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Nicki Pendleton
The Eat Beat
Nashville Banner
1100 Broadway
Nashville, TN 37203
| "Big River Grille: Out with the old, in with new dolled-up, beer-friendly menu"
By Nicki Pendleton,
Banner Food Writer(pub. Feb. 5, 1997, Nashville Banner)
While we were in and out of brew pubs trying root beers (see accompanying story), we tried Big River's new menu.
As it turns out, Big River's clientele is largely local, rather than tourist, says manager Duke DeBois, and the idea was to freshen up the menu for the regulars.
Some of the old menu is better off gone: I couldn't warm up to the fish and chips made with salmon (why fry salmon?), the quesadilla was soggy, and I didn't like the meatloaf. But it grieves me (and almost everyone else) that the homemade sausages are also gone. At lunch, the menu items all pair well with beer, if you're lucky enough to be able to drink beer at lunch. We had a smooth, smoky black bean soup ($3.95) that would be a nice match for one of the ales.
There's a rich spinach con queso dip that's mostly melted white cheese, a good match for the slight bitterness of beer, and very little spinach to spoil your cheese and beer experience.
Scrape off that frightening coat of salt and you're rewarded with a soft, fresh, yeasty pretzel ($3.25) that's a good munch by itself, but will definitely have you reaching for a beer.
There's a big, meaty steak sandwich ($8.50), smothered with sauted mushrooms and onions and swabbed with its own juices. It was made to go with one of the heavier beers, like the Blue Star ale.
We had a $10 chicken and shrimp pasta in a red pepper cream sauce we didn't much like for the overcooked meats and the bland sauce. For your $10, you'd do better with the cavatappi, ridged, curled, hollow noodles straight out of Dr. Seuss, in a basil cream sauce with chicken breast chunks.
The old working class dinner menu has been sent to charm school and returned dolled up with dishes like a fillet stuffed with roasted garlic and topped with Gorgonzola ($17.95) and a pork chop with superb apple cranberry relish, gravy and white Cheddar mashed potatoes ($14.95). Both arrived nicely cooked, in generous portions. We had fun speculating on the technique used to insert the garlic into the steak and sage pesto into the chop. Giant syringe? Surgical knife? (The effect is especially attractive in the pork, where slicing the meat in the geographic center yields a pretty green dot in the pale flesh. It's not enough to make much flavor difference, but it's pretty.)
Bypass the fishy smoked salmon, which was laughably huge (as if you'd eat this much fishy fish for $13.50) and instead get the traditional fried shrimp ($9.95).
The bread basket needs to return to the drawing board. The bread was a strange and unappealing combination of cement crust and gooey interior, yeasty and very sweet but with a bitter edge (from the beer), and, for laughs, a few chives.
Because the beer bread was a failure, we definitely skipped the stout cheesecake, but it's kind of adventurous.
It's good food and excellent beer in a pleasant setting, but I had one wish. I know very little about fine beer. Not that I haven't spent hours of ``research'' time, trying to get acquainted better. But I wish the menu suggested beers to go with the various dishes.
location:
Big River Grille & Brewery
111 Broadway, 251-4677.
Nicki Pendleton's "Eat Beat" is a regular feature of the Nashville Banner's Friday Backbeat section. All reviews are based on two or more visits. The Banner pays for all meals. We welcome your comments.
Copyright 1997, Nashville Banner |
