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Review

King Solomon’s Gyros: Friendly, Fresh and Cheap

Apr 12th, 2010
by Jason Kirk.
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If you’re looking for a good meal in East Nashville but don’t have the time it takes to sit down, consider stopping by King Solomon’s Gyros at 716 Gallatin Road.

For starters, you won’t find better service anywhere in East Nashville. While Rachel and I waited behind two other cars on our last visit, the owner brought a menu out to us so we could look it over before arriving at the window to place our order. Once we got there, he was exceedingly friendly and attentive to our requests and got every detail of the order right – more than can be said for a lot of fast-food-style establishments.

The menu at King Solomon’s Gyros is diverse. There’s the standard fare that you would expect from a gyro joint, along with a few favorites like the Philly Cheesesteak and Catfish Sandwich, and a number of different salad options. There’s also a full complement of appetizers from stuffed jalapenos to fried mushrooms and hot wings, making it a low-priced option for game-day snacking. On our visit we kept it simple, opting to go with a taste of the Mediterranean and leave the American favorites for another time.

At King Solomon's Gyros, you get all three: fresh, friendly and cheap

Rachel ordered the falafel plate ($5.99) and noted that the falafel cakes were perfectly cooked with a great soft crunch. They were a touch dry on our last visit, but a little cucumber sauce is the perfect antidote to that little problem. Served on a bed of aromatic yellow rice with saffron, the falafel was accompanied by warm and tasty pita wedges. Rachel described the side salad – lettuce, cucumbers, tomato, banana peppers, and feta cheese in a vinegar dressing – as “refreshing.” The tangy peppers and potent vinegar overpowered the other flavors in the salad to a degree, especially the delicate flavor of the feta, but all the ingredients tasted fresh.

I chose the gyro combo ($5.49), my second go-round in the last two weeks with this option. At just $1.50 more than the gyro alone to get an order of fries and a drink, it’s as good a bargain as you’ll find on this side of town. The meat was tender and flavorful, juicy but not greasy, and served on a fresh roll with cucumber sauce, tomatoes, lettuce and onion. The portion size was generous without being too much to handle, though you might end up with a few leftover fries if you didn’t grow up a member of the Clean Plate Club.

I finished my meal by splitting a small vanilla milkshake with Rachel. Made with local Purity ice cream, it was a bit on the sweeter side but still made for a nice treat on a hot day. Even with the milkshake and tax included, we both ate for under $15.

Even though it’s a drive-through business, it can take a few minutes to get your food at King Solomon’s Gyros because they have a small staff and make everything to order. But with long business hours (Sun-Thurs 10am-10pm, Fri-Sat 10am-11pm), fresh food, friendly service and the affordability of a diverse menu all working in the restaurant’s favor, the wait is a small price to pay for one of the East side’s best cheap meals.

King Solomon's Gyros on Urbanspoon

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Kink Ador at Mercy Lounge

Apr 6th, 2010
by Lindsey Boise.
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I recently got a call from my brother Corey, a drummer in town, telling me he was going to sit in for a song with a band called Kink Ador down at Mercy Lounge. Most, if not all, of Kink Ador call East Nashville home, and I always love checking out the local cheese.

My wife Ginger and I met up with Corey and his wife Jen across the river at the Mercy Lounge. The room was spaciously empty, and since I’m such a rebel, that made me happy. We were there early though, which allowed ample time for the place to fill up just enough to make you feel the energy of other people without having to fight for basic survival resources like oxygen, points of escape and elbow room at the bar.

Another reason the audience had a chance to grow was because the band got started a little late, creating a buzz of annoyance/anticipation that seems to be a prerequisite for any decent show these days.

East Nashville's own Kink Ador (Photo: Ray + Wendy)

Once the sound of the crowd murmuring became a sufficient hum, Kink Ador appeared from backstage. I was surprised to see that they are a trio. I guess I expected a troupe playing keyboards, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, a washtub bass, synthesizers, xylophones, a harmonica, a laptop, their iPhones and whatever other noisemakers people pile onto a stage these days. No, Kink Ador do it simply. They are a drummer, a guitarist and a bassist/singer. The guitarist and the bassist also played trumpets from time to time. Really cool.

Guitarist Andrew Sovine had a few tricks up his sleeve and seemed to play mostly textural riffs and patterns which allowed the guitar to have its own voice, ornamenting the rhythm section rather than sitting all over it and being just another thump in the beat. There were occasional, tastefully done guitar solos which followed melodic themes from the song. He played some beautiful sounding vintage instruments, though I can’t tell you what they are offhand. In addition to the electric guitar, he also played a lap slide. Whatever the instrument, Sovine was adept and capable on his instruments and knew how to translate his skill into emotive playing.

Sharon Koltick on trumpet (Photo: Ray + Wendy)

As far as the vocals go, it was pretty hard for me to hear what vocalist Sharon Koltick was saying. Whether it was due to the house mix, her pronunciation or our position in the room is something I don’t know. From what I could hear, there was a girlish poppiness in the melody, vocal delivery and stage presence. Koltick’s vocals sat in the rhythms well, danced above them when appropriate and supplied a unifying thread for the audience to lock onto. Every so often, Sovine would sing backup. Their voices might have blended well together in other circumstances, but in this case his voice was mixed louder and sounded clearer than hers, creating a feeling of insubordination and imbalance when he chimed in.

Koltick’s duties also included the bass guitar. I am always impressed by that feat – it’s like simultaneously being rain on the roof and a brontosaurus. The bass lines were a punky throb which clung pretty closely to the songs’ chordal triads and orbited the kick drum relatively tightly. There was some more melodic movement present in the riffish licks she threw in here and there.

The solidly pounding tempo, subtle accents and dynamics, and advanced cymbal technique left me impressed with Brad Naylor‘s drumming throughout the set. His beats were designed to make us move and delivered with a restrained, focused intensity that made me wonder half-excitedly and half-fearfully what would happen if he were to let absolutely loose.

One of the benefits of being a trio is there is room to bring in other people for collaboration, and Kink Ador used that to their advantage. They brought up two unique female vocalists for a song each and my brother joined their drummer on the penultimate song to create an explosively percussive piece.

All in all, I would recommend seeing Kink Ador – their music was well played, and the mood was assertive yet fun. Not only will you be showing support for a talented group of Eastsiders, but you also might be pleasantly surprised. They definitely surprised me.

Kink Ador will play two benefit shows later this month: Light One Up for Kenya at The Basement on April 17, and the release party for the We Will Not Ignore EP to benefit Haiti at Exit/In on April 22. In the meantime, follow them on Twitter, check out their music on Myspace or connect with them on Facebook.

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Buffalo Clover’s Strong Medicine EP

Apr 2nd, 2010
by Lindsey Boise.
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One of the joys of life on the East side of Music City is that I’m always stumbling on new music not only from my city, but from my neighborhood. Recently a friend turned me onto an EP by a band I’d never heard, Buffalo Clover. Before listening I wanted to get an idea what to expect, so I headed over to their website and started looking around.

Buffalo Clover (Photo: Scott Simontacchi)

There were two things I saw there that made me nervous. For starters, they are described as “Nashville’s most eclectic band”. This filled me with trepidation, because I know it can’t be true and was worried the band themselves might believe it. I was also taken aback when I read that they call their music “Roots Music.” Any music called Roots, including one of my favorite genres, roots reggae, is an explicit misconception – only a primitively fundamental kind of music should be called “Roots”. I knew that Buffalo Clover probably wasn’t chanting, slapping their thighs or drumming on tree trunks, so I tried to interpret “Roots Music” as what it might mean to students of Americana, a style that relies on its own styles and conventions far from the roots of music.

Of course I can’t hold any of that against Buffalo Clover. Despite my reservations about their PR material, I was anxious to hear the Strong Medicine EP. After a week of daily listens Fool’s Gold stood out as the strongest song on the EP. It has the elemental arrangement of an old country song, with slide on steel in the background and haunting background ahhs in the chorus akin to the spooky ghost train records of the 1950′s. The choppy guitar rhythm through the verse opens up into a pleasant picking pattern through the chorus and singer Margo Price‘s vocal sounds warm and strong when she stays in her lower register. The line “Don’t try to hide who you are anymore” sounds sincere. The drums, especially the snare, have a a softer, more muted sound similar to the old drum kits used in gypsy camps or carnival bands.

Another highlight was the single Midnight Circus, though it has to be said that it may be better live than on record. The song is basically a party anthem. You know the formula: let people know there’s a party, introduce who’s involved and remind everyone of the fleeting nature of fun. It would work well at a live show, where the audience wants to be reminded they are indeed at a party and that it is, in fact, kicking. Unfortunately for me, my position was as a listener wanting a recap of what happened to our Midnight Circus pals at the event. I was left hanging because after the stage was set and the characters introduced, the story just stopped. That said, the song has a great rolling rhythm section, an energetic sense of forward momentum, an interesting transitive construction from the end of the chorus through a sort of pre-verse and back into the verse, and an open-skied instrumental jaunt with accordions and guitars and led by what sounds to be our best pal, la mandolina. I also love the final chorus, where Price hits her high register and blasts the song out of a cannon and into an uplifting instrumental ending.

Midnight Circus by Buffalo Clover on Vimeo

Some of the other tracks like Over the Weather didn’t stand out as much. The arrangement doesn’t do much to hide its formulaic structure, and the melody and lyrics don’t cover much ground until about 2/3 of the song is over. I do enjoy the slide guitar solo and how they close out the song with the drums kicking out and the pulsating guitar carrying the mood through to the end. In 15 Reasons, I found a similar instrumentation to Fool’s Gold, but without the finesse and dynamics in structure or playing. There wasn’t much to hold my attention until a little more than halfway through the tune when a few playful bars of an acoustic guitar flit in. For the most part, the song plods forward like a buffalo without much change, and though there may be a kernel of truth to the lyrics, they feel contrived.

Some folks may not see the importance of song order in this day of MP3s and song shuffling, but 20 Tons of Blues is an example of how a little change of position could have gone a long way. With the heavy stomp of the main guitar riff and drum beat, a vocal delivery reminiscent of Tom Petty, and both an organ solo and a guitar solo, it’s from more of a blues/rock tradition than the other songs and injects a whole other side of Americana into the mix. As the last track it ended up being a welcome change of sound and mood, where if it had been placed somewhere amid the other tracks it could have created a more eclectic experience in general.

Overall, I enjoyed Strong Medicine. It uses instrumentation, vocal style and song format to cleverly pull on my nostalgia strings. Buffalo Clover may not be as eclectic as their marketing makes them sound, but I definitely recommend checking out the EP, which you can hear for free on their website.

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Hunan Express Not So Hunan After All

Mar 30th, 2010
by M. LaVigne.
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Though a preface seems counterintuitive to the nature of restaurant reviews, I feel the need to do so in the case of Hunan Express. I typically love hole-in-the-wall shops, stands and street vendors, for their mystery and excitement add to the overall gustatory experience. I get the sense that I’m not just eating to sustain myself, but that I’m also having an adventure, which improves my estimation of the food. Eating becomes as much an emotional event as much as a necessity.

It's more "Express" than "Hunan"

That said, I don’t hold short-order vendors to the same standards that I would a sit-down restaurant charging two to three times the price. With Hunan Express or any such Chinese restaurant, I don’t expect to find fancier plates the likes of Squab with Five Spheres, or dishes made with douchi (豆豉), the pungent, bitter-sweet fermented black bean typical of the intensely flavorful Hunanese tradition and for that matter, much of China.* When it comes to short-order Chinese food I’m looking for a certain level of quality for a fair price. So even though I frequent Hunan Express semi-regularly, I’m not a return customer because the food is good. When I get home from work and I want to satisfy my craving for Chinese food without cooking it myself or driving out to China Bell in Madison or The China Cottage in Rivergate (hands down the best Chinese this side of the river), I hit up Hunan Express at 920 Gallatin Ave. because they’ve got the market in East Nashville cornered.

I understand it’s just a name, but I find something a bit misleading about a restaurant called “Hunan” having a severe deficiency of Hunanese dishes on the menu. I also understand that this is not a concern many of their customers share; most Americans want a variety of Chinese dishes to choose from, and they often want the weak-sauce versions of the Chinese originals. Hunan Express does carry one dish that has become the American standard for Hunanese food, General Tso’s Chicken. While General Tso’s is not actually from the Hunan province – most sources say Chef Peng Chang-kuei invented it while in Taiwan after the Nationalists fled Mao Zedong‘s reign – it does exhibit some traditional Hunan characteristics, a combination of spicy and salty with sour in a rich sauce. Chef Peng later altered the recipe to suit American tastes by adding sugar, and it’s this version that has proved popular throughout much of the world.

The General Tso's at Hunan Express is lackluster at best

The Americanized version of General Tso’s is often criticized for being too sweet, but Hunan Express takes this syrupy overabundance to new levels. Granted, not much can be expected from an establishment that has it listed as “General Joe’s” on their menu, but I have to draw a line somewhere. Their version of the dish upsets the careful balance of flavors and blatantly disregards the other flavors entirely, culminating in a dish that is nothing more than chicken in sweet tomato sauce. It lacks dried chilies, an indispensable and relatively inexpensive ingredient in what is supposed to be a spicy dish, and rice wine vinegar, the element that provides the dish with its delicate pucker factor, is scarcely detectable if present at all. In fact, this is a trend I’ve found throughout most of Hunan Express’ offerings. The dishes which are supposed to contain shaoxing (绍兴酒), the quintessential dry cooking wine that graces many Chinese dishes, is completely absent from their dishes, leaving them quite flat.

Hunan Express is, however, not entirely devoid of positive characteristics. It is cheap, with most dishes averaging in the $5 range for a generous portion. And as I mentioned earlier, it is the only Chinese restaurant in East Nashville – so it does have that going for it. Perhaps Hunan Express has erred on the side of pandering too much to the American palate, but with Asian cuisine doing quite well in our neck of the woods at restaurants like Far East Nashville, Thai Phooket and Pad Thai Kitchen it seems that Hunan Express could only benefit from upping its game. Or perhaps the East Nashville market is ripe for another enterprise to step up to the plate. Either would be a welcome development. (more…)

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Five Points Still Doesn’t Get The Drift Of Barbecue

Oct 14th, 2009
by Bobby Shamwell.
3 comments

Editor’s Note: What you’re looking at here is almost as much a review of all the East Nashville spots owned by Matt Charette as it is a look at his newest place, Drifters. But Bob’s review of Drifters depends pretty heavily on a familiarity with those other businesses, so I’ve left the whole thing intact. – JK

drifters

My EastNashvilleBlog.com foodie colleagues and I recently sampled the fare at Matt Charette’s newest Five Points eatery, Drifters BBQ. Before I get into my review of Drifters, let’s take a quick glance at all of the other Charette-owned East Nashville establishments.

Beyond The Edge: This sports-themed restaurant has absolutely the dumbest theme going in East Nashville. Its logo is of a rock climber rappelling a distorted martini glass. The theme matches poorly with its pub fare food – burgers, fries, pizza, quesadillas, and various sandwiches, most of which you can tell just gets microwaved.

Beyond The Edge does thrive as a drinking establishment with good alcohol variety and popular drink specials. This is the only reason to go. They should ditch the “extreme sports” schtick and simply call themselves The Place That Doesn’t Call Last Call Early. They should also stop trying to feed us.

Battered n’ Fried: The Battered n’ Fried portion is decked out with Boston-themed kitsch. Before the Red Sox won their “miraculous” World Series those several years ago, it was rare to see anything Sox around the South. Afterwards (and continuing still), all of the “fans” have come out of the woodwork. Nothing is more annoying than being surrounded by the bandwagon when you just don’t care, and B n’ F’s Boston fetishism is no exception. Another corny theme from Charette.

Food-wise, seafood lovers like myself will definitely try this place once. While B n’ F can sometimes satisfy a rare craving, frying absolutely everything on the menu gets old quickly. There’s not much variety, and southerners already deep fry everything anyway – which makes the Boston theme even more confusing. East Nashvillians who want a good pan-seared or baked piece of fish will get no help from Battered n’ Fried.

Wave Sushi Bar: Sharing the building with Battered n’ Fried is Five Points’ only other seafood option, Wave Sushi. I have to say that the rolls I’ve had from Wave are quite good. The taste has consistency; the problem is the portions you get for the price. There are endless sushi options in Nashville that are just as good, more filling, and much better-priced. Wave Sushi Bar is like eating appetizers for dinner. The appetizer bill is well over fifty bucks, making you wish you had stayed home and rolled your own.

Watanabe: In Riverside village is Watanabe, Charette’s second sushi zone and possibly his tastiest restaurant. Watanabe has Wave prices, but more variety, better portions, and better atmosphere. (It helps when you’re not eating sushi beneath Boston newspaper clippings.) I dropped a lot of money there on my birthday, but I had a good time and felt it was worth it. Mmmmm, sea urchin.

With Drifters BBQ, Charette has added another finger to his gradually-forming stranglehold over East Nashville, but can he up the already limited, and boring, food ante? Riverside Village’s Watanabe is delicious, but despite East Nashville’s reinvention of tattooed, bohemian yuppification a lot of people around here simply can’t afford to eat at places like that all the time. Can Drifters make its mark in Nashville’s barbecue world? This review is going to split hairs, but when it comes to southerners rating their beloved BBQ, that’s just how it’s gotta be. (more…)

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