Mexican restaurant in Nashville; it had been in existence here since 1966 and had tempered its dishes to accommodate the Southern-fried palates of its Nashville clientele. I remember lots of cheese.
Destination number two was a place called the Gold Rush, on Elliston Place. Friends had told me to order the bean roll, inasmuch as it seemed Mexican. As it turned out, I became a faithful Gold Rush patron, eating there an average of three nights a week my first year in Nashville. The bean rolls weren’t very Mexican, but the Gold Rush was on my way home from work, I needed food and the scenery was always lively.
This is all by way of saying Nashville was a culinary wasteland when I first got here, emerging out of some provincial Southern backwater kitchen hell. Much of the problem, I think, had to do with people looking upon dinner as something only served in one’s own home or in a private club. Eating out, with others, was just not something you did very often.
Among other Southern cities, I’m certain Birmingham, Memphis and Louisville were probably no better. Further south, of course, the Gulf Coast cities and towns had so much fresh shrimp and fish that they couldn’t help but enjoy themselves immensely in some very fine restaurants. But here in Nashville people survived on pork, ham, overcooked vegetables and rolls for a very long time.
Here’s what the city did have in the late ’70s and early ’80s: a few, expensive, big-ticket, haute cuisine places like Julian’s, Arthur’s, the Ritz Cafe and Mario’s. Nashville had a few chain restaurants, O’Charley’s being among the more popular. It had Jimmy Kelly’s steakhouse. It had meat-and-threes, barbecue shacks and catfish joints. With a few exceptions, that was about it. For the city’s emerging middle and upper-middle classes, for those who had moved to Nashville having tasted a thing or two in the world, for thousands of young people looking for a bite to eat and some fun in the process, this city was a dud.
Enter Faison’s.
Begun by local restaurateur Jody Faison, the eponymously named restaurant in Hillsboro Village gained steam throughout the ’80s and pretty much kick-started a restaurant movement in this city. Fresh fish, novel sauces, Caesar salads: All the things that seem so commonplace today were so hip and challenging in Faison’s little eatery when it started. It was as if, with Faison’s, a city began to think that something terribly (and terrifically) cosmopolitan had landed. In the blink of an eye, everyone was drinking Glen Ellen Chardonnay by the glass and thinking how we weren’t that far removed from Fifth Avenue.
From that point forward, this city’s restaurants haven’t looked back.
What has happened in recent years has been nothing short of revolutionary. Food is, after all, a major part of living, and the fact that all of us are eating out at so many different kinds of restaurants says a lot about the old provincial boundaries in this city slowly vanishing with every passing moment. We’re all going out, mingling, drinking, chatting and eating. And we’re doing this with people from every point on the globe.
Because the city’s restaurant scene has become so dynamic, vibrant and international, we bring you our Food & Drink issue—a close look at places to wine and dine in town. There’s everything here from great cheap eats, to not-to-miss entrées, to local foodies’ favorite out-of-town haunts, to the city’s best Bloody Marys, coldest beer by the glass and unique ethnic soft drinks. Savor every bit of information. Then share it with a friend.
Good restaurants and watering holes are among the world’s most friendly visions, signposts of community and communion, places that invite you to break bread, toast triumphs, tell stories, be with people you love. Nashville’s restaurant explosion has made it a better city, and it hasn’t been all about the food.
—Bruce Dobie
