Date Evening is a multipart highway map for everybody who desires a pleasant night out, however has no time to plan it. It’s for individuals who need to do extra than simply go to at least one restaurant and name it an evening. It’s for overwhelmed mother and father who don’t get out typically; for mates who go to the identical three eating places as a result of they’re too afraid to attempt someplace new; and for busy people who hold forgetting all of the locations they’ve pushed previous, heard about, seen on social and stated, “Let’s do not forget that place subsequent time we exit.”
When my household moved from Pittsburgh to Franklin within the late ’70s, my grandparents questioned aloud if we’d have operating water. All they knew of the South was the TV collection Hee Haw, during which actors in overalls advised jokes in a cornfield and used empty moonshine jugs as musical devices.
When Grandma and Pap Pap Antrilli visited, the huge inexperienced areas round city unnerved them due to a lifetime of metropolis dwelling. However they braved the wild to stroll Music Row and have lunch in Franklin, the place my mom took her mom to Miss Daisy’s Tearoom in a nook of outlets known as Carter’s Court docket.
Miss Daisy, who died at 80 in 2025, was recognized for her scorching baked hen salad (topped with potato chips) and the concept each buyer would go away as her pal. My Grandma — a full-blooded Italian who had by no means been outdoors of southwestern Pennsylvania or had a glass of tea punch in her life — took this actually. Because the household story goes, Grandma met Miss Daisy on one go to, then returned years later, beckoning her from throughout the room, “Miss Daisy, it’s me! Julie Antrilli from McKeesport!”
In the identical vein, this Double Sean Brock Date Evening — a enjoyable idea for which I can’t take credit score (due to my pal Cara) — isn’t constructed on the concept Chef Brock is on website, and even all that linked to the eating places he began anymore. On this stage of his profession, Brock creates eating places, we flock to them, and he strikes on to the following restaurant to which we’ll flock. Not like Grandma Julie, I don’t want him to recollect me from his James Beard observe dinner on the Hermitage Resort’s Capitol Grille in 2005. Or the vegetable plates I cherished at Husk. If I did, I might’ve talked about it one of many many occasions I’ve seen him on the White Bridge Street Dealer Joe’s, the place he’s simply one other man with a crimson basket, gathering the makings of a meal.
Upstairs at Audrey
Cease 1: Upstairs at Audrey
Once I first visited Audrey a pair years in the past — trusting Brock and his workforce with a one-night-only dinner with well-traveled mates from California — I blew proper previous the lobby. This time I observed the hanging quilt and dried bunches of lavender, plus the soundtrack of chirping crickets — all meant to set the tone for a contemporary Appalachian expertise based mostly on the model of cooking he discovered from his grandmother.
My Grandma — and Brock’s — would doubtless balk at $19 for strawberry pretzel salad, even when it was probably the most genius model ever made. However that’s what advantageous eating prices in our nation lately, with all of the rising prices of operating a restaurant baked in. It’s additionally what makes Upstairs at Audrey, a 30-seat bar that shares the highest ground of the constructing with the at the moment defunct June and a analysis and growth lab, refreshing in additional methods than one.
One flight up, surrounded by artwork, crops and dried flowers hanging from the lights, every part (besides the $15 burger) is $5. My husband Dom and I paid $30 plus tip — the worth of two cocktails in most Nashville bars — for a bourbon drink with mint and lime; a super-cold inexperienced chile tiny tini in a small glass bowl; a plate of completely salted tallow fries with ketchup; three meat-and-cheese-filled hushpuppies with comeback sauce; a silver ramekin of room-temp pimento cheese plus flatbread crackers; and 4 pickled egg halves, which we dipped in Audrey’s creamy scorching sauce that needs to be bottled and out there on the market.
How splendidly uncommon to not overpay for well-made, well-executed meals. It wasn’t sufficient for dinner, nor was it imagined to be — nevertheless it was simply sufficient to maintain us by way of Cease 2.
Cease 2: Grimey’s and Anaconda Classic
The nine-minute drive from Cease 1 to Cease 3 contains the stretch of East Trinity Lane house to Grimey’s New & Preloved Music. Brock has no stake in certainly one of Nashville’s most beloved report outlets, however he’s integrated vinyl into lots of his ideas, most notably the 5,000-album library on the defunct Bar Continental at Grand Hyatt Nashville and a hi-fi lounge at his L.A. spot, Darling.
Grimey’s, which moved from its Eighth Avenue South location in 2018, looks like strolling right into a church of vinyl for good motive. Previously the Level of Mercy Church, it’s 4,000 sq. ft of latest and used data, CDs and books with a stage for reside exhibits within the sanctuary, plus all of the extras you need in a report retailer — T-shirts, postcards, magazines and free posters.
I like a very good report store or bookstore in the midst of my Date Evening, as a result of Dom and I get to uncouple for some time and discover on our personal. He can debate whether or not he wants Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? on vinyl whereas I stare at a Joan Osborne album cowl, making an attempt unsuccessfully to recollect what her in style tune was within the ’90s. Then we reunite by a basket of cassettes, the place Dom opens Weapons N’ Roses’ Lies to indicate me the bare folks on the liner notes.
We did the identical factor at Anaconda Classic, which sits immediately behind Grimey’s, previous the wall of album cowl murals. Dom requested if I wanted an Ice Dice “At this time Was a Good Day” T-shirt. I shook my head no when he pulled out a males’s tank high with the bars of Key West drawn on the again. We tried on sun shades that lined our entire faces. He stated mine weren’t even touching the bridge of my nostril however have been being held up by my cheeks, which is such a Dom factor to note.
Caesar salad, spicy marinara pizza and mushroom pizza at Sho Pizza Bar
Cease 3: Sho Pizza Bar
If I needed to guess on which of Brock’s present Nashville ideas will dangle across the longest, I’d put my cash the place my mouth is, was and might be once more within the close to future — Sho Pizza Bar in Riverside Village. I say this not solely as a result of it’s troublesome to get a reservation between 5 and seven:30 p.m. any day of the week, even weeks prematurely, but in addition as a result of, high to backside, it simply feels proper.
Even if you happen to don’t perceive what Tokyo-inspired, neo-Neopolitan pizza is — or care that the dough is fermented for 3 days, or need to lavatory down your mind with the origin story of the title (brief for the Japanese shokunin, which means “grasp of your craft”) — Sho is a strong, barely elevated neighborhood pizza joint the place anybody may really feel comfy having a solo Italian sausage pizza with Taleggio cream on the pizza bar on a Tuesday, or sharing bruschetta, olives and slices of a bianca, salumi and mushroom with a bunch on Saturday night time. Sho pizzas are served entire, so that you’ll reduce these slices your self with scissors from a utensil crock on the desk, which isn’t as messy because it sounds.
The Japanese affect is refined: katsuobushi (skinny slices of dried, fermented and smoked skipjack tuna) within the Caesar; a uncooked bluefin tuna appetizer over puffed rice served with purple-tipped gem lettuces for wrapping; a couple of sakes on the wine checklist, together with from Nashville’s personal Correct Sake; and the unconventional addition of yuzu to an Arnold Palmer.
It’s exhausting to think about Brock ever feeling like he’s mastered his craft. This can be a good factor. I don’t need to see him stretching dough at Sho; I would like him out on the earth, tinkering and tweaking, dreaming about what to feed us subsequent.
