Tavern Nashville

I think, technically, the place is called Tavern, but holy crap this place was difficult to Internet. Do you know what came up when I searched for Tavern and Nashville on Google? Pretty much nothing. Granted, they just opened for business last week. However, I thought the Nashville Hype Train would be running at full speed (or at least enough to register some hits on the Internet) well before opening, given that this place is from the same group that owns Whiskey Kitchen and Virago. Meh. Anyway, I think I was privy to the place only because they are located a block away from my apartment. Just knowing that this place was a concept similar to Whiskey Kitchen was enough to draw me in that first week. Countless pitchers of whiskey sour have been downed in the past. Unfortunately, there are no cocktail pitchers at Tavern. It’s a shame. But the menu is one of the most exciting I’ve seen in Nashville. To be honest, though, I think any menu that forgoes pork chops and shrimp and grits is pretty brave amongst this city’s somewhat homogeneous menus. Culinary director Robbie Wilson incorporates some of his upbringing into the menu, which includes such exotic delicacies as loco moco. YEAH BRAH. I haven’t had Hawaiian food in 4 years, there on the menu was a plate lunch! It was pricey at 12 (now 13 dollars I think), but I’m a sucker for comfort food.

Although they advertise themselves as a gastropub, they have a decent list of cocktails gleamed from the bars of NY and Nashville. Ordered a 1920 (gin, basil, ginger) which was not too sweet, fragrant, and had enough alcohol to get me buzzing for my food.

The presentation of their loco moco deviates somewhat from the traditional three-compartment take-out boxes I usually devour them from, but it made me a little concerned when I didn’t see any macaroni salad on my plate. After pointing out the small but critical omission, a small plate of mac salad was brought out. Homemade, but a little too al dente for my taste. The hamburger steak was thick, a little dry, but the savory gravy helped with the toughness. The egg on top was excellently prepared, with just enough heat to solidify the egg proteins, but not enough to prevent egg yolk from spilling over onto the rice and beef, creating the most gnarly taste combo this side of the Cumberland. This is how eggs are cooked. All in all, I think I picked a winner. My other compatriots, however, suffered from what I call price-portion disproportion, meaning they ordered dishes priced like they were dinners, but served in appetizer portions. Two tiny tacos for $8 is a blasphemy; I don’t care if they’re sprinkled with diamonds and gold. I hope they are still working out the kinks in pricing and portion, as they were still less than a week out at the time of this dinner service.

Overall, there’s a lot of potential in this place. Kinda sad to see Lime go since it was the only thing different–now ALL of Broadway/Midtown is one giant dive bar–but as long as they keep serving Hawaiian food, I’ll be back to try more.

Tavern

Midtown/Broadway

Nashville

My Life Was So Different A Week Ago

What I do now:

Study, Eat, Poop, Sleep

What I did last week (including really quick reviews!):

Went to Jason’s Deli because they are delicious, make (fake) po’boys, and remind of Sweet Tomatoes (my favorite!).

The next morning I went to Noshville for brunch with Yash. Surprisingly, lox and scrambled eggs is a tasty combo. If the creative juices were really flowing, I would’ve put the eggs, lox, latkes, and cream cheese on the bagel, and had a bagel that could’ve easily obtained ultimate-status. Note to self: do that next time.

Went to Goten for Zack’s birthday dinner. Goten is a sorry excuse for a teppanyaki restaurant; even the ones in Fresno (particularly Edo-ya) are leagues ahead in terms of show, taste, and value.

Salt water and mushrooms = soup? No, it = fail.

Hooray for volcanoes!

This chicken contains pineapple. Pineapples are filler for what could’ve been more chicken. I want meat, dammit! Also of note, the dipping sauces are ketchup and terriyaki sauce. KETCHUP. Let that sink in. I’ll remind you that this is a Japanese establishment. Ok. Time to move on. TIME FOR PICTURES OF MAH FRENZ!

They were dressed the same.

This is a cute accessory.

How can you not love this face?

The birthday boy and his pinata. It was a one-shot decapitation; this is the strength that comes with going to the gym. Weight room!

I sorta stopped remembering things at this point. Or wait…it might’ve been the liquid cocaines. Yeeah, I probably stopped remembering stuff after having four of them. I might not be able to return to Hollywood Disco–not because I could’ve been banned, but because if I go I’ll be tempted to get more liquid cocaines. And frankly, after that weekend, I need to grow up.

And so, I’ve adopted this grown-up schedule: study, eat, poop, sleep.

It feels good to be a mature adult.

The Pub at Vanderbilt – Overcup Oak

The food at the pub is satisfactory–it’s marginally better (and more expensive) than what we eat everyday at the hospital cafeteria. They have typical lunch/bar fare: burgers, wraps, paninis, and hot wings(!). The pub, being what it is, does serve beer at lunch, which is also a plus. But really, the pub, as a restaurant, doesn’t stand out too much. I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat there, normally.

But I do take the 10 minute detour to go to the pub every Friday for lunch. Why?

Because it’s so much more than just food. Overcup Oak is located on the undergrad campus, you see. Going there for lunch at the end of a grueling week is a vacation; it’s a breath of fresh air; it’s an escape from the dredges of medical school. Being among undergrads always brings back fond memories of undergrad at USC. Not being around our other peers is also a relief because we can be as rowdy and inappropriate as we want without threat of being overheard (we don’t really care what undergrads think anyways (actually, I can only speak for myself, I don’t represent “da group”)). Most importantly, the trek to and from the pub–especially on warm, sunny days–is worth the trip alone. The walk always yields a bounty of eye candy; the pub is located at the center of campus, where all the undergrads congregate for lunch. It would probably be a terrific place for a future surgeon to pick up girls. However, for some reason I think we’ve all been misled: I don’t know why my parents keep warning me about gold-diggers; even with my white coat and scrubs on, none of the undergrads I see would give me the time of day.

It’s still nice to get away from school at the end of the week.

Overcup Oak

Sarratt Student Center

Vanderbilt University

Trivia at Corner Bar

If there’s anything I’ve learned since entering medical school last year, it’s that not everyone in medical school is smart, and not everyone not in medical school is not smart. That sure was a lot of negatives, but what I’m trying to say is that there are a lot of people not in medical school who are smart, probably even smarter than people who will become doctors someday; it’s simply a matter of lifestyle and career choice that people choose to make. It feels so refreshing and invigorating having intelligent conversations with people not in medical school. I just wish I had/took the opportunity go meet people.

This is only partly related to what I just said, but people who play trivia at Corner Bar are smart. Or just know a bunch of random shit that occurred before my time. And maybe paid attention in high school social science classes. My 5 in AP U.S. History should be stripped from me. But back to the task at hand: there are definitely a bunch of trivia gunners–maybe even snipers–who show up to Corner Bar every Monday at 8pm for trivia. It’s by far the most competitive trivia gathering that I know of in Nashville.

The place is also pretty cool for a dive bar, with an eclectic crowd, an a really nice waitress (I will probably butchered her name because I’m retarded, so I won’t write it), and some decent food–by far one of the best bar food in the area. The menu isn’t very extensive, but sticking to the basics is a good thing for a place that doesn’t specialize in any sort of cuisine. There are burgers, fried foods of all sorts, and–wtf?–a gyro. The sides, though, are where it’s at: there’s a pretty good selection of diverse sides, fried and not fried, that are served in generous portions beside each entree. My favorite? Fried okra. Don’t know why, but I like fried and slimy together. Yes, I’m gross. What of it? You wanna fight?

Corner Bar at Elliston Place

2200 Elliston Pl

Nashville, TN‎

(615) 320-4979‎

Los Angeles Day 2: One Ramen To Rule Them All

I woke up Saturday with a glimmer in my eye. I knew it was going to be a great day because lunch was going to be at Santouka, which is widely known as one of the best places–if not THE BEST place–for ramen on this side of the globe. Santouka isn’t really a restaurant per se; it’s more of a stall tucked away in the corner of a food court inside of Mitsuwa, a Japanese supermarket. My fall break’s success relied largely in part on slurping ramen from Santouka; it was a ramen pilgrimage–after flying from Nashville, driving across town to West LA, navigating the supermarket’s overcrowded parking lot, and creeping for an empty seat in the food court, I was finally able to sit down and drink from a broth that was nothing short of incredible. In fact, I ordered two bowls of ramen. Who knows when I’ll visit next?

My first bowl was a large order of shio ramen. While shio means salt in Japanese, to call this soup a salt broth is a gross injustice; the flavor of the soup is an intermingling of salt, meat, and seafood, which creates one of the most complex assortment of molecules to ever elicit tastes on my tongue. I had to let the soup sit in my mouth for a moment to determine everything I was tasting. Salty, meaty, seafoody, umami, and even sweet. This is a bowl of noodles that needs no accessories. The pieces of fatty pork, fishcake, seaweed, and scallions were all an afterthought. As for the noodles: some would describe them as al dente, others would say they were Q (or QQ). As long as they weren’t soggy, it was fine for me.

Even though my stomach was bursting to me, I decided to ignore my body and order another bowl of ramen. My next visit might not be for another couple of years. So I ordered a bowl of shoyu ramen, which had a soy sauce base. The soup was also delicious, just not delicious to the max like the shio ramen. After eating, I only had two options for afternoon activities: have my stomach pumped so I wouldn’t throw up, or go take a nap. So we went to the beach and took a nap.

Traffic was at a standstill because of a large hillside brushfire. It sucked because we were stuck for a good 30 minutes, but we at least able to see helicopters dump water on the fire. Seeing it in person is way more exciting than watching on TV.

For dinner, we went to Father’s Office 2.0 in Culver City. The space accommodates a lot more than the first Father’s Office, but there are still a bunch of people there, so it’s still difficult to find a place to sit. Like at the Mitsuwa food court, we had to creep around a bit before finding a table.

Father’s Office is known for having one of the nation’s best burgers. There aren’t any gimmicks like wagyu or kobe beef, or truffles, or foie gras, or gold flakes; it’s aged beef, caramelized onions, arugula, and bleu cheese. Each ingredient added a different dimension of taste to the palate. In short: get in my belly.

The sweet potato fries, like all sweet potato fries, were crunchy morsels of sweet, starchy goodness. You can never go wrong ordering sweet potato fries. The beer was also good. I’m not a beer connesseur–I don’t know how to order anything other than a Blue Moon–so seeing the selection of over 100 beers was a quite intimidating. My friends ordered the beers, and I drank them. That’s how I usually order alcohol. How have I made it this far without getting roofied? It’s probably because I’m not a very noteworthy conquest.

Los Angeles Day 1: WeHoooo (Or Just West Hollywood)

Preface: I’ve decided to cut down the content of my Los Angeles posts for the sake of conciseness, save for a few restaurants that warrant an in-depth discussion. I was able to visit about half the places on my “map of happy tummies,” and also visit a couple other places that weren’t on the map, but still delicious, nevertheless.

I landed Friday night around 8:30, and waited for my buddy from high school, Ryan, to pick me up from the airport. The contrast between Nashville and Los Angeles is beyond description. The multitude of people and cars and buses circling the airport arrivals level made my head spin after spending months in little ol’ Nashville. After almost 30 minutes of waiting, I was starting to become enraged purely by osmosis of the abrasiveness around me. I couldn’t stand anymore honking from every other car. And then Ryan showed up, and we were off!

We went to West Hollywood because that’s where Ryan’s girlfriend lives. Along the way, we stopped at a random Thai place, Sammy’s Thai BBQ, to pick up some food. I ordered a panang with chicken. I don’t want to bore you with details and crappy photos of the food, so I’ll just say this: it was meh. I guess Thai places in LA are either a hit or miss.

I lied. Here’s a picture of my food. Where is the substance?

Following dinner, we went out to some gay bar in WeHo, where we partook in 2 for 1 margaritas. It was $7 for two Patron margaritas. I can’t complain. I also saw an old college friend on the way out, who is currently on his third year surgery rotation at Keck. Hm. Interesting.

Walking back, we dropped into Barney’s Beanery, Los Angeles’ version of a dive bar: it’s kinda like all the bars around Nashville, except the crowd seemed more fake (but more diverse!), and it didn’t feel as authentic. At this point in the night, fried food = drunk food = GOOD FOOD. I really liked the fried mushrooms–you don’t see too many of those these days.

Afterwards, we trekked home along the streets of West Hollywood. The walk home involved spotting a stand called LA Buns and Ryan urinating in public. This walk isn’t that interesting now that I soberly recall. After we got home, stuff became more blurry. And that was the end of my first night in Los Angeles. I swear day 2 will be much more interesting and delicious UMAMI-licious.

Sammy’s Thai BBQ, Barney’s Beanery, and LA Buns are all on Santa Monica Blvd.