A Locally-sourced, Grass-Fed Burger in Antioch? Yes, Antioch!

360 Burger, in their own way, are the true revolutionaries right now in the Nashville burger business. 12 South, East Nashville, Sylvan Park, all have restaurant and tavern owners who set up their shops in firmly foodie-educated, BoBo territory.  The scions of the Swett Family, David & Patrick, come from a family of restauranteurs with 60 + years of Southern cooking under their belts, in neighborhoods many don't like to step into until gentrification is already well underway. The Swetts have traversed from the North to the South side, and brought good burger along with them.

 I neglected to bring a camera; my burger buddy Michael Higgins may save the day, yet. Here's going for the score, in the meantime:

Juiciness - 6.  
Kind of on the low side, here. The burger was plenty moist, but not exactly juicy. On the plus side, you won't have to worry much about dribbling.

Flavor - 9. 
Wow, really big beefy flavor, with a little kick that makes me wonder if there isn't a tiny amount of additive, along the lines of an onion soup mix.

Attractiveness - 7. 
360 offers a near picture-perfect burger. I'm not a huge fan of pretzel-dough buns, though, and there was the issue of pre-shredded lettuce.

Atmosphere - 8. 
Nice looking tavern that gets plenty of light from the front window wall. Because this is Antioch, after all, I'm not removing any points for it being in a strip mall.

Digestivity - 10.
While we all love good burger taste, no one really wants to taste it for the rest of the day. I've been to 360 twice now, and the star attraction went down clean and stayed clean, each time.

Overall - 8.
Congratulations Antioch! If you wish to say now, that you have a burger joint for hipsters, you can. Other bonuses: Yazoo on tap, and great service, too.

Note on the sides: I've tried the fries, chili cheese fries ("what was I thinking?"), and one of Michael's onion rings and wasn't very impressed with any. OTOH, I went for the burger. 

360 Burger, Hickory Hollow Pkwy.

 

Enter the Noodle: Otaku South Stirs Pop-up Debate

Sous chef William Gentry

   Yes, we are excited about all the buzz on the Nashville food scene - why not be? In addition to the great restaurants that laid the foundation for the attention we're getting, like City House, Margot & Capital Grille, and even Whole Foods & Turnip Truck, the last two-three years have brought an infusion of foodie-biz entrepreneurs who are as creative with their business model as they are with their product. I'm honestly not sure which came first: the upscale food truck, or the pop-up restaurant.

   Yet, with it all, comes some debate. When the NY Times recently sent their Atlanta bureau chief to do a write up on our food scene, for many it read like a collection of back-handed compliments. Or even just the back-hand, with no less than 9 mentions of "hipsters." I couldn't blame her, too much; we do have a good amount of signal: noise.

   Take Nashville's publicist-per-capita ratio and add it to social media flacks reaching for cool-by-association as one part of a tripod; for the second leg, consider locals who look back on Jody Faison's restaurants with nostalgia for the actual food; for the third, everyone who's eaten on the coasts and major heartland cities where food gets shipped to, as distribution points. Then sit back and listen to the debate: "they want how much for that grilled cheese sandwich?" That's basically what happened in the pages of the Nashville Scene last winter, not long after the pop-up Otaku South appeared on the map.

     I haven't gotten around to very many of the food trucks; I did once give into childhood longings at an entertainment event and order up a mocha-flavored sno-cone. As I was gulping it down, another patron commented on how awesome they were. I agreed, but questioned whether they were really $4 awesome. "But that's real coffee in there," he pointed out. I also did have the wonderfully sloppy cheeseburger. You know the one. I may again, one day.

  The crux to me, and others whose food experiences did not begin in or remain limited to Middle Tennessee, is this: authenticity and freshness never seemed really high on the priority list of the average Nashville restaurant until ever more outsiders connected and made our homes here. Now that entrepreneurs are finally picking up on and exploiting that, the ball is in our court whether or not to support them.

   I suspect a large part of the reason Nashville was always so notorious for mediocre restaurants, among the better-travelled, is because of Tennessee's bar and restaurant laws; if you serve liquor, you can be penalized for not also serving enough food. Result? The haunts that really wanted to be bars became restaurants. Wonderful places to hang out with your friends; and if the salsa was the best thing on the menu, if it actually was a particularly fine salsa, that alone could make it a great restaurant in the minds of heavily social types who chose that particular hang-out because it was, simply, a cool place to hang out with their friends and drink.

In upstate NY where I grew up, a night on the town started with dinner and then moved to your nightclub of choice. Sometimes, in reverse. In Nashville, because of liquor laws, you can head straight to the nightclub and, instead of having an aged steak or hand-made ravioli, there's a big soft pretzel waiting for you, with honey-mustard. Or maybe something more substantial - like a turkey wrap.

What this new generation of restauranteurs, especially the truck operators, is offering Nashville is an emphasis on the food experience, rather than the drinking one.

Enter the noodle. Here's what the Scene and others have already told us about Sarah Gavigan's history with ramen.

Now that I've finally had the much-hyped and, considering what's available in Nashville, maligned Otaku South noodles - two different flavors - here's what I will tell you: this is the good stuff. Everything in the bowl tastes remarkably clean, in the way that oysters taste clean if they get to you within 24 hours of the harvest. If you went to a high-end restaurant that paid real estate taxes and anchored neighborhoods, and ordered a bowl of these noodles, you'd probably get 1/3 to 1/4 size the serving at half the price. You would not blink. Neither would I.

Which leads to another question: like the way Tennessee liquor laws encourage us to lower the bar for what we perceive as good restaurants, what good thing might we discouraging when we promote, as a trend, creating an upscale, nomad, restaurant business out of a one-course meal?

Otaku South Extra Large pop-up at Marathon Music Works

 But I don't really want to wrestle over that one, today. Today, what concerns me is the question, "is it really $16 awesome?" I have to say "yes." If you're a schlep like me, go ahead and split it if you can. There is more here than noise.

Coda: ML Rose Pub

Although Higgins and I have long since agreed Burger UP is  the best Nashville has for red-meat patties long ago, and it's still pretty much true, I thought I'd come back and update you with one or two we didn't get the chance to hit at the time, and also put some time in for the new kids on the block.

The Melrose Pub (or as it's now officially known, M.L. Rose Craft Beer & Burgers, for expansion outside of the Melrose neighborhood in Nashville's untrendy South side) was already known to have a wonderful burger for some time and, in fact, Higgins and I were headed there to confirm it the fateful day we instead wound up in 12 South, chowing down on Miranda Pontes' creation. This nod is way overdue.
 

Nearly mooing

 Juiciness: 7. The burger was incredibly moist (cooked rare-medium-rare), with very little meat juice — maybe a few drops. There was more grease, though not overwhelming.

Flavor: 6. Most of what I tasted was the surrounding enhancers; cheddar cheese, mustard, bacon, bun. They were all good, though.

Attractiveness: 10. Come on, look at those pics — and that's only a bright-normal phone. I also need to bring up texture on the ML Rose burger. Its tenderness reminds me of the kind of burger I'd get back home in the Adirondacks, in a town too small to have a Sysco Foods store. The menu claims their meat is local and I've got to give them props for apparently going a step beyond: if I had to guess, I'd say this is one of the few burgers you could get in Nashville where the meat wasn't smushed (go read what Alton Brown has to say about meat proteins and texture) and frozen. At least, it looks and feels like it.

Atmosphere: 10. ML Rose has the look and feel of a blue-collar tavern, but white-collar eaters look like they belong there just as well (unless they're coming in pre-tanked from a $300 a plate fundraiser in the more tony section of Franklin Road, but that's a whole 'nuther episode).

Digestivity: 9. Very little in the after-effects & after-taste department.

Overall experience: 8. The burger rocks, true, but $4.50-$5 for a pint of Yazoo? Really?

Nashville, This Is One Reason Why You're Fat - And It's Not McDonald's Fault

I was craving Italian tonight and considered phoning Carrabbas for takeout, but the drive (each way) would have put that immediate gratification off twenty minutes longer than a stop at a locally-owned place I'd always been meaning to ... but looked a nudge pricey for fare I've never heard anyone in Nashville rave about.  I ordered up two appetizers, thinking that would be the light option. Turned out to be a joke. After eating 1/4 to 1/3 of the calimari I ordered, this was what was left:

The McCormick's spice bottle is in the picture to help give you an idea of scale for this $9 or $10 (I forget exactly which) serving. In addition, the other appetizer was about the same price, a plate of cheese fritters. Again, huge serving. A supposedly fine-dining restaurant isn't supposed to give you that much food that's so totally bad for you. Two to three times the size of what an appetizer would have carried before the rise of chain restaurants and economies of scale made it look like diners were getting fantastic deals on huge amounts of food. Even with Italian, I would never have expected a single appetizer to feed three or more in a "fine" restaurant that doesn't bill itself as Family Style, where you order one item to feed a whole table.

For freshness and taste the food itself was good; better than the average Nashville Italian, and on par with typical upstate NY fare I grew up with. But, again, trying to match chain restaurants' economies of scale with local finer-dining prices is a loser. Conscientious eaters don't want to take home fried-food leftovers; no one wants to reheat an appetizer. When we see portions this size, on food we know we're not going to reheat, our psyches tell us to finish it all NOW.

30.8%. That's the Tennessee obesity rate, according to the CDC. And it's an appropriate fraction for the size the above appetizer would have been, back when my Mom was taking us out to dinner as kids. Perhaps it's also a coincidence the obesity rate was one third then, of what it is now.

Day 10 - Burger's Up: Mary's Notes

Our intention this day was to visit another of Nashville's traditional burger dives, but the hours listed on the web were wrong and we needed something that was open already at 10:30. So we drove from the Nolensville Road area to Melrose and our second choice wasn't open yet, either. Went four streets over and Burger Up, the new venture from the owner of the Frothy Monkey, was unlocked and ready for business, or at least it was ready to serve a margarita. Here's how it went:

Juiciness - 6. Most of the 1/2 teaspoon or so of drippage was in the form of grease more than juice.

Flavor - 10. There it is, finally, a 10 from me. Local, grass-fed beef flavor wins out. Burger Up's basic cheeseburger adds caché name-brands Jack Daniels for ketchup, Cabot's for cheese and über-hip (for Tennessee foodies, anyway) Benton's bacon; I'm pretty sure the burger would have tasted just fine without them.

Attractiveness - 7. It was a lovely burger. It was ordered medium rare and appeared to have the texture of a medium-rare but the meat was suspiciously grey, not pink.

Atmosphere - 9. Very 12 South; matted steel with some vintage wood thrown in and public-house style seating.

Digestivity - 5. Getting some pangs. I'm not sure if it was from the beef, grease from the bacon or the French fries, which, by the way, were seasoned with truffle shavings. Major points on the foodie scale, for both of the latter.

Overall experience - 8. In spite of finally finding a burger with flavor that beat out Dalt's (which will make all of my hipster friends very happy with me) the overall experience was brought down by two things: the above-mentioned pangs and the less-than-stellar margarita.  Burger Up's margarita seemed to venture too much into screw-driver territory. The $11 price tag on the burger can be justified by the gourmet burger craze, the $10 inferior cocktail, not so much.

afternote: this review was written in June but circumstances prevented posting it. On a return trip the burger was just as good, and no pangs. I don't get the margarita anymore, and it's a 10 every time.

update Dec. 2011. After Burger Up! we pretty much stopped rating Nashville burgers because nothing else we'd had up to that point could touch Miranda Pontes's burger in quality. Still, the Nashville burger universe is ever-expanding and if a great one is found, I'll write about it in the future.

Burger Up!

“Now I can't complain… I've got to admit it's getting better… A little better all the time…” Paul McCartney and John Lennon

A pleasant surprise is Burger Up and 12th and Paris. I had never HEARD of this place. It IS rather new. They need to print the back story on their menu. The beef is local out of Franklin. You will pay a little more for this place and you will enjoy it. Enough foreshadowing?

The Digs: It’s an open bright big windowed clean place. The extensive selection at the bar makes you know you will probably be paying a bit more than you normally would for a burger. I had a glass of wine with my burger that fit perfectly. The staff is damn attentive and they really make you feel like they WANT you there (without being clingy.)There wasn’t a BIG crowd but definitely some regulars at 11am.

At First Sight: I did not go for my usual condiments… I don’t think they could really ‘roll’ that way. But the ‘Woodstock’ burger, medium-rare looked great. It had some hickory bacon, cheese and barbecue sauce on it. It was NOT smothered, just enough of each ingredient to make a statement about the flavor. The TRUFFLE fries came in a cute little aluminum cup. (It's not about the fries, but they were ok.)

At First Bite: It wasn’t PINK inside but definitely medium-rare, the meat wasn’t too grey and it tasted fine and fresh. My FIRST bite was overpowered by the hickory bacon but as I continued with the burger, all of the flavors came out. So much so, I wanted to keep biting… and really wished I could have had more (though there was PLENTY burger there…)

The Finish: I have never been happier to spend 9 bucks on a burger (plus wine and some baby spinach so I can feel healthy?). For the first time in many weeks I am not disappointed by my visit to an establishment. Maybe I had no expectations? I HAVE to say it is certainly getting better. Burger Up was Mary’s call – I had better come up with a great suggestion for our next visit.

Score: 9.25

Gabby's - a little hideaway...

“I know a dark secluded place. A place where no one knows your face…” Hernando’s Hideaway from the musical ‘The Pajama Game’

OK not-so-dark but rather secluded is Gabbys… best described as ‘up behind Greer Stadium.’ I like the back story on this place. A corporate guy who wanted to spend more time with his family, he opened a burger joint. The lunch hours in the beginning were mid to late week only lunch but as business has caught on, the hours are slowly expanding. Good for them, NOW – how does this stuff taste?

The Digs: Not dark but oh so fluorescent light bright. Tile floors and people get there early. A lot of blue collar workers along with city employees and some law enforcement all frequent this place. A great mix of folk and no one you would know. The folk who work there have great attitudes and are perfect for the place. If you want to be anonymous, this is a good joint.

At First Sight: I didn’t get medium rare, but I got as rare as they could go… pretty decent. It did not look as juicy as I like and the burger is a tad smaller than I like, but decent flavor. The fries were those ‘skin on the end variety’ – not my fave but it completes a meal.

At First Bite: A fully cooked burger. But not DRY. Cheese mixed well with the condiments for a better than fast food burger. The bun was a bit big BUT the bun actually added to the overall flavor of the burger for me. I guess it helps when everything is fresh.

The Finish: Gabby’s is an oddball little place. And I mean that with love and respect. It’s bright with tile… you can almost smell the Lysol on the floor. Maybe in 20 years and few less mop swipes it will settle into the cement brick greasy burger joint it can be… but the burgers are good enough not to disappoint. You can go there and hang in a crowd – everyone will smile at you and no one will care who you are. Sometimes that goes great with a decent burger.

Score: 7.7.