There are many reasons people patronize Shoney’s restaurants, I imagine. Maybe they buy into the slogan that adorns their menus and advertising, “Your neighborhood family restaurant.” Lots of families I know, when their small children’s taste buds had yet to sprout, went to Shoney’s to eat. Teething babies and toddlers can be easily fueled on the trappings of the infamous Shoney’s salad bar.
Speaking of food troughs, many people are fond of Shoney’s breakfast bar and load up on scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, hash browns, biscuits, gravy, pancakes, French toast sticks, and stewed prunes that all taste exactly the same. These days, you can even have breakfast at dinner on Wednesday nights—just $5.49 for adults, $2.99 for children ages 6 to 12 and free for 5-and-unders (with an adult meal purchase). Shoney’s moderate pricing probably attracts a certain segment of cheap eaters. A family of four could have dinner for less than $20 with careful ordering.
I wouldn’t have thought so, but a local restaurateur I was interviewing once for a story about working lunches said he thought more business took place at Shoney’s restaurants than at any other dining establishment in Nashville. Now he wasn’t talking about the type of business lunches where Joe Developer is trying to lure the site selection committee from a national corporation to relocate in his company’s Class A office building. He was referring to the kind of day-to-day business that makes our world go around—insurance, contractor, and attorney appointments.
Some Shoney’s customers may drop by out of force of habit or even a sense of nostalgia. After all, in one form or another, Shoney’s restaurants have been feeding Nashvillians for almost 30 years, since Ray Danner brought the original Shoney’s Big Boy franchise to Madison in 1971. I can imagine that lapsed Shoney’s customers might even be lured back by the clever commercials now running on television that promise a new, and one might suspect improved, Shoney’s.
What I can’t imagine, particularly after a recent dinner at one of the newly refurbished Shoney’s restaurants—this one on Murphy Road—is that anyone goes to Shoney’s for the food. While everything at this overhauled Shoney’s did look better, nothing tasted any better than the last meal I had at Shoney’s. That was about three years ago when, as we pulled out of the parking lot following a kid’s-eat-free Wednesday-night dinner, my children pitifully beseeched, “Please don’t make us go there again.”
Still, they and seven other children and adults I rounded up one evening agreed to give it another try. I was eager to sample the Pasta YaYa, a none-too-subtle copy of the dish Jody Faison created years ago at 12th & Porter. Oddly, this Cajun-influenced pasta recipe is part of the Italian feast promotion that Shoney’s is currently presenting. Other than the fact that it includes fettucini, there is nothing remotely Italian about Pasta YaYa. Nor is there anything remotely Cajun about the way Shoney’s makes it—bland and gummy with rubbery little shrimp, tasteless chicken strips, and small rounds of andouille sausage that were somehow washed of any kick. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, one wonders how Faison should feel about this feeble attempt.
We ordered the country-fried steak after wondering what makes it “the customer’s #1 choice,” as it is described on the menu. We still don’t know. It surely can’t be the “scratch-made potatoes” which, through some kitchen wizardry, Shoney’s manages to make taste like instant mashed potatoes.
The salmon on the grilled salmon platter, purported to be flaky, savory, grilled to perfection, and bursting with flavor, was none of the above. It was instead grilled to the texture of wallboard, with the taste one might expect of the material, though liberally sprinkled with some salty seasoning.
The “New!” vegetable stir fry was okay if you are very fond of onions and green peppers, which composed the majority of the garden vegetables promised—no squash, a couple of mushrooms, and three broccoli florets.
The children didn’t fare much better. The burgers were dry and overcooked. The five fried shrimp were still cold in the center, and the meat product in the corn dogs was overwhelmed by the nearly impenetrable cornmeal wrapping. Three out of four adults surveyed agreed that the French fries were pretty darn good, even crispy as promised.
The hot fudge sauce on the kids’ sundaes was not hot, and each was also delivered minus the fresh strawberry advertised. And there’s another reason many people go to Shoney’s: their original strawberry pie. I never understood the attraction to this “Shoney’s classic,” which featured frozen strawberries in a gelatinous syrup on a crust that could make cardboard seem an edible alternative. This actually has gotten better. The strawberries in our slice were big, juicy, and fresh, though the crust upon which they sat had not improved.
Once again, as we left Shoney’s, my children implored me to never take them there again. That’s a promise I’ll have no problem keeping.
Full press
Nashville restaurants are favorably featured this month in two national publications.
Food & Wine sent writer Jonathan Hayes—an Englishman living in New York City—on an eating jaunt through Music City. Professing near complete ignorance of our most famous music form, he came away “a country music-lovin’ man.” He seemed less enamored of our most famous eateries, among them the Loveless Cafe. He did like Zola, calling Chef Debra Paquette’s Southern-meets-Mediterranean menu a thoughtful approach to food more his style. He also liked what was then the just-opened Sasso in East Nashville. “The food at Sasso tends to be simple,” he writes, “and is all the stronger for it.” He gives special mention to “a particularly wonderful peanut-crusted salmon with bok choy in an Asian broth.”
In the May issue of Southwest Airlines Spirit magazine, noted food writer John Mariani writes his annual restaurant round-up on 11 American chefs, whom he calls “modern masters.” Nashville is represented by Paquette, whom he describes as “nothing if not daring,” and describes her food as “out on the edge,” and “some of the most exciting food in the region.” Backing up his plaudits, Zola this week introduces a nearly entirely new menu. Among the new entrées are Turkish lamb with grilled veggies, pomegranate coffee yogurt, and Turkish barbecue sauce; Solomon’s salmon, which is pistachio-and-sesame-crusted with an orange coriander risotto and mint pesto; and Market Zolanela, a grilled market fish, drizzled with truffle oil and bedded on greens with black olive croutons.
