Nashville food and beverage scene

[BnaBreaker]

8 minutes ago, MLBrumby said:

The first TGIF in Nashville was in another building on Church (Elliston Place) at the corner at Louise... it was demolished and replaced by a 2-story building that now contains an IHOP. 

Ahh, you're right, that's the one I'm thinking of!  My mistake.

[MLBrumby]

Easy mistake... so much has changed since "way back" in the 1980s.  I only remember because I took my first date as a frosh at VU there.  LOL... I was on a very tight budget and it was before a football game.  

[donNdonelson2]

That old TGIF on Elliston was the first place I bought a drink after reaching the legal age...way back in the 70s. That place and Houston's on West End are two of the F&B outlets of the "good old days" that I really miss.

[CityHeart]

Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown Nashville edition airing this Sunday at 9 p.m. 

http://www.cnn.com/shows/anthony-bourdain-parts-unknown

[jmtunafish]

3 hours ago, BnaBreaker said:

That TGI Friday's location was the first one in the country outside of New York City.  It's weird to think about places that are now rather ho-hum watered down chains being seen as a super hip New York only spot. 

The first TGI Friday's location outside of NYC was in Memphis, not Nashville.

http://firstwefeast.com/drink/2014/04/surprising-history-t-g-fridays

[Flatrock]

2 hours ago, donNdonelson2 said:

That old TGIF on Elliston was the first place I bought a drink after reaching the legal age...way back in the 70s. That place and Houston's on West End are two of the F&B outlets of the "good old days" that I really miss.

Right there with you. I remember taking dates there in the 70s while in highschool - thinking I was a pretty big deal. :-)

[BnaBreaker]

2 hours ago, CityHeart said:

Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown Nashville edition airing this Sunday at 9 p.m. 

http://www.cnn.com/shows/anthony-bourdain-parts-unknown

Very excited about this.  Bourdain is one of my favorite...well...favorite human beings, I guess, and it appears as though he really is going to give the city the true Bourdain treatment.  No fluff pieces about honky tonks and whatnot here...we can definitely count on him getting down and dirty with the REAL Nashville.

[MidTenn1]

5 hours ago, BnaBreaker said:

That TGI Friday's location was the first one in the country outside of New York City.  It's weird to think about places that are now rather ho-hum watered down chains being seen as a super hip New York only spot. 

The first location outside of NYC was on Elliston Place. At midnight on Thursday, they would celebrate Friday as if it were New Years Day. Yeah...... that was as good as it gets back then.

[BnaBreaker]

33 minutes ago, PHofKS said:

The first location outside of NYC was on Elliston Place. At midnight on Thursday, they would celebrate Friday as if it were New Years Day. Yeah...... that was as good as it gets back then.

I've gotta say, that's a pretty cool little tradition they had going.  It's too bad the chain got so corporatized!  

[jmtunafish]

6 hours ago, PHofKS said:

The first location outside of NYC was on Elliston Place. 

Again, the first TGI Friday's outside of NYC was in Overton Square in Memphis.  Not in Nashville.

http://firstwefeast.com/drink/2014/04/surprising-history-t-g-fridays

[smeagolsfree]

14 hours ago, Jamie Hall said:

Looks like a building/rehab permit on the door and some interior work going on in the former TGI Friday's spot on West End across from Vanderbilt. Always seemed like a prime location for a good sports bar, and never could understand TGI Friday's failure there (aside from that pesky one-way street that made parking tricky). Good to see something moving back into that spot, whatever it might be.

They pulled the permit last week. Turning the one space into two spaces at this point. No word as to who the tenants will be or if they even have any tenants.

[fieldmarshaldj]

12 hours ago, donNdonelson2 said:

That old TGIF on Elliston was the first place I bought a drink after reaching the legal age...way back in the 70s. That place and Houston's on West End are two of the F&B outlets of the "good old days" that I really miss.

Used to go to lunch with the folks at either place in the '80s and then mosey on over to Mosko's Book & Pipe to peruse the new magazines.

[bhibbs]

Those of you who are older than myself, I keep telling myself that I remember as a kid an IHOP location right at that pie shaped property currently housed by Union Common (midtown, back side of Vandy, right in front of Buckingham).

Am I crazy or did that actually exist?

[PruneTracy]

2 hours ago, smeagolsfree said:

They pulled the permit last week. Turning the one space into two spaces at this point. No word as to who the tenants will be or if they even have any tenants.

One of the guys doing the work on-site said a pizza place and a Dollar General. Just saying what he said.

[etimer13]

25 minutes ago, bhibbs said:

Those of you who are older than myself, I keep telling myself that I remember as a kid an IHOP location right at that pie shaped property currently housed by Union Common (midtown, back side of Vandy, right in front of Buckingham).

Am I crazy or did that actually exist?

Yes.  It was still there in the mid-80's.  Convenient for those of us who lived in Kissam Quad.

[shanky]

2 hours ago, fieldmarshaldj said:

Used to go to lunch with the folks at either place in the '80s and then mosey on over to Mosko's Book & Pipe to peruse the new magazines.

Ahh the memories.  Thought those brain cells were long gone.  TGIF, Houstons, Ireland's, Gold Rush all represent the Nashville of my youth...Didn't Ireland's have a location on 21st as well as the old Harding mall?

[bhibbs]

5 minutes ago, etimer13 said:

Yes.  It was still there in the mid-80's.  Convenient for those of us who lived in Kissam Quad.

I was born in 84 so I thought I remembered it, mom wouldnt take me downtown very often, but, I swore to myself that it was real!

[CenterHill]

11 minutes ago, etimer13 said:

Yes.  It was still there in the mid-80's.  Convenient for those of us who lived in Kissam Quad.

Fuzzy memories here, too, but I'm pretty sure the iHop in the 80's was across the street on what's now the large VU parking lot at the corner of 21st/Broadway (directly across from Aertson).   No?  

[CenterHill]

30 minutes ago, shanky said:

Ahh the memories.  Thought those brain cells were long gone.  TGIF, Houstons, Ireland's, Gold Rush all represent the Nashville of my youth...Didn't Ireland's have a location on 21st as well as the old Harding mall?

Yes, Ireland's was there along the curve as Broadway merges with 21st.   Where Aertson is now.   

[rookzie]

2 hours ago, bhibbs said:

Those of you who are older than myself, I keep telling myself that I remember as a kid an IHOP location right at that pie shaped property currently housed by Union Common (midtown, back side of Vandy, right in front of Buckingham).

Am I crazy or did that actually exist?

That was before my time, too...

[Flatrock]

Our family tradition: Ireland's steak & biscuits with fries before Vandy basketball games. Geez, I can still taste those steak n biscuits.....

[fieldmarshaldj]

6 hours ago, bhibbs said:

I was born in 84 so I thought I remembered it, mom wouldnt take me downtown very often, but, I swore to myself that it was real!

'84 ? To quote Karl Childers, "You're just a boy !" You missed the old department stores and getting to see Harvey's downtown, it closed right about then. That was the heart and soul of downtown. I still miss it.

[bhibbs]

Just now, fieldmarshaldj said:

'84 ? To quote Karl Childers, "You're just a boy !" You missed the old department stores and getting to see Harvey's downtown, it closed right about then. That was the heart and soul of downtown. I still miss it.

I missed a lot, even in the late 80's/early 90's mom was still too scared to come downtown, even though we just lived over the river in East Nashville.
For the longest I thought people were lying to me when they said there used to be a mall downtown on Church St

[fieldmarshaldj]

4 minutes ago, bhibbs said:

I missed a lot, even in the late 80's/early 90's mom was still too scared to come downtown, even though we just lived over the river in East Nashville.
For the longest I thought people were lying to me when they said there used to be a mall downtown on Church St

I was already going to school downtown by 1984 (Johnson Middle), or at least "near" downtown. But in those days, it was strictly a 9-5 Monday-Friday affair. Come in after that and it was a dead zone, even the weekends. What little action was down on 2nd Avenue (not counting the nearby XXX shops by Lower Broad) and the Old Spaghetti Factory was almost the sole restaurant open past 5pm. Go downtown on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon (my parents and I would go to TPAC for a matinee of travel shows around the world, little more than a glorified showing of someone's slides and home movies narrated by the person who took them with just music for a background) and you'd have everything all to yourself. Park anywhere you wanted, no problem (you could even drive up to Capitol Hill without a hitch).

Sadly, because folks were now mostly shopping out at the malls of the era (Harding, 100 Oaks, Rivergate, Hickory Hollow and even a tiny Green Hills), it just absolutely killed everything downtown. Sears went, Harvey's, Cain-Sloan in 1987, and lastly Castner-Knott, which fell not long after. Then-Mayor Boner had the notion to put up Church Street Centre (and before that, the infamous Fountain Square, AKA Mistake By The Lake, which brought out all the big shots to put their hands in concrete displays - until someone figured out putting up a mall next to a housing project was probably ill-advised. It gave the locals a nice place to stroll, but they spent no money except on the movies, the sole thing that worked there).

We'd go to CSC on the weekends, but you still had the 9-5 problem the rest of the time. With not many tourists other than those staying at the then-Stouffer (or Hyatt Regency nearby), the place would go dormant except at the lunch hours. Go there at 3 or 4pm and you hardly saw anyone. On the weekends, it was just dead. There was nobody to support the mall and little reason for suburbanites to come downtown when they had closer malls and shops, and with longer hours (until 9pm). Until you had residents living downtown again (and in 1989, aside from some pioneering folks on 2nd Avenue's lofts, nobody did), a shopping mall wasn't going to work. It was sad going there every weekend to see shops closing left and right. They had a great restaurant there, 9 Points Mesa, which featured steak fajitas (a new dish at the time, at least to us), but with the worsening business, they couldn't survive.

Now with more residents each and every day, a mall concept might've done better in 2016, though malls in general are not as popular as they used to be. Anyway, I never really thought of downtown as being "dangerous" in those days, just very quiet and empty. Strange to experience "that" Nashville compared to today. Sadly, the worst losses were not being able to keep some of the downtown department stores, and the demolition of every theater. Every other major city in Tennessee has at least one "grand old" theater (not counting the Ryman, since that was a different type of venue -- I meant the movie theaters), but Nashville doesn't have one. Losing the Tennessee Theater and Sudekum Building was a travesty. The Cumberland Apartments replacing it was no prize, and that's Tony G's biggest mistake. It should've been restored and converted to luxury apartments.

[BnaBreaker]

^Ohh I remember my parents taking me downtown to have dinner at the Spaghetti Factory on occasion, and I have fleeting memories of feeling like I was in an incredibly special place that felt like another world.  All of the lights...the smells...the sounds...you might say my occasional trips to The Spaghetti Factory helped to create my interest in urban spaces and urban development.