Restaurantpalooza

Anderson Design Group

I've written previously about the round of restaurant visits I did with my sister and her husband over the extended Memorial Day weekend (Quickies, Part 1 and Quickies, Part 2). This last week I had BFF Scott in town. Scott and I have a long history of cooking and exploring restaurants together. I also owe quite a bit of my culinary knowledge to him. He used to live here in Nashville, but the food scene has changed a great deal since then, and even since his last visit. So, I took him on a tour of a few of my current favorites so he could experience first-hand how Nashville has come up in the world in the last decade or so. We also had one notable new adventure at an unusual, world-class restaurant. I'll write more detail about some of these later, but for now here's a brief recap.

• Scott lives in Connecticut now, and has been missing southern food. A true Southerner, he's as fond of good side dishes as entrees. Knowing that, we hit up two barbecue joints that have not only great smoked meats but excellent, interesting sides:
• Edley's, previously reviewed here.
• B&C BBQ (Melrose location), where the garlic cheese grits were better than they have ever been before.
• We're both fans of Asian food, so I thought a visit to Arnold Myint's Suzy Wong's House of Yum on Church St. would be fun. Here Scott had what he declared his favorite dish of the whole trip, a spicy raw tuna napolean.
• One of my favorite spots in town is Eastland Cafe in East Nashville, and our visit didn't disappoint. I've discussed Eastland Cafe previously, but this time I had a new dish, a vegetarian fettuccine with fresh summer zucchini, corn, & corn cream, which was outstanding.
• We revisited Arnold Myint at ChaChah. As with my trip there with Kellie & co., we made a delicious, leisurely meal of tapas and small plates.
• Wednesday night brought a truly special occasion -- dinner at the nationally-acclaimed The Catbird Seat. I'll post a full review soon; suffice it to say here that it was a memorable night.
• Our final outing was at City House. We were joined by two other friends of mine, Jon and Matt. We had a typically excellent City House meal with lots of good conversation and laughter. Again, I'll post a full review in the near future.

 There's nothing better than spending time and catching up with an old friend, except when doing so with good food and drink!