Sportsman’s

Back in college, I watched Grey’s Anatomy and was all into it like nobody’s bisnazz. Then there was the episode where the code black was called and the bomb exploded in the hospital but no one left the hospital because only the SWAT team guy died, and no Meredith. Suspension of disbelief: SHATTERED. Nevertheless, I was still a naive teenager when I watched the show, and romanticized the life of the surgeon: performing surgery, saving lives, and then going to the local bar where all the other doctors gathered after work to down a couple beers with all my MD buddies after a hard day’s work. I believed that was the surgeon’s life. It was awesome.

Now that I’m a few weeks into my third year of medical school, living a similar life style to real doctors, I now know that my romanticized, school-boyish dream is not how real life is. Life is tough. Not just omgIhavetowork9to5MondaytoFriday tough, but OMFGWTFIhavetowork6AMto7PMsixdaysaweek tough. Plus call schedules. And I’m not even on my surgery rotation. Just how am I supposed to have the energy and money (I am paying $40k this year to work in the hospital) to knock back a couple brewskies with my residents and attendings? Not to mention time?

Revelation: real life is not like TV. Nobody finishes work at the hospital before 5pm, unless you’re post-call, in which case you will be going home to recoup your 30+hour sleep debt. Everyone else finishes after 5pm, and from what I’ve observed, goes home to their families. They don’t go to the bar after work. Scrubs and white coats don’t flood the bar for happy hour. And maybe that’s a good thing. Patients would probably shit bricks seeing their doctors chugging beers at the bar. Probably. At least that’s what all my hours in patient-centered classes in my first two year of medical school would lead me to believe.

So there is no “hospital bar” where all the doctors hang out after work. That kind of blows. But Sportsman’s is the closest thing there is to my romanticized fantasies of youth. At least that’s how my friends and I treat it. Not that we go there everyday and drink, but it’s a suitable option whenever we want to gather for an impromptu dinner with a beer or two. Since the only other patrons are…actually, I have no idea what the other patrons do–but they’re not doctors, and they’re not students. Anyway, I don’t feel like a tool when I’m there with a white coat or scrubs.

The menu itself is unapologetically mainstream: burgers, salads, chicken. They somehow have the same fried catfish dish at two different prices, too. I’ve even heard stories of failed health inspection tests. But I don’t go there for the food. You may want to decide for yourself if you want to go there food, too. However, I will still go, just because they have 2-for-1 beer specials and it’s an ideal hangout spot during 3rd year. Also, it’s the closest bar to the hospital–I’m not counting Vanderbilt’s undergrad pub because I would definitely feel like a tool going there in scrubs and all. So…yeah…Sportsman’s is “aight.”

Sportsman’s

Nashville

Restaurant Week – Jackson’s

The post should’ve been titled “Restaurant Week – Fido’s,” but Fido’s had closed their kitchen at 6pm for the night on the first night of Restaurant Week. It’s not really the way a restaurant would want to start the week, but I guess something bad happened. Or there was really bad planning on Fido’s part. At least there were multiple restaurants on 21st Ave that were participating in Restaurant Week. And because it was there, and partly because I had been told that Jackson’s dinner was different, we decided to get dinner at Jackson’s.

The ongoing deal for the week was $20.08 for a prix fixe meal at all restaurants participating in Restaurant Week. From what I recall, other cities’ restaurant weeks involved special menus and dishes created just for the occassion to showcase the chef’s, and restaurant’s, razzle dazzle. Jackson’s special menu was just a “you pick one of our regular appetizers, one regular entree, and one regular dessert” for $20.08. It didn’t dazzle. But at least I could see how much the special saved me: six dollars. Then again, I don’t think I’d ever buy that much food in one sitting at dinner for just myself.

Now, since the actual dinner was two weeks ago, and my brain has been sufficiently stuffed with medical knowledge, my ability to recall the names of dishes will probably subpar, but I can still describe the dishes. They just won’t sound as eloquent.

I chose shrimp and corn puffs, or hushpuppies, with a sweet chili thai dip as my appetizer. It was mostly puff, a couple kernels of corn, and maybe the essence of shrimp. No real pieces of shrimp really. My friends ordered other dishes so we could get a nice sampling going: beer-cheese dip with bread and chips, grilled chicken quesadillas, and buffalo feathers (fried pieces of shredded chicken). Out of all the dishes, the beer dip was probably the best, mostly because I could actually taste the beer. And since I’m a man now, I grow facial hair, have a deep voice, and love the taste of beer. The quesadillas were a little messy; a product of overstuffage. And the chicken was just another form of fried chicken. It’s all the same to me.

For my entree, I chose barbecued meatloaf with mashed caulliflower and cheese. I didn’t really know what to expect since barbecue and meatloaf seem so opposite to me. What I got was something that looked like mushy spam with grill marks, covered with ketchup. The meatloaf had none of the complexities of its multiple ingredients, but rather tasted like meat. I couldn’t really describe it, but it was very basic. The ketchup had more complexity than the spam meatloaf. The mashed caulliflower was more like mashed potatoes. I couldn’t really taste the cheese, so there wasn’t much incentive to finish this off. The mashed caulliflower at Amerigo is far superior. Besides, at this point, I was getting stuffed.

Dessert was the real reason for coming to Jackson’s for dinner; my friend recommended their cookie dough egg rolls. I was really interested giving it the good ol’ try. It was just too bad that my stomach wasn’t as willing. Fortunately, I was able to force some cookie dough and ice cream down the food tube. It was good, but then again, I never found a problem with cookie dough and ice cream. I don’t know why they decided to fry the cookie dough in an actual wonton skin and not just a log of cookie dough by itself. Fried wonton skins had no place in that dish, and by that time in the meal, no place in my stomach. Much like the pizzookie at BJ’s, it’s good, but I, too, can go to the store and buy ice cream and another baked good and slap them together at home. Then I won’t have to pay 6 dollars. And then I can tell girls I cook!

Also of note: my friend’s $5 milkshake tasted like low-fat milk with syrup. Go to Ben and Jerry’s instead.

Another note: maybe Jackson’s would taste better if there weren’t so many people smoking on the patio.

Jackson’s Bar and Bistro

1800 21st Ave S

Nashville, TN

(615) 385-9968‎

South Street – A Prelude To Mambu

This is what happened before we drove by and spied on my friend Luke on his date. It won’t really explain anything, though–I don’t think I can ever explain what goes on in the messed-up minds of medical students on a Saturday night. It might even scare you into not trusting doctors ever again. So I’ll just play it safe and stick with what I do know: what I ate.

I’ve never been to South Street, but the menu looked somewhat promising. It looked like a mishmash of barbecue and cajun/creole food. And while I really wanted to try their po’boys, I ordered a combo platter, which came with ribs, fried calamari, fries, hush puppies, and cole slaw, to taste a somewhat broad spectrum of what they had to offer.

The ribs were dry in the sense that they were served without sauce, but also in the literal way; the meat still clung to the bone, and took some effort to rip flesh from bone. There was an overwhelming smoky aroma emanating from the meat, but offered less flavor than I expected.

The calamari was served in the form of tiny rings and some tentacles, which made me think that I was getting the leftovers from the bottom of a large batch. I would’ve prefered larger pieces of calamari for a better calamari:batter ratio, and also a lemon wedge. This didn’t wow me either.

South Street’s hush puppies are texturally perfect, but lacking in the flavor department. They had a thin, crisp coating and a fluffy interior of dough. I think I tasted a fleck of onion, but it might’ve snuck in by mistake. It would’ve been nice if there were actually more onions in there. However, adding ketchup or cocktail sauce can solve the flavor problem.

The menu looks promising, but I have to admit that I’m a bit of a sucker for creole food. I might’ve chosen the wrong dish, and definitely the wrong sides, but next time (I know I’ll come back again because it’s only a 3 minute walk from my apartment) I’ll try their creole and cajun selections. The night wasn’t a total loss, though–South Street did serve as a good staging area for spying on Luke’s date!

South Street Restaurant

907 20th Ave S
Nashville, TN 37212
(615) 320-5555

Seoul Garden – Huh?

Sometimes you come across something that makes you say “WTF?!”–like the first time I went to Seoul Garden in Nashville. It’s the South, where meat and threes and barbecue dominate the foodscape. There aren’t too many ethnic restaurants here. Usually, to get really good ethnic food, you need a demand for really authentic dishes. The stuff that only immigrants and ex-pats crave. So I have to ask myself, “Why is the food here of the same caliber with food I ate in Koreatown when I lived a few miles away from K-town during college?” Why, of all the cuisines in Nashville, is Korean the most delicious I’ve found so far? I guess the answer to my question was given by a Korean classmate: there are lots of Koreans living around Nashville.

Oh.

WTF? How’d that happen?

I’m not an an expert on immigration movements or social studies, but I am an expert on what I think is delicious. During the last year, I’ve visited a couple times and tried both their barbecue and regular entrees. One thing that I noticed is that the menu is more accessible to people who aren’t Korean. Back in K-town, a lot of places I went to only had Korean menus; I was limited to ordering from just a couple pictures. Here, pretty much every item has a corresponding picture, and each item has a little explanation that includes its ingredients. Thanks to that, I’ve been able to find dishes that I wanted to try in LA, but didn’t know how to order, like yookgaejang and sullungtang.

On this visit we started off with an order of haemul paejun, which is basically a pancake-like dish with seafood and onions. It can be pretty hard to find a well-made paejun; it has to have enough thickness to encase its ingredients, which included octopus, squid, etc., yet it has too be moist on the outside and crispy on the outside, which is often a feat that is quite difficult to accomplish. For $15, you get something the size of a medium/large pizza. It’s a pretty good deal in my opinion, and I don’t even like octopus.

The rest of the time we were busy cooking and eating meat. We ordered kalbi (short ribs), chicken, and pork (the most delicious of all!). Each person got a bowl of rice and an array of Korean barbecue accompaniments, which include green leaf lettuce to wrap up meat, rice, and other toppings like kimchi. I didn’t really think about taking a picture because we were too busy overstuffing our faces, but I guess if you imagine everything in the top picture wrapped in green leaf lettuce, then you can pretty much picture what the finished product looks like. It’s nice to know that I can get a taste of home (by home, I mean college and K-town, and not really home because I’m not Korean, but people think I’m Korean or want me to be Korean, but that’s another story for another sentence not consumed by commas) here in Nashville. It makes living 2000 miles away from home a little more bearable.

Seoul Garden

4928 Edmondson Pike
Nashville, TN 37211

Get Directions

(615) 445-3613