There isn’t a ton of interesting food content for April: my long-awaited renovation finally got going at the beginning of April, taking with it my access to a kitchen at home. I’m currently living on a construction site with Zipwalls keeping the areas I’m living in as dust-free as possible.
If you’re interested in following the renovation project, I set up a system to let you get an email every time there’s a new post.
While I didn’t have the presence of mind to take any photos of the food, I had the chance to visit Nashville, Tennessee the first week of April.
It’s an interesting place culturally. On the one hand, it’s clear you’re in the South. Most obviously at least to me, the number of people smoking as soon as you walk outside the airport. At the airports I frequent, that group is shunned into special ventilated shelters to protect the rest of us. Ditto the conspicuous lack of options for the vegan and vegetarian members of our group.
On the other hand, it’s clear that, as a culturally lively urban agglomeration, it’s changing. The COVID-19 vaccination rate in Davidson County, which includes Nashville, is worryingly low, but substantially higher than the rest of the state. There are huge glass and steel apartment towers going up everywhere, even as other amenities like high-quality public transport or even grocery stores are weirdly absent in the city center.
At least while I was there, it felt more like someone had dropped a theme park in the middle of a central business district than a place like London or San Francisco where everything is woven into the same fabric.
All of which is context for the food, good and bad. There are signs of a good Mexican (or Tex-Mex) food culture. I had a couple of lunches at Velvet Taco, a medium-size chain with about 40 locations in the South and Chicago that I’d never visited before. It was good enough that I was a little disappointed I didn’t have more time to explore. If the market can support a chain like that, there must be even better options if you dig deeper. I chose Velvet Taco mostly because it was close to where I was working for a few days.
I was equally pretty pleased with one of the dinners my company did at a place called Etch. It’s exactly the kind of place the world needs more of. A little inventive, but not so much that it will alienate the less adventurous people in your life, and all very consistent.
The food scene has a lot of potential. Some of the other places I tried make me think they do have a ways to go to really live up to it.
Back at home, the end of the Nashville swing was also the beginning of my new no-kitchen lifestyle. It’s been an adjustment to say the least.
For starters, because it so incredibly expensive. I’m lucky that it’s not really a financial hardship, even if I could put the money to better use. I still struggle with how much to worry about it. In my adult life so far, I’ve gotten takeout or eaten at restaurants infrequently enough that I never really worried about how much it costs. For the two times a month I go somewhere to pick up dinner, it makes no appreciable difference to my budget if it’s $30 instead of $15 per person.
When you’re eating out every night, the difference between spending $12 at Sweetgreen and going out with a friend and spending $50 really adds up quickly. Knowing that I’m doing this so often, I signed up for DashPass, which should be a net saving. It saves me about a dollar on each order that I pick up and far more if I ever decide to have food delivered, so pays for itself pretty rapidly.
There’s also a certain lack of variety when you’re confined to fast casual food. I’ve always been a fan of the small chain Dig. It’s not complicated food, but it’s all cooked surprisingly well for a fast casual place. I could eat a bowl of nothing but their roast carrots. While I like their salmon, there’s a part of me that would love to have the option to order, say, seam bream instead.
Philosophizing aside, some practicalities.
My choices so far haven’t been all that exotic, mostly places that I already know and at least like. The most straightforward (i.e., cheapest) option is something from Sweetgreen. It’s not that creative, but it’s at least vegetable-forward and I can usually get out of there for under $15.
Close behind are the aforementioned Dig (about $15 for dinner) and Café Landwer (about $20 for dinner). The latter is definitely at the higher end of fast casual — they have wait staff in a way somewhere like Chipotle doesn’t — but I think they do a good job for the money.
As much as I take issue with the way they bastardize the cuisines of Asia, I also have to admit that I’ve gotten takeout from Wagamama. There’s a certain part of me that likes the edges-rounded-off take on something like soba noodles, and they’re at least very consistent.
A few other places I’ve tried shall remain unnamed for not doing such a great job.
And then a few nights I’ve treated myself to a meal out or something higher end. Aside from existing favorites, on one evening that I was too exhausted to even walk to pick something up, I tried Mela Indian. They did a pretty serviceable biryani.
More of the same awaits me for the month to come and through the end of June, if the construction goes to plan. I’ll do another installment in May, possibly including some charts to explore my revealed preference for takeout places around Boston.