Fork Time!

See you tonight at Iron Fork! Doors open at 6 p.m. at LP Field—I mean, Kitchen Coliseum. Tune in tomorrow for complete coverage, and be sure to say hello if you see us.

Table Manners

Tonight is Dining Out For Life, so if you dine in any one of 55 restaurants a portion of your bill will go to Nashville Cares' programs for people living with HIV/AIDS. I'd love it if you'd join me at Wild Iris.

Which brings me to this: I've been busily arranging a group of diners for the Wild Iris. It's a good thing I'm not in charge of the reservation book on a regular basis, because I clumsily stacked the dining room with a flight of 7 p.m. reservations. I can only hope the folks at the Iris can forgive my ham-handedness. But it brings up a point I'd like to discuss.

I recently got a question from a reader asking about seating protocol. She and a friend had an early reservation in a chic new hot spot, where they ordered dinner and a few drinks and were still sipping cocktails when their server asked them to please vacate their table for the next group. Needless to say, she felt a little dissed, especially while other groups were drinking cocktails, sans dinner at the adjacent tables. Is this standard operating procedure? What should happen in this type of situation?

Congratulations to Molly F. and Sloopy

We have two winners in our concurrent contests for the Iron Fork tickets.

As much as we hate to reward anyone for introducing the notion of pork belly-flavored pig rectum into the collective consciousness, we gotta give it up for Molly F.

Equally creative was Sloopy's recipe for the Vacation Sunburn Madwich—grilled pineapple, coconut mayo, slow-roasted pork and bacon on Hawaiian bread. Like they say, tan fat is better than pale fat.

You can collect your pairs of Iron Fork tickets at Will Call on Wednesday night. Doors open at 6 p.m.

You can buy Iron Fork tickets here.

Fired & Iced

After only a few short months, Fire & Ice Grill has closed. The short-lived Italian-American restaurant at 1805 Church St. was a project of Sitar restaurant owner Naresh Kumar and his nephew Benny Kumar. Prior to the launch of Fire & Ice, Naresh Kumar briefly operated Indian restaurant Madras Bhavan in the location.

With a sprawling menu of homemade pizzas, beef tips and various sandwiches, Fire & Ice was a time-intensive and non-lucrative project for the team, who have now purchased a gas station. Kumar has no plans to fill the spot, which is adjacent to the recently opened Suraj restaurant.

Do Me a Flavor

I must have been blinded by hunger while shopping for groceries today, because I mistakenly picked up a bag of cherry-flavored Craisins in lieu of the regular dried cranberries.

I'm sorry? Cherry-flavored dried cranberries? What's wrong with cranberry-flavored cranberries? Sure, I understood when Sunsweet started spritzing prunes with essence of lemon. Prunes are brown and drab, and they had become the perennial butt of constipation jokes. They clearly have an image problem, so if a little dab of citrus and a splash of yellow on the packaging helps eliminate the laxative stigma, I say spritz away. Or change your name to dried plums. Whatever works for you.

But cranberries, what have you got to be embarrassed about? Sure, there's the slightly delicate business about being good for yeast infections. But it's not like you've become synonymous with all things vaginal. And if you had, do you really think adding a cherry on the package helps matters? The extra flavor just gives you a slight hint of desperation—and cough syrup.

In the craven world of brand extensions, what's next? Orange-flavored grapefruit? Sprite-flavored Coke? Lettuce-flavored salad?

And so, Bites readers, I pose the question to you. Your next challenge in the quest for free Iron Fork tickets is to come up with the most absurdly redundant flavor layering.

And don't try saying bacon-flavored bacon. That would be just plain ridiculous.

Dine Out For Life April 29

If only every fundraiser were as simple as Dining Out For Life. All you do is eat a meal, and the restaurant gives a portion of your bill to Nashville Cares' programs to help people living with AIDS. There's no entry fee, no drink tickets and no crappy silent auction. Just a festive dinner (and also, in some cases, lunch) in one of 55 generous restaurants.

I'll be dining at Wild Iris that evening, tucking into a plate of chef Mike Kidd's pan-seared salmon with salsa verde served on baby greens with warm cherry tomatoes and Parmesan-roasted potatoes. Please join me at the Iris, or check out this list for dozens of other participating restaurants, who will donate anywhere from 30 to 105 percent of the proceeds from lunch and/or dinner.

We Have a Winner! The Iron Fork Tickets Go To...

While canned bananas, high fructose corn syrup and pig rectum all sound delicious, we've decided to save those Secret Ingredients for another day—possibly for a future installment of Madwiches.

The two free tickets to the April 30 debut of Iron Fork go to Tobin the Gnome for his heartless response of live catfish. We're not saying it was the best response—because, remember, we were looking for bad suggestions, like horse testicles (thank you, Mr. Pink), and we'd quite like to see a catfish throwdown among Deb Paquette, Sean Norton, Clay Greenberg, Bobby Benjamin and Will Uhlhorn. We're just saying we want to make sure Tobin the Gnome will be at Iron Fork...so we can introduce him to Claudia.

It's not exactly fair, but then again, we make the rules.

For another chance to win a pair of Iron Fork tickets, see Steve Haruch's insane post about Madwiches. Or you can purchase tickets here.

Nashville Insane Sandwich 1: The Happy Family

For the inaugural Bites insane sandwich (henceforth to be known as a Madwich), we look to the Chinese-American restaurant menu for inspiration. The happy family, though it varies in execution, always presents itself for the indecisive diner with its harmonious combination of beef, chicken and shrimp.

As Prince once said, "Let's get nuts."

Fish & Bitch

My Stepford wife-colleague and I strolled down the hill from the Scene office yesterday for lunch at Agave Tequila Lounge. While munching fresh tortilla chips and salsa under the lazy ceiling fans, we agreed that the front porch of the faux hacienda might be the best venue in the urban landscape to while away a lunch hour pissing and moaning about sleep deprivation, pink eye and my broken microwave.

However, when the Scene’s Best of Nashville issue rolls around in October, don’t expect to see Agave taking home any honors for best fish taco. Despite the appetizing description of mahi marinated in coconut and cilantro and served with roasted pineapple salsa, three tacos with rice and beans for $9 offered little more than a few pasty cubes of soggy, overcooked fish and a smattering of diced citrus virtually suffocated inside cold flour tortillas. No cabbage, no special sauce, no green salsa. No good.

What’s more, Agave doesn’t serve iced tea.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we won’t be back. We minivan-driving Scene employees are sluts for a nice patio. Which, come to think of it, is probably why they don’t serve iced tea. With endless refills, lemons and Splenda, we could have sat there all day—bitching quite happily.

Located at 118 12th Ave. S. (Phone: 254-9997), Agave serves lunch Monday through Friday and dinner nightly. Bar opens at 4 p.m.

T Minus Three and Counting

T's Tuscan Bar & Grill, the rustic-Italian restaurant filling the void left by the recently shuttered Trace, will open by Friday, says owner Michael Tangredi. All that remains on the punch list is a few plumbing issues.

Originally scheduled to open today, T's is the second nameplate in the Tangredi family's troika of Italian-themed eateries. The flagship Tangredi's Italian Kitchen has been running for two years on Elliston Place, and Michael T's: An American Grill is set to open in the former Division Street location of Country Life this spring.

T's will serve a menu of rustic-Italian-inspired cuisine, such as grilled mahi with crabmeat cream sauce, grouper parmesan and a variety of steaks. Located at 2000 Belcourt Ave. (phone: 386-0069), Tangredi's will serve lunch and dinner from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily.

Sing for Your Supper: Win Iron Fork Tickets Here!

The countdown has begun to the April 30 debut of Iron Fork, the Scene's culinary death match among kitchen titans Deb Paquette, Will Uhlhorn, Bobby Benjamin, Sean Norton and Clay Greenberg.

Event sponsor Whole Foods Market has the honor of selecting The Secret Ingredient, and knowing the Earth-lovers over at the Green Hills temple of all things organic, sustainable and fully priced, TSI will no doubt be a hard cheese aged in the cave of endangered bats or a non-genetically modified citrus fruit bearing an uncanny resemblance to a character from the bar in Star Wars.

But just imagine if Iron Fork were orchestrated by anti-foodie trans-fat lovers like Tobin the Gnome, or brand-extension junkies like Mr. Pink, or drive-through addicts like yours truly? (Yes, Claudia, I was in the Wendy's line when you called. What of it?) We could pick a Secret Ingredient that would need no further embellishment. Like, for example, a No. 6 combo. Or Bugles.

So in the spirit of keeping things real, I am hereby offering a pair of free tickets to Iron Fork to the best suggestion for a Secret Ingredient that Whole Foods would never pick.

To win, you must include your email address. The winner will be announced later. As soon as we choose one. Or you can just purchase your tickets here.

Allez cuisine!

Cool Food

No, chef Bobby Benjamin and the crew at Flyte World Dining & Wine are not smoking in the kitchen. That's the vapor coming off their stores of liquid nitrogen. I stopped by the Eighth Avenue restaurant last week to find Benjamin & Co. dabbling in a little mad science, making frozen milk balloons and what can only be described as Dippin' Dots—of course, they would NEVER misuse that trademarked name—out of roasted parsnip puree.

Late Friday afternoon, they were still working the kinks out of a dessert homage to General Mills' Cookie Crisp cereal. (I'm sure they would NEVER misuse that trademarked name either.) Using a hypodermic syringe, Benjamin injected a balloon with milk, tied the balloon closed and bobbed it around in a bath of liquid nitrogen. When the über-cold liquid had frozen the milk to the interior of the balloon, he peeled the balloon skin away to reveal a pristine white orb, about the size of an ostrich egg.

He cut the egg in half to yield two marble-white bowls. Benjamin placed a pile of toasted oats on the bottom of a plate and balanced one of the bowls on the cereal. He then filled the bowl with crumbs from chocolate chip cookies from Sweet 16th bakery in East Nashville. As the milk bowl warmed, it began to soften and ultimately melt, producing a medley of cereal and cookies in milk. All that was missing was the erstwhile Cookie Jarvis. With a few more details, the dessert will be ready for prime time this week, when Benjamin plans to add it to the menu.

The tiny frozen parsnip BBs—not to be confused with the trademarked Dippin' Dots—debuted this weekend, atop blue marlin seared in a cast iron skillet, and presented with caramelized orange skin. A word of warning: make sure your Not Dots have warmed before you bite into them. For one thing, the flavor of the roasted parsnip comes out as the beads rise toward room temperature. But more importantly, you don't want to rip the skin off your tongue.

According to Benjamin, there were no nitrogen-based injuries at Flyte this weekend.

Better than BOGO

For a bargain-hunting, eBay-shopping, estate-sale junkie like me, it's frustrating that, as a rule, the restaurant industry doesn’t have sales. (Please, don’t come at me with your dollar-menu meal deals. You know what I mean. And we both know that the daily special is not a sale. I'm talking shameless retail seductions like BOGO, blue-light specials and two-for-the-price-of-one-plus-a-dollar.)

But now we discount divas have the Nashville Originals’ quarterly gift certificate sales to look forward to, and the next one is Wednesday, April 23. I don’t know which member of the independent-restaurant co-op is tasked with posting the sale on the Originals website, but that person must wake up earlier than a Saturday morning yard-sale stalker. The certificates—which sell at up to 40 percent off—hit the web early and sell out fast. If you snooze, you lose.

So set your alarm clocks and log on for discounted eats at your favorite independent restaurants. Until T.J. Maxx opens a restaurant, this is the best meal deal you’re going to find.

Last Will and Testicle

Speaking of Judge Bean's, as if the barbecue joint weren't contending with enough balls in its new home at Greer Stadium, its Lascassas outpost down Murfreesboro way will host its third annual Testicle Festival this Saturday starting at 2 p.m. There'll be fine country music from Judge Bean's mainstays Wade Hayes and Trent Willmon, but the big attraction (I suppose that's the word) will be untold quantities of rooster fries, lamb fries and the gonads of any other poor critter too slow to dodge the knife. Hell, there won't be a squirrel left in Rutherford County with any nuts.

Judge Bean's Lascassas is at 6605 Lascassas Highway. For further directions and info, call 615-273-2215. An all-day pass is $10. Think of it—all the balls you can eat. (At least I'm guessing the "BYOB" on Judge Bean's calendar is for something else.) Just a question: Why would you eat animal balls, and if you do, are they any good?

(BTW, I can't find the origin of that deeply moving image above, but I stole it here and here.)

Lest Ye Be Judged

I finally stopped by Judge Bean's Bar-B-Que in its new digs—or dugout—at Greer Stadium. It was a beautiful spring afternoon, and the Sounds were suiting up to stomp Omaha. With the brilliant green field and blue seats below, Judge Bean's new fourth-floor space (around the side, up the steps, take the elevator) has the feel of a giant skybox. Cold beer, hot wings, killer view—how better to spend a Thirsty Thursday?

Unfortunately, I must've hit the place on a Weird Wednesday. Granted, I went late in the afternoon, after the traditional lunch crowd but before the game and dinner rush. But the meat in my brisket tacos was ash-grey and mushy—fatty beyond even the comical warning on the menu. And while the Judge's famous Shrimp Diablo (jalapenos stuffed with cheese and shrimp, wrapped in bacon, toothpicked and smoked) had its usual kick, the inside was only lukewarm, down to the unmelted white rectangles of cheese. It wasn't cheap, either. Even with no drink, three uneaten tacos (plated with good slaw and fries) plus three Diablos plus a modest tip came to $27.

On the way out, I ran into a friend, a barbecue-savvy mofo who swears by their brisket and loves the place. So it's entirely possible I just hit them at a bad time. I'll withhold judgment on Judge Bean's until another visit—one where the Sounds are swatting flies over the far wall, a summer breeze tickles the kids' hair, and you can smell the smoker all the way in the outfield. Play ball!

Judge Bean's Bar-B-Que is located at 534 Chestnut Street, open 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday and Tuesday and 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday.

Psssst, Free Iron Fork Tickets

Since you’re no doubt planning to attend Iron Fork, the Scene’s culinary showdown in which we pit kitchen gladiators from five of Nashville’s best restaurants against each other, you may as well try to get in for free. I have no idea how she got hold of them (we gave them to her), but Claudia over at CookeatFret.com is giving away five pairs of tickets to the April 30 event at LP Field.

Log onto CeF and tell Claudia why you want to go to Iron Fork, and she just might bestow some free passes on you.

(Hint: Claudia really likes bacon, blogging, Michael Rulhman, stinky cheese, cupcakes, Per Se, New York, architects and cats. So, if you can work those things into your response, you just might have better odds than you had in Claudia’s recent mole giveaway. Claudia, who ended up with all that crap, anyway?)

If you’d rather shell out cash for your tickets ($20 to $30, depending on when you buy them) and know that your money is going to help St. Luke’s Community House, you can purchase them online here.

Tayst Goes Green

After promising big changes at Tayst restaurant for months, chef Jeremy Barlow has just received certification from the Green Restaurant Association. Tayst is the first Nashville restaurant to earn the designation.

To earn GRA certification, Barlow implemented a recycling program, removed of all Styrofoam products, brought in biodegradable takeout containers, installed faucet aerators that reduce the amount of water used, replaced paraffin candles with all-natural beeswax and soy, and began printing menus on paper made of 100 percent post-consumer waste.

Having long used local and sustainable foods whenever possible, Barlow began using fish exclusively from sustainable sources early this year.

“The last three months of my life was turning green,” says Barlow, who recently became the restaurant's sole proprietor when he bought co-founder Dan Morrissey's stake. As part of the GRA's certification, Barlow is already working on more greening steps for next year, which are likely to include adding a water filtration system that would allow Tayst to have filtered water—bubbly and still—without bottles.

To celebrate the GRA certification, Tayst will host a wine dinner with all local cuisine and biodynamic wines on May 1.

Allium Update

In a Bites post last week, I mentioned in passing the long-awaited Allium restaurant, the second project by Germantown Cafe team Jay Luther and Chris Lowry. Located in the ground level of the 5th & Main development in East Nashville, Allium is on track to open late this summer or in the fall, according to Lowry. The 5th & Main development, including lofts, flats and town homes at the corner of Fifth and Main streets, is currently under construction.

Named for the family of flowering plants that includes garlic, onions, shallots and chives, Allium will deliver a menu inspired by the cuisine of France, Italy and Spain. For the anchor restaurant in the environmentally green 5th & Main development, Lowry and Luther are planning a sleek, contemporary aesthetic similar to that of the four-year-old Germantown Cafe.

Provence to Open in Hill Center

After months of speculation about Provence Breads & Cafe taking a space in Green Hills, Terry Carr-Hall has inked a lease for the 1,750-square-foot space between Anthropologie and California Pizza Kitchen.

The seventh store in the Provence chain, the Hill Center location will offer breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as wine by the glass. What makes this development especially interesting is that Carr-Hall will be going mano-a-pano with the solidly entrenched Green Hills location of Bread & Company, with whom he worked early on before launching his own whole-grain empire.

Carr-Hall is in the early stages of planning construction on the store, which will include an ADA-compliant patio on the sidewalk facing Hillsboro Road. He hopes to open the store sometime mid-summer.

Side note: Provence recently introduced frozen yogurt in the store on Vanderbilt's Peabody campus. The Hill Center store also will have the specialized equipment to serve tangy frozen yogurt in the style of the popular Pinkberry chain. Carr-Hall says he plans ultimately to introduce frozen yogurt to all the stores.

Haute Cuisine

Every day as I drive through the Charlie Foxtrot of construction that is The Gulch, I look up to see if I am in the direct gravity path of the cranes rotating around The Terrazzo. The next time I pass by, instead of wondering if an errant wrench is about to plummet through my windshield, I'll think about this.

Get Sum

So, I've been pretty obsessed with the idea of insane sandwiches ever since reading about them on the interwebs. I've got some ideas for some Nashvillecentric 'wiches, some of which I'm hoping to assemble in real life and subsequently challenge the editorial staff to ingest.

In the meantime, one of my insane ideas is the Country cha siu baau— pork shoulder barbecue baked into a biscuit. Thinking of this led me to another idea, grits and sausage cooked inside a collard green, a riff on lo mai gai. This of course in turn led me to the obvious need for real dim sum in Nashville, but also, more to the point, to the idea for Southern dim sum. Imagine clattering carts filled with small portions of mac-and-cheese, smoked ribs and permit har gow. Oolong sweet tea on the tables. What else?

Springtime for Chadwick's

Chef Andrew Chadwick and the boys on Rutledge Hill are ushering in spring with a tasting menu bursting with the fresh shoots and fruits of the season. The $80 prix-fixe meal, which debuts tonight, opens with an amuse-bouche of a Canadian oyster on the half-shell with lemon oil, gelled tomato water, red pepper and smoked vinegar. Then come escargots, followed by lobster with porcini mushrooms and black truffles with a pea soup poured tableside.

The entree, a saddle of rabbit, arrives in a glorious vernal composition with celery root puree, truffle sauce, morels, pickled ramps, asparagus and tiny turnips, tomatoes and carrots, finished with a flourish of French breakfast radish. Baba rhum, a yeasty bread soaked in rum and plated with candied baby vegetables and saffron ice cream, concludes the feast, along with a mignardise of sea-salt caramel.

When the rains abate, Chadwick & Co. will get their own crops in the ground, including lettuces, garlic, shallots and heirloom tomatoes, which, according to Chadwick, will help defray the $300 he spends each week on fresh herbs.

Meanwhile, if the inclement weather carries on, Chadwick finally has completed the wine room in the ground floor of the old house. The bottle-lined bunker could be a good place to weather storms.

Andrew Chadwick's on Rutledge Hill is located at 37 Rutledge St. (Phone: 254-8585)

Bacon Bitch

OK, you jackals. Disconnect your alarms. Hit the snooze button. Spend a little quality time with Morning Edition and Pete Wilson's "Nashville Jumps" on WRVU. 'Cause come 6:05 this morning, if any of you stand between me and a pound of Benton's Hickory Smoked Bacon—at least a pound of Benton's Hickory Smoked Bacon—you're a-gonna visit Fist City.

Chef Julia Helton gave me a hit of this porcine crack at Mitchell Deli in East Nashville, where she said she'd gone through 50 pounds of the stuff already this week. It comes from Benton's Smoky Mountain Country Hams in Madisonville, and Mitchell's supply was already sold out. I can see why. The strip I tried was close to country ham in its full, earthy flavor and stinging saltiness. Even the fat was sweet with wood smoke.

Helton said she'd used the bacon to season a side of summer squash, to which she'd added some freshly gathered dandelion greens. The bacon provided all the salt the squash needed; the greens added a subtly bittersweet bite. Heaven.

Veggie season is almost here, which is swell. But bacon is forever. So let me reiterate: don't go near Mitchell's once their bacon shipment arrives this morning, sometime around 6 a.m. It's for your own good.

Why So Crabby?

The blue crabs are molting in the Chesapeake, which means it's soft-shell crab season. The thought of biting into the defenseless backside of a naked crustacean always makes me feel a little barbaric, but then I just close my eyes and think of breezy spring days on the deck at this place. A few Yuenglings under my belt and, well, I'm over it.

But since a trip to Annapolis isn't in the offing, it's good to know that chef Laura Wilson at Ombi is getting in the first shipment of soft-shells this weekend. She’s still deciding what to pair with them, but she’ll happily sauté, fry, grill or broil them for you, or even set them beside a steak for a Chesapeake-style surf and turf. The Tennessee morels are arriving, too, so maybe there’s a ’shroom-and-crab combo in store.

If you stop by for happy hour on the patio from 4 to 7 p.m., ask Terrell about the new cocktail menu. Or better yet, see if he's got any Yuenglings behind the bar.

How Does Your (Restaurant) Garden Grow?

First there was Basil, then came Lemongrass. Now we're getting Wild Ginger. It seems you can't open a restaurant these days without naming it for a zingy, herbaceous flavor. There's also Jasmine, Kalamata's, Agave, Acorn, the bygone Grape, the long-awaited Allium and the redundant Tomato, Tomato in Murfreesboro, not to mention anagrams Lime and Miel—though the latter, which is French and Spanish for “honey,” isn't a plant but is the byproduct of one.