As any observer of the Nashville dining scene can tell you, it’s been a rough go of late at some of the finer establishments. Restaurants are closing because they can’t get enough staff. Unspoken is that they can’t get enough staff because they won’t pay enough to recruit and hold such staff. Why not?
I will be the first to admit it: you tend to eat at restaurants closer to your home than ones you must make an effort to get to. I don’t live thaaaaat close to Bellevue’s HoneyFire BBQ, but close enough.
The owners are Russian, the staff Ukrainian, and the food Georgian at this Seattle restaurant. The bread boat will leave you longing for the ‘old country,’ even if it’s not yours.
You like to load it up at Thanksgiving? Hit all the app stations at a wedding? Just forget it. This grilled chicken, with mashed potatoes and green beans, is the biggest one-plate lunch extant.
The three peaks of meringue hint at the marshmallows you melted on a summer’s night, as a little kid, but just a bit softer, a bit lighter, browned, I bet, with a quick drive-by from a blow torch.
The tang of the clams pulls out the kindred spirits in the pork’s marinade, the potatoes soak it all up. More, please.
Moving from one city to the next is usually a well thought-out decision. Inertia being what it is, few of us pick up and leave just for the hell of it.
Becktons is a steakhouse fever dream. You are in a very rural part of a very rural state. And then you find this place. Quality. Quantity. And value.
Most of the businesses in Paducah, Texas, are, well, out of business. A bite of Mac’s Brisket Grilled Cheese lets you know, however, that the town is very much alive.
Pepperoni, sausage, ham, bacon, salami and ground beef. I can’t tell you exactly how the alchemy works, but climbing over each other, these six artery-clogging morsels of magnificence transform a slice of West Nashville pizza.
There’s not a lot of any one thing in it, but enough of everything. And it’s sized for the European that’s buried somewhere deep inside many of us, whether we want to admit it or not.
In certain parts of this country, if you have TVs and a liquor license, you’re a bar. In Tennessee, if you have them, you can be one of the best restaurants in town.