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Nicki Pendleton
The Eat Beat
Nashville Banner
1100 Broadway
Nashville, TN 37203
| "Capitol Grille: Downtown spot still a winner despite new faces"
By Nicki Pendleton,
Banner Food Writer(pub. June 13, 1997, Nashville Banner)
Capitol Grille has been on my heartily recommended list for a couple of years now: when people call for a suggestion, I suggest the grill for its pretty surroundings and opulent food. But I stopped doing that recently with the change of chefs from Guillermo Thomas, who put Capitol Grille on the map, to Larry Grosshans, a corporate chef for Starwood Lodging Group, which recently acquired the hotel.
Nothing personal: I don't know the new chef. It's just that my job is to give accurate restaurant recommendations, and I hadn't returned to Capitol Grille to check the quality of Grosshans' work. I have a reputation to protect, too.
So it's with great relief that I report that the food at Capitol Grille has adhered to high standards despite the change in chefs and ownership.
This is no small feat. Think how often you've visited a favorite eatery to find that the food simply wasn't as good, or that your favorites had disappeared from the menu. I can't think of a single instance where a restaurant's food improved after a change of ownership or management. Far more often, it can, and often does, mean the beginning of the end, even if the new personnel are bright and talented.
But Grosshans is holding up the same high standards that made the Capitol Grille such a worthwhile destination.
At lunch, treat yourself to the luxurious cream of roasted onion soup ($4.95), a thick, slightly sweet puree of caramelized onions, and thinned with a little cream. Soup of the day, a chicken soup with honey and thyme ($3.95), was complex and intriguing for the first several bites, but the novelty of the sweet undertone wears off after a while.
My favorite lunch dish, the crawfish tail salad ($7.95), remains as big and beautiful as ever. Wild greens topped with tender and spicy fried crawfish tails, bold blue cheese and vinaigrette dressings sounds simple, but every bite is hot, sour, crunchy and tangy. A topping of frizzled leeks makes it maybe even better than ever. Grilled salmon over greens with its superb fresh vegetable and orzo salad on the side ($9.25) doesn't have the personality of other dishes, but if you're on a zero tolerance diet, it's a good choice. Lately there's been a lot of menu abuse of the term ``jerk.'' I've eaten two dishes labeled ``jerk'' that had not a whisper of jerk seasoning. One of these was at Capitol Grille, where a tender little roasted chicken with a melon salsa is utterly delicious, with crispy parts and tender parts, but it's not jerk ($7.95). We wished the menu had just called it roast chicken.
On the dinner menu, the tuna ($18.50) is everything you love about sushi, including high-grade fish, white rice, sinus-dilating wasabi, pickled ginger, and a plateful of colorful stir-fried vegetables. Since it's mid-June, the winter-warming winemaker's menu of escargots in burgundy sauce with orange zest ($8.95), and an entree of venison tenderloin ($24.50) seemed a little out of season. Both are delicious, and beautifully paired with popular, inexpensive wines (marked up, naturally), but heavy, rich and flavored with winter ingredients like red onions, orange zest and cranberries.
The winemaker menu changes weekly, and for those adventurous diners who want to see the chef strut his stuff, this is the place to look.
World-class desserts have always been one of Capitol Grille's hallmarks, including the best creme brulee and the best slice of cheesecake I've ever eaten.
When you order the banana cheesecake, you can smell the baked banana scent as soon as the cake is near the table. Every light-textured bite melts on the tongue in such an extraordinary way that you almost forget the extras, like a crunchy chocolate crust, a custard sauce and whipped cream.
Creme brulee arrived in a big slab of soft, glowing ivory. It's deceptively light and just sweet enough, and adds a few sheets of crisp pastry and some crushed nut brittle for a crunchy counterpoint to the soft creme.
On our dinner visit, we had a service glitch or two, such as a 10-minute wait for the glass of wine paired with my first course and a mis-totaled bill. I've heard similar anecdotes from other patrons. At our lunch visit, the restaurant was jammed with unexpected customers. There weren't even enough menus for all the tables. Nonetheless, the kitchen still managed to turn out food that crosses that elusive line from very good to perfectly astonishing. I don't, very honestly, know how they do it.
But I'm relieved that they do, and that I can recommend it confidently.
location:
Capitol Grille
In the Hermitage Suite Hotel, 231 Sixth Avenue North, 244-3121.
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 |
