Lucky Bamboo: Good Chinese and Nashville Food, Together At Last?

     Nashville restaurant goers pretty much gave up on having anything like a Holy Grail for Chinese food in the area, long ago. There have been any number of kitchens in every area — Nolensville Road, Green Hills, Midtown, North,  Downtown — over the years that serve passably okay meals. Buffets, more. What's typical is a restaurant will have one thing on their menu they do very, very well, but everything else, not so much. You'll get good Garlic chicken here, great green beans there, and amazing sweet & sour pork on another side of town. Cheap, frozen ingredients probably don't help.

All photos ©2013 Mary Brace all rights reserved.

    A lot of people did enjoy going to Lucky Bamboo for Dim Sum, though, and were disappointed when it shut down last spring. However, new owners have taken over, and it's the same crew that gave Chinatown (Green Hills) a make-over, much to the Scene's delight.

    Lucky Bamboo only re-opend on Thanksgiving Day of this year and the current verdict is: they're still finding their feet, but it's worth supporting while they try to work out the kinks. I went with a group of 8-12 on both visits and each time, some of us were thrilled with our take, and some were deeply disappointed.

   First a look at what Lucky Bamboo is doing right:

   Reaching for authentic: Appetizers include chicken feet (although I can't say I enjoyed it) and and wontons stuffed with real crab meat and two types of cheese, neither of which come in a little silver cardboard box and foil wrapper.

     Pretty much anything in chili oil seems like a safe bet, as long as you like spicy food. Wontons in chili oil, cold noodles in chili oil, and whatever meats they cook in chili oil are making people happy. The pic on the top left is Lucky Bamboo's Chongqing chicken and everyone enjoyed it. The kitchen will spice it up or down to order.

      Cold noodles: something I never saw on Nashville's Chinese  restaurant menus until now. Lucky Bamboo offers two versions, one in sesame oil and the already mentioned chili oil version for people who like it a little spicier.

     Firecracker shrimp was another winner, with a crunchy exterior and tender interior.

     What people are less than thrilled with, so far, are the doughy things. I was served curried potato puffs that were deliciously spiced but the dough was on the heavy, condensed side. Scallion pancakes were another disappointment, as they were too greasy to enjoy and weren't very flavorful to begin with.

     Service is also still very spotty. I get the feeling that they're still working out the plan for who does what, and have some inexperienced people on their wait staff.

    On opening day, the servers seemed flat-out overwhelmed by a packed house, so that was easily forgivable. There were mix-ups in who got what. On the second visit, I was a few minutes late joining my party and our waitress passed the table several times until I flagged her down. Another who arrived late had the same experience. After a water spill, the busser who came to clean up neglected to come back with a mop for the puddle on the floor. I had to get up and find a manager. Most eaters had some food delivered in a timely manner, while others were kept waiting for ages.

   So, it's not the Holy Grail. Not yet. But it's still worth going back to be taunted a third time.

Nashville Hot Chicken Day 5: Pepperfire

All photos ©Mary Brace 2013. All rights reserved.

For this one, it's back to East Nashville, the acknowledged home of Nashville Hot Chicken. Pepperfire restaurant, on Gallatin Road, opened in 2010 as a walk-up, cinder-block joint with a barred window. The barred window is still there, as a reminder that hey! you're on Gallatin Road! In East Nashville! and you just have to deal with it.  Improvements have come in the form of a covered shelter and picnic tables so that, if the barred window doesn't put you off, you can eat in.

 

       Pepperfire has two things on its Nashville restaurant menu that you do have to try at least once in your life: Tenders Royale, which consists of chicken tenders served over a deep-fried, grilled cheese sandwich (it's hard to wrap your brain around it without actually seeing it) and Applefire, which I had on the day of this visit. Applefire is a take on chicken & waffles, but with apple pie filling as the sweetener instead of syrup. Of the two, it's probably the one you're more likely to ever order a second time, if you're not a frat member.

     Pepperfire serves its heat 5 ways: mild, medium, hot, extra hot, and extra, extra hot. I've always ordered hot, and had a bite of a friend's extra hot and wondered if they had the orders mixed up. Pepperfire's hot is DAMN hot. And they don't have a soda fountain, so you don't get free refills. Just warning. They'll tell you at the window that their heat level will be equal to two steps up from the average Hot Wings order. As finding genuinely good, hot, Buffalo style wings is a quest of its own, in Nashville, I'd say they are perhaps one degree above.

Tenderness: 6. Decent, but not exceptional.

Moisture: 6. Again, not remarkable. Definitely not dry, though.

Grease: 10. This is one area where Pepperfire excels. They don't use breading to coat, and what goes on the chicken after its fried is a pretty dry rub. There's very little coating, beyond the rub itself, to hold grease.

Flavor: 7. You will notice the actual chicken flavor for up to 5 seconds before the heat kicks in.

Atmosphere: 5. In spite of the barred windows, it's not a bad space. It's just pretty obvious that it's not a space where the owners want anyone hanging out for long periods.

Sides: 8. I've never actually had any of their sides, but am giving Pepperfire's Nashville Hot Chicken  bonus points for creativity with Applefire and — yes — the Tenders Royale.

Overall: 7  I don't think Pepperfire's chicken is the best in town, but the overall vibe, originality and affordability make it worthy a return trip, anytime.

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.

All photos ©Mary Brace 2013. All rights reserved

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.

Day 5: Rotier's - Mary's Notes

Today we took on Nashville's most famous burger joint in its most infamous neighborhood (prior to the rise of East Nashville, Elliston Place was renowned as the "Rock Block" for decades). What makes the Rotier's burger is that it's one of the few - maybe only - in Nashville that's freshly ground on-site; you really can taste the difference.

Juiciness - 10. When you pick up your burger and two-three teaspoons of deep reddish, brownish juice spill out on your plate, you know you're in good hands and the cook hasn't been flattening your patty with the spatula. 


Flavor - 4. I've had Rotier's on several occasions and while today's burger had as much old-fashioned hamburger taste as any other day's might, it also carried a trace of "meat sat in the refrigerator one day too long" taste. Not enough to send it back, but to make me think that I might not want to return early in the week, if you know what I mean.


Attractiveness - 6. It looks like a real-burger burger, but the French bread bun it's supposed to be famous for was disappointingly un-French breadlike. Next time I'll happily settle for the plain-bun bun.


Atmosphere - 9. Awesomely divey, with wood paneling, Christmas tree lights, neon signs and booths.Good beer selection, too.

Digestivity - 4. Another area that disappointed me today. Maybe the meat did, indeed, sit one day too long.

Overall experience - 6. I want to specify this being judged on today's - and only today's - meal. Now that we're comparing all these great places side by side, or meal by meal, this was a real disappointment. Come on, Rotier's, you can do way better than this.