Since its opening last year, it's seemed as though Nashville was all abuzz over The Southern Steak & Oyster restaurant in the bottom of The Pinnacle building downtown. I admittedly did not visit for quite some time because I feared it was a little too snobby for my taste.
Also, I placed too much emphasis on the oyster bar portion of this place and turned my nose up at the idea. Despite the amounts of gulf coast sale water that swim through my veins, I just really can't bring myself to swallow the slippery, horseradish-spiced bivalves. And, since I know you're going to ask, yes, I have tried them Rockefellered and Bienvilled and Orange Beached (which is the term I use for fried and served up po' boy-style) and I just can't bring myself to love them.
All that to say that it took me quite a few months to finally patron The Southern. And once I did, I immediately wondered what took me so long. We went for brunch, which has become my favorite meal of the day. Good brunches should be long and lingering and involve many bottles of mimosas.
The Southern delivered on that ideal. Although housed in a relatively new Downtown building, the atmosphere and the black-and-white tiled floor tricks you into thinking the place has been there for ages. The seating is comfortable, and the large windows give a great view of the street outside.
The brunch menu includes carafes of mimosas for $14. Our group of 8 shared several carafes equally; a much better deal than paying $4 per glass. (Which is actually a decent price for a brunch beverage in this city.) Plus, who doesn't love their own carafe of champagne cocktails at their table? Others at the table raved about the Bloody Mary, but that is another foodstuff I just can't swallow. So I'll take their word for it.
The brunch menu featured so many delicious items, I could hardly settle on any one dish. I finally opted for a southernized version of a classic: traditional eggs Benedict with a large slab of southern-fried ham atop golden fried green tomatoes. Served with a side of biscuits and honey, it was a perfect choice for a blustery February morning.
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| Eggs Benedict atop Fried Green Tomatoes |
The downside to this delicious meal, though, was the service. We did make reservations, which I highly recommend, so the wait up front was not unbearable. However, our server really started slacking toward the end of the meal and took forever to refill our drinks and bring our checks. We had all reached that miserably full point (for which the only cure is stretching out on the couch), and we were more than ready to surrender our table to those waiting outside. But it took nearly 20 minutes for him to bring our checks and collect our payments.
I won't let the less-than-stellar service keep me from returning, though. The food was pretty darn good!
