Metro Council candidate queries Germantown coffee shop owner on Madison plans

A pre-Christmas Twitter exchange between district 8 candidate Nancy VanReece and a Germantown restaurant/coffee shop owner on the latter's plans for a second shop in Madison (third, if you count plans for a Berry Hill extension) captured below. Offered without my comment, other than to say that I have positively reviewed The Red Bicycle in the past. But please feel free to comment yourselves, if so led:

Germantown's Swaffles sells its last waffle today

If you have been meaning to go down to 5th and Madison for chicken and waffles, you only have a few hours left. I was told by the Swaffles owner that his store was just bought out by local bakery Flour, Sugar, Eggs. According to the Flour, Sugar, Eggs website, chef and owner Gina Olds offers quiches, croissants, and scones on her menu. The folks at Swaffles told me that the bakery will keep all of the kitchen equipment, including the espresso machine, which is good news for coffee drinkers like me.

I am sad to see Swaffles leave Germantown. They knew just how this regular liked his breakfast choices. And the coffee I got there was as good as anywhere else in Nashville. Going to have to train a whole new crew now, but joking aside I do look forward to trying out the new selections at Flour, Sugar, Eggs.

North Nashville may be a payday lenders' paradise, but it is a food desert

From the Community Food Advocates' blog:

there are currently 103,100 food insecure households in Davidson County or approximately 16.8% of the population.This includes both rural and urban residents, the elderly and disabled, and about 29,100 children ....

Four Nashville neighborhoods: North Nashville, JC Napier/Southeast Nashville, East Nashville, and Edgehill/South Nashville, are still considered food deserts

The fact that 30,000 kids live with food insecurity is shameful in a civil society. I would maintain that hunger and want have more to do with poor student performance than teachers or curriculum. Word to the reformers: you cannot innovate privation.

Rezone for a restaurant in Salemtown? Don't be dazed by the dream

So, there is this rumor floating around Salemtown and promoted by certain segments that a developer on the 1600 block of 6th Av North is trying to woo owners of East Nashville burger joint, bar, and beer garden The Pharmacy to open a second place in our neighborhood (or at least to woo a restaurant "like The Pharmacy"). The 6th Av property, like most of Salemtown, is zoned for residential, so the developer would have to rezone either for commercial or mixed-use if they come to an understanding with restaurateurs.

Screenshot of 1604 6th Av N & homes from Google Maps

The developers who bought 1604 6th Av N last summer are absentee. They are Oak Tree Partners LLC of Gallatin, TN. They were founded in 2011 and they flipped another holding in their own town into a liquor store. According to Next Door comments forwarded to me, Salemtown Works (a 501c3, not to be confused with Salemtown Neighbors Neighborhood Association) president, Molly McCluer has corresponded with Oak Tree Partners. She encouraged neighborhood residents online to "lobby" The Pharmacy owners (the restaurant is owned by Terrell Raley) to open a restaurant in Salemtown. No word on which owners of restaurants "like The Pharmacy" are being so lobbied.

Now I don't question the value of having restaurants in higher density urban neighborhoods as long as there is careful planning and attention to traffic and parking impact and noise abatement. I have expressed support on this blog for a number of local businesses, including those that feature bars and restaurants. And we spend our money in these establishments to support them particularly because we appreciate the chance to walk rather than drive to do so.

But Salemtown sends the wrong signals to developers when we unquestioningly welcome them with open arms and no critical concerns. We send the wrong signals when we assume that, if we support a specific zoning change here, developers--especially absentee developers--will deliver the restaurants they float in front of our noses as wishful concepts to get their rezoning. We send the wrong signals when we appear to fall in love with their product and generally appear desperate for development when we should be asking developers to compromise to a win-win.

I live very close to the property that other people in my neighborhood who appear to live farther away want to see flipped into The Pharmacy. If I lived where they live I might want that dream, too. The reason I like going to the Pharmacy, besides the fare, is because it's across the river in East Nasty, and I do not have to worry about late-night bar closings near my property or noisy beer gardens.

But if this rezoning bobs to the surface, I will be contacting Mr. Terrell myself to ask about parking, traffic, his closing hours of 3am 7 days a week, and any amplified music played in a beer garden on top of the voices of dozens of customers on school nights. I see that he has a kid about my youngest kid's age, so he would probably understand why I would ask. I might even visit The Pharmacy late night with a decibel meter to measure the noise level myself.

Before I could support a bar and restaurant with outside service near my house on a property that is currently zoned residential, I would need assurances. And I have already talked to a couple of my neighbors who tell me they would need the same assurances. I bet I could find other neighbors who would be sympathetic, especially parents.

One online review of The Pharmacy indicates that parking is a problem in its East Nashville location. In 12South residents have been struggling with shrinking parking due to business growth for years, and the tensions came to a head in 2012. Following multiple meetings between 12South neighborhood association, the Belmont-Hillsboro Neighbors neighborhood association, and 12South businesses, affected residents have successfully navigated the parking permit application process to reserve street parking for themselves. They have a public hearing set with Metro Traffic and Parking Commission on March 11. I bet reserved on-street parking for residents will be approved.

Given that Salemtown has primarily on-street parking, support for residential permits is one thing among others that developers and business owners should be willing to give in order to get support for rezoning. One among others, like noise abatement.

Speaking of the impact of neighborhood businesses on parking, I meant to respond to Chris Chamberlain's observations about on-street parking in a Nashville Scene review of Germantown's Rolf and Daughters back in November. Chamberlain wrote:

Although Rolf and Daughters may seem to be in a remote location with no dedicated parking lot, intrepid diners will quickly realize that it is really only about a minute past the Nashville Farmers' Market and just a couple minutes from the interstate at the Rosa Parks exit. There is plenty of street parking on Taylor Street, so you shouldn't have to walk far to enjoy this new gem in the local restaurant crown.

I drove down Taylor tonight at rush hour, just before dinner time. I saw no ample on-street parking. There was ample parking if you were willing to walk at least a block to get to the place, because cars were choking both sides of the street (and what is the impact on residents who live on 7th Av off Taylor?). Taylor is so narrow that moving traffic is reduced to one squeezed lane when the ample parking spaces are occupied. Without traffic flaggers, two-way traffic on Taylor would be impossible on nights when Rolf and Daughters is slammed and on-street parking backfills for two or three blocks. Ample parking? Did Chamberlain closely look at the street before writing that?

All questions about traffic and parking impact and noise abatement must be soberly considered by Salemtown before we indulge ourselves in the seduction of developers' dreams.

I want to ride my bicycle

The Nashville restaurant business is a tough one. I've lived here nearly a quarter of a century and I've watched them come and go; birthed, prosper and blow away like ashes in the wind.

I used to buy cat food in the old Jones Pet Store in Hillsboro Village. Then I stood in the same shop on Fido's opening day at the counter (that replaced a line of fish tanks), and I ordered my first of many coffees. I also wrote half my dissertation at Fido, setting the trend early of annoying students who occupied the place for hours (except that I made a point of purchasing food and drink during busy times so as not to miff "Bongo Bob" Bernstein). Fido is one of the few places with staying power, and that makes my remembrance of its early days that much more significant.

Since moving to the North End in 2004, we have been able to rely on the Big 3: Mad Platter, Germantown Cafe, and Monell's not falling to Nashville's fickle dining market. However, newer places like a coffee shop called Drinkhaus, a hotdog cafe called Zackies and a sweets boutique called The Cocoa Tree have shuttered. (I should at least mention City House, a newer place that has held its own for several years).

And we really have not had the benefit of a bona fide breakfast place (my personal favorite for meal of the day), although Garden Brunch Cafe may qualify despite its brunchiness (and the Garden Brunch owners are salt-of-the-earth folk you should meet if you have not already). However, all of the sudden we do with the opening nearly three weeks ago of The Red Bicycle Coffee and Crepes, which previously served the denizens of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

I have now been to the Red Bike at least half-a-dozen times and I have not had a bad experience or fare. Full disclosure: my taste preferences run from savory to spicy, so I have not yet tried their sweet menu. To tell you the truth I liked the savory crepes I've had so much I may never get to the sweet side and still not regret it. I have tried at least four variations of their breakfast crepes (the "Good Morning" with meat and without, the "Wake Up" and the "Yummy Crepe") and two variations of their lunch crepes (the "Thai" and the "Bacon Cheeseburger"), and I thoroughly enjoyed every single one. Given what you might be in the mood for, each is a winner in my book.

I have to say that I have had more crepes in the past two weeks than I had in the past twenty years, so there is definitely a niche among my taste buds for something extraordinary.

The only glitch in their menu that I see is that the salsa that they serve with their chips and salsa is not what I have traditionally called salsa. It is more of what we from my corner of the southwest refer to as "picante sauce", which is thinner and less chunky than salsa. No matter. They send it out in a supersized coffee mug with a huge plate of chips that I could not finish by myself. More for sharing.

My preference in breakfast drinks runs toward the espresso end of the pool with lots of shots, and again, nothing sweet. Their breves (steamed half-and-half instead of milk) are the best I have had in our end of town (yes, better than the departed Drinkhaus, of which I was a loyal customer). They pull their shots from a cool retro machine that looks like a shade of Tar Heel blue. I have had the coffee with my meal and stand-alone, but I have yet to be disappointed in their skills. In fairness, I should mention a couple of other eateries in or near the North End whose espresso drinks are also worth a mention. Newly arrived Swaffles (across 5th from the Red Bicycle) has brewed me a mean cup of coffee the several times times I have been there. They tell me that they were schooled by some of Bongo Bob's minions (the legend becomes legacy). Also, I refer you to Garage Coffee Company a short drive away in Marathon Village. They also pull tasty java.

A big selling point of Red Bicycle for me is that they are open 6:30 am to 9:00 pm. Those hours are rare in this community and we need to avail ourselves of the privilege. If you follow their Twitter stream, you'll get daily tweets on specials they have during the evening hours until closing (2-for-1 crepes, 50% off drinks, etc). They have knocked out the cozy boutique that was The Cocoa Tree into a big, breathing dining room that bests any other shop at the corner of 5th and Madison (excluding Silo). The way things are setting up, the Red Bike could be to Germantown what Fido has been to Hillsboro Village. That is a hugely favorable comparison based on my experience.

Businesses lost in Germantown

It has not been an easy autumn for food places that anchored mixed use at the intersection of Madison and 5th Avenue, North in Historic Germantown. At the end of July, the Cocoa Tree closed. At the beginning of September, Drinkhaus closed, and earlier plans owners had to reopen the business in a larger Germantown space folded as well (I had intended to blog on this closing weeks ago). This week a Germantown resident tweeted news that Zackie's hot dog business had closed (they had previously cut their operating hours). Today Zackie's had brown paper blocking the view through its large picture windows.

On a side note, the Silo restaurant recently opened at the same intersection, and it joins several other eating establishments that are still in business in Germantown. However, the retail space at the 4h and Monroe mixed use development is still empty as it has been for 4 or 5 years.

The 3 closures were all businesses that we patronized consistently and we are sad to see them go, especially at a personal level. Their walkability was also an incentive for us. The closing of Drinkhaus in particular leaves Germantown without a coffee shop, which makes no sense to me.

Hopefully, Salemtown residents who were keen to rezone our mostly residential properties for mixed use preemptively, without any developer plans, should take note of Germantown's trends. These closures should give all of us pause before rushing to rezone.

Service marred an otherwise delicious Silo first brunch

Last Sunday we walked from our Salemtown home down to the newly opened Silo restaurant in Germantown, which bills itself as a "Southern-influenced, neighborhood bistro". On the way we passed several parties headed to the new bistro's main brunch competition: Germantown Cafe, which sits across an intersection from Silo.

We made reservations to avoid what we thought would be a crush for Silo's first brunch. While the turnout was vigorous, there was no crush. There were open tables and bar stools while were there. For the time being, that is a noteworthy contrast to Germantown Cafe. In the future that could change.

The ambiance of the restaurant is comfortably cool with large picture windows, cedar-planked walls, and a large basket weave feature overhead at the center of the dining room. The wooden tables and chairs are invitingly substantial. There is an empty outdoor patio on the 5th Avenue side that looks like it could accommodate bistro tables. The host stand was squeezed in a corner next to the front door when we were there, which caused arriving patrons to line up and hold the door open, letting house flies in. I assume this configuration could eventually let cold drafts in when winter arrives. Silo might want to find a better way to corral waiting patrons.

Water was brought to our table in recycled Bulleit Bourbon bottles, which I thought was a nice touch. However, it seemed a little late getting there with apologies from our server based on this being Silo's first brunch. I believe that we were thoroughly prepared to be patient with first brunch glitches.

I do not believe we were prepared to sit at our table for an hour and a half before our entrees arrived. I know our hungry 8-year-old was not prepared. Our appetizers did arrive sooner, though later than we expected. Our concerns about the service were salved by a tasty heirloom tomato tart and roasted corn soup buoying jalapeno hushpuppies. I never turn down fresh tomato dishes this time of year and the tart did not disappoint fruitside. The tomatoes were plump and firm with no hint of rind or blemish. They were suspended between a flaky, satisfying crust and lively basil leaves. As good as the bulk of the pie was, the crowning edge of the crust was burned. I believe that those final bites of crust should at least be lagniappe if not the perfect ending. But the tart's finish was weak.

The hushpuppies in the corn soup (itself excellent) were not too spicy (for my tastes they were not spicy enough) and they seemed baked rather than deep fried. If the chef deep fried them, they should have been more crunchy in texture.

I found the combination of flavors in the Silo burger, which boasts smoked pimento cheese, onions and pickles, to be perfect. Pimento cheese on a hamburger often strikes me as disjointed and uncoordinated. Silo's edition, more firm than creamy, was an unmatched accompaniment to the beef on the sandwich. I found no need for any other condiments, and the flavors were also well married to the thin pickle slices and slivered red onions. The "proper fries" on the side were limp and uninspired. I could not liven them up with anything. But the burger was really the crucial part of the plate and it was fantastic.

Our daughter had french toast that was light, not too sweet even though it was punctuated by peach preserves. I plan to claim that dish for myself in a future visit.

Despite our frustration with Silo's service, we enjoyed the flavor of the food when it eventually arrived. When I expressed our dissatisfaction to the staff, the chef ordered champagne for the put-out parents and the manager told us our food was on the house. We appreciated the good will, but it was also the least they could do for our inconvenience.

The fare is worthy and we will be back to Silo, because everyone deserves a second chance. Besides there is evidence to suggest our experience may have been the exception. Case in point: we watched diners all around us enjoying their food while we bore the wait on slow boil.

Will Bar Louie bring Velocity homeowners the noise?

Will "sound clouds" quiet the revels of zombies?

Comments on the Velocity Homeowners elist indicate that the Bar Louie restaurant chain is not exactly endearing itself to its new neighbors with construction noise or the potential for music reverberations to pulsate up the building once it eventually does arrive in The Gulch. Residents above the planned restaurant are awakened at 7:30 each morning lately to the sounds of pounding and sawing construction down below.

Originally, construction crews told concerned residents that soundproofing inside walls and ceilings was not in the plans. A former Bar Louie employee told them that the company's brand includes mounting speakers inside the restaurant's ceilings and cranking up music with "thumping bass" until 2:00am. That conflicts with what BL owner Anthony Marougi told a Velocity homeowner who called their Michigan corporate office. According to Mr. Marougi, the company plans to put in "a layer of spray foam soundproofing on the ceiling" and hang "sound clouds" from the ceiling to absorb noise.

Bar Louie ownership has promised Velocity leaders that they will be coming to Nashville soon and they pledged to meet with leadership. We shall see whether the owners are good neighbors or homeowners might awaken at some future time to the noise of early morning "Kegs & Eggs Parties".

Every next big thing has a next big flip side

There is a lot of buzz in the mainstream media and local social media about food trucks. They are today's latest rage. While food trucks are fun and novel (for those who've never noshed at a roach coach), they also have unintended consequences for neighborhoods that require some forethought toward regulations. For instance, should food truck owners be held responsible for litter that their customers throw down? Should a food truck be allowed to blare Tijuana Taxi for hours straight? Can a food truck set up shop anywhere on or off the street? What obligations does the vendor have to protect public health?

Real life concerns may be a buzz-kill on food truck fun, but these are important issues to people who live in the vicinity of these good times. Jump to a draft of the regulations Metro Traffic and Parking is considering for mobile vendors.

A locavore muses

The blogging maven on farmers markets considers how challenging eating locally is:

The cold hard truth is that eating locally is a lifestyle, and it’s tough. You actually have to spend some time outside in the heat and shop for your food and then you have to prepare it when you get home.  I can’t tell you how many times I have thrown out local produce that went bad just sitting in my fridge. It’s hard and it’s frustrating.

Metro Health goes to the dogs

Goodness knows, I have documented my inability to convince Metro Animal Control (a subsidiary of the Metro Health Department) to respond to my reports of stray dogs in Salemtown. So, I have not been surprised to see reports coming in lately that Animal Control will not give neighborhoods relief or satisfaction from wanton strays.

The Salemtown e-list tells of unchecked strays and unreturned phone calls, even from Metro Health. Salemtown officers have invited Animal Control to business meetings, but have been jilted. Recently, the Highland Heights neighborhood association received a commitment from Animal Control to send a representative to their business meeting, and as elsewhere, no controllers showed.

Neighborhood leaders are corresponding on how to deal with Animal Control neglect, but in the meantime, the Metro Health overlords seem to be too preoccupied with running interference for an attempt to permit dogs in restaurants to concern themselves with preventing the mutts from running the streets:

[According to a proposed dogs-in-diners bill] dogs must be kept on a lease and will not be allowed on chairs, tables or other furnishings ....

"The restaurant would have to be constructed as such the dogs can enter [the outdoor dining area] without have to go through the restaurant, there can be no co-mingling of food bowls to food preparation products from the dogs to the restaurant itself," Brent Hager with the Metro Public Health Department explained. [Incorrect spelling in the original online story left unchanged]

The shame of this laughable proposal is that allowing dogs in eateries requires oversight and enforcement, which in turn require resources and administration. At a time when Metro Health officials neglect community complaints about strays and fail to muster an ambassador of good will or two to be available to neighborhood associations, their attention to the petty conveniences of canine canteenery is queer.

2010 Nashville flood: Jefferson Street restaurant owner discusses affects on her business

Germantown to Look at Drinkhaus Owner's Plans for New Venture on 4th Avenue

Word on the street is that Historic Germantown is meeting on Wednesday to take a look at Kat Roo's plans to renovate an old electric company building at the corner of 4th Avenue, North and Madison Street. I've heard that she is proposing a restaurant for the building. However, I also heard that the roof will be designed for tennis courts, and the structure will include a parking garage. Bricks from the building will be used in the sidewalk surrounding the new business. Feel free to comment with any other information you have about the proposed establishment.

Owner of SoBro's Sole Mio to Donate Dinner Sales to East Germantown's Nashville Jazz Workshop

This one's for all of you Sole Mio fans and jazz aficionados from the Nashville Jazz Workshop's newsletter:

[Sole Mio] owner Debra Agnoletti is also an NJW vocal student and supporter, and is creating a special night for NJW at the restaurant. The evening of Tuesday, August 25, 50% of all dinner sales will be donated to NJW! This is a fantastic opportunity to feast on great fare and help support the Workshop at the same time. Be sure to tell all your friends about this. You'll want to make reservations in advance for this event, which you can do by calling 256-4013. We'll see you there!

Council President Pro Tem Greg Adkins Redefines "To Regulate" as "To Punish"

Apparently, the writers of our Metro Charter should have held off several decades and talked with Council Member Greg Adkins before writing that the Metro Board of Health should exercise administrative functions pertaining to the regulation of privately owned institutions for the purpose of sanitation and public health. CM Adkins, who while filling in for Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors broke the tie to move an anti-regulation bill on to second reading, obviously has a better grasp of how the Health Department should function than did the writers. After all, this is what he just told the Tennessean tonight:

In this day and age of where we are with the economy, I don’t want to punish restaurants in any way, shape or form

Well, perhaps Metro should also stop doing those health inspections and scoring restaurants on hygiene and food storage. If regulation amounts to punishment, why ask the Board of Health to apply and enforce any rules?

Greg Adkins should have made a more presidential argument for his tie-breaker (which could eventually constitute a veto of Health Department rules, if this bill passes all three readings) than "regulation equals punishment."

Somewhere between Store-Bought Bagels and Prosciutto on Ciabatta Lies My Brand Loyalty

I had the chance to make my first dives into two new coffee places this week, and relative to the java and fare that I can get elsewhere, I found them somewhat lacking.

• Edgehill Studios Cafe in Edgehill Village markets itself as "music row's favorite cafe." It has a good open layout with lots of table space and free wi-fi for surfing and keyboarding. Parking is an adventure at crowded hours. I dropped in to pick up some breakfast between 10:00 and 10:30 only to discover that they had stopped serving breakfast. But wait. This is music row, right? The musicians I've known here are not farmers; they stay up and sleep late, so how can "music row's favorite cafe stop serving breakfast bagels before 10:30? Anyway, I settled for just a bagel and cream cheese, and I was given what looked like a small store-bought bagel and a tiny tin of cream cheese not packed on site. The third strike was that the cafe couldn't make my breve because they were all out of half-and-half. A coffee joint out of half-and-half? That's a gastronomic foul in my book, even with so many drinkers watering (literally) their javas down with skim milk. I bet they keep the hazelnut flavored syrup overstocked. The espresso fell a little flat for me. All of those early-rising musicians can have their favorite Edgehill Studio Cafe.


• Drinkhaus (in Germantown) opened with a lot of hyper-local fanfare here, and so I was looking forward to my first walk to a coffee shop this morning. I'll confess my bias right off and admit that I'm rooting for a neighborhood place in this walkable community to succeed. The place is small-to-cozy but bright and clean. Its size restricts it to a shop either to get coffee and linger at non-peak hours or to get coffee on the go. I was fortunate on both accounts this morning, but Drinkhaus seems to have the potential to feel claustrophobic if a half dozen patrons hit it at once.
  
  The espresso is fair trade, which made buying my double 8 oz. breve a pleasure this morning. What let me down is that even after I called the drink by name the barista asked me what kind of milk I wanted in it. Doh! And she asked me size I wanted. Double-doh! Once I got the drink things got better and it was a fair trade for me as I paid about 35 cents less for it than at other establishments. That average-guy solace was offset by a menu that looks a lot like the aristocratic neighborhood that Germantown is fast becoming: prosciutto with honey and pear on ciabatta (did I spell the Italian correctly?), and no bagels.
  
  The tipping policy is not exactly worker-friendly, either. Even in our check-card-based culture, there is no place for the tip ticket. Customers have to leave cash, which means that customers who tend not to carry cash don't tip even though they may want to. There's really no excuse for not providing a tip line on the bill for the sake of convenience. It ain't right that Starbucks omits a tip line, and it ain't right that Drinkhaus does likewise.
  
  In the final analysis, I will be going back and supporting Drinkhaus, because the concept of fair trade coffee with good flavor in the walkable community is an appealing one. But they haven't yet impressed me enough to pull me away from regular excursions to Crema (my personal favorite, which had attempted to locate in Germantown before Drinkhaus only to be stopped by the neighborhood association's failure to vote to allow commercial development in the same mixed-use building) or to alter my pit stops at Fido or J&J's on the way to work.

CORRECTION: John Horton points out in the comments that it was the Summer Street Lofts homeowners association (not HGI) that was vested with approving commercial use.

Cavalcade of Capitalists: Cheesecake Factory Serves Highly Contagious Infections with Dessert

From DMI's panel discussion on paid sick leave:

I'm all ready to go to Green Hills for some factory cheesecake now.

Coolest Coffee Bar Design

It has to be Crema's use of solid-wood antique doors laid end-to-end as the side-paneling for their bar. What makes this bar-skin the coolest is that the skirt boards are notched to accommodate the weathered iron door knobs, which sit suspended an inch or two off the floor. After closing, when the skirt boards become mop boards, it probably doesn't make swabbing the floors easier, but it is definitely a subtly charming appointment during open hours.

Zackies Hot Dogs Owners Soon to be Living in Salemtown

According to the Salemtown e-mail list, the owners of Mike's famous hot dog establishment, Zackies, bought a Salemtown house and will soon be moving in. Welcome to S-town, Brandi and Mike!

Now, the rest of ya'll go buy some dogs underneath the Summer Street Lofts! They have a mortgage to meet.

Crema Coffee Naming Contest

Crema owner Rachel Lehman is issuing a challenge to all java lovers, and she is offering what looks like a very fine award: free coffee for a week.

Here's my idea: Joe Talk Thai