Jim Myers

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville restaurant scene. Now here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. Today is another best-of episode and this is a replay of an episode that we did with Jim Myers from April 9th, so right in the middle of our quarantine time. As I'm interviewing chefs, one of the things that I've always been curious about was reporters, the people who write about food, the people who come up with the stories, kind of in a way in which I like to do over the air, but the way that they do on paper. So I was curious about their day, how they formulate a review, what are some of the better reviews that they did, and Jim Myers did not disappoint. With Jim Myers coming back onto the scene, taking over the helm at the new Elliston Place Soda Shop, I thought this episode was completely appropriate to get caught up on Jim Myers from April the 9th in the middle of the quarantine. And if you look back on the original episodes, so you got to go back to find April 9th, you'll see a picture, and in that picture is the actual C, the culinarity C that he talks about in the beginning of this show. I never really disclosed what that cover art was. That was a picture of the actual C from the beginning of the show, so go back and check it out. So I'd like to go ahead and welcome into the show Jim Myers. Jim is a storyteller, a journalist, and an author, and he's the food and drink writer at Culinarity. Jim, how are you doing today, man? I'm great. How are you, Brandon? You know what, as I tell people, I said I'm doing wonderful as I

02:04can be stuck at home. I'm finding lots of stuff to do. My wife's finding lots of stuff for me to do. Yeah, we're all learning that, that the use of our time has shifted and changed, and how we spend it and what we do with it is a little bit different right now, and I will say, I say I'm doing fine, but I think here in Nashville we're all reeling with the news of the death of John Prime yesterday, and that one, I think, is really going to hit a lot of people hard in this community, and it's also, just to share a little personal stuff because this has been on my mind lately, it's the anniversary of my father's death today. He died three years ago today, so it's a little bit of a melancholy pall over my brain today, but it doesn't mean we can't have a great conversation and talk about some important things that are going on.

03:17in our lives and our world today. Absolutely, and it's important to note. I mean, I think everything on my Facebook feed last night from nine o'clock until, you know, this morning was people talking about John Prime and how much he meant to them and what he means to the music community. I mean, just everybody really who was touched by him and really bringing home the importance of staying at home and that this virus, it can do devastating things, and definitely a somber day for sure. Right on. So I said in the intro that you are a food and drink writer at Culinarity. That's your company. Tell me about Culinarity. Yeah, it's funny. Culinarity is a word that I made up. You know, back in the, I mean, honestly, I can't remember how long ago I bought the domain name Culinarity. You know, when you're typing things in and going, let's see if this is taken off. Damn, that's taken. You know, I really wanted Crumb Snatcher, but that was taken. And so it's just a, you know, culinary curiosity, you know, just trying to mash up some words. And so it was a made up word. So I bought the domain name. And I even, hanging in my office right now is an old enameled letter. It's a big red C. And I bought this saying, oh, this will be the logo for Culinarity. And it's this cool, it's about a foot and a half tall. It's a red C and that's mounted on a sort of dappled white enamel square. And then the whole thing's framed in an aluminum frame. So it was obviously a letter that was part of a larger word.

05:11I've never been able to figure out what it was, but that's the official logo for Culinarity. All of that to say is it's just, it's an email address. I've never actually created a company or anything formal with it, but I use it because it just seems to, it's been attached to me for so long. And the funny thing is, you know, as new social media platforms spring up, I immediately try and jump on there to grab Culinarity, you know, to protect this brand as it is. And some guy in Ohio who has never used it has the Culinarity Twitter name. And I've never been able to get him to let it go. And he hasn't even asked for money. He just says, no, it's mine. And I go, well, I invented the word. How can it be yours? I made this up. But anyhow, that's what that is. You are a writer and an author and you do food and drink. You just, you write about everything. You find these stories that aren't just the regular run of the mill reviews that you do of restaurants. You've been doing it for a really long time. 2003, you were the food and drink writer for the Tennessean. In 2007, you left that. You came back in 2013 to 2016. So I mean, you've seen the city change in a bunch of ways over the last 20 years.

06:52Yeah, I really have. You know, it's, there are some old running jokes in Nashville, at least in the sort of the old blue blood Nashville that people used to say that the only two places to go out and eat were Jimmy Kelly's and the Bell Meat Country Club. As sort of elitist as that sounds, it kind of captured what the landscape in Nashville was for a very long time. I grew up coming to Nashville in the early 60s to visit my grandparents here. And that statement also doesn't take into account all of the great old barbecue places that used to exist. The mom and pop restaurants that were around town, the history of the old chili parlors in Nashville, the Italian restaurants. We used to have a whole handful of them in the 60s. But yeah, Nashville really has evolved over that time. And dining in general in this country has changed from the high end fancy places like Mario's and Arthur's and Julian's, which kind of put into the category of expense account restaurants.

08:04The wild boar. Yeah, the wild boar. I mean, these were places where cakewalk. Yeah, a lot of business entertaining was done. And they were, you know, most of them were continental cuisine, haute cuisine, French and Italian. But then those kind of started to fade right around the time that the age of the chef driven restaurant came forward. Because we didn't used to talk about restaurants always in such reverent ways about the chefs. Sometimes we knew who the chef was. But the whole chef driven concept in this, the chef is celebrity thing, you know, started to come in and we paid more attention to who they were and what they did. And, you know, food TV had played a huge role in that. And we started to see chefs in the distance or in a different light at that point. So that's when things started to change around Nashville.

09:10And we, you know, we started to see the restaurant scene evolve with places like Randy Rayburn's spots, Jody Faison before him with sort of eclectic funky kind of places like Faison's and then 12th and Porter. 12th and Porter had a great menu, even though it was a great music club. It also had a really great menu. So there's a couple of restaurants to me that when they opened, it kind of changed. They were kind of monuments for Nashville. And this is just from my opinion as really a kid when I was like 15, 16 years old before I even knew anything about restaurants. When the Hard Rock Cafe opened in downtown Nashville, it was almost like there was a reason to go down there again. And then there's Planet Hollywood and then like downtown Second Avenue became kind of a thing. People started going downtown again, which I thought was a big, it was almost like a benchmark or a tipping point for Nashville going towards the come downtown, making it friendly.

10:16And then Bar 23, I thought when that opened in the Gulch, when the Gulch wasn't really anything, Bar 23 was just so far ahead of its time. And obviously it didn't last forever. But I thought that was, those were just moments to me when I went, okay, Nashville's going places. Yeah. I mean, that was a watershed moment. You're right with it. Because downtown, what would you go to? If you were a kid, you went to the spaghetti factory. Maybe. On Second Avenue, maybe. And there was Laurel's seafood on Second Avenue, which was great. In fact, I can remember I was living in East Nashville at the time. And you could drive across the Shelby Street Bridge. This is making me sound like a real old man now. You could drive across the Shelby Street Bridge. And you could park anywhere on Second Avenue. You could go into Laurel's and get a pint of Guinness and their amazing gumbo. And you had downtown to yourself.

11:18In the 80s downtown, it was really pretty seedy. The strip clubs and lower Broadway was was not a haven for tourists that it is today. So. Not even close. No, no. So yeah, you know, Hard Rock, it really anchored that corner on Second and I think brought some national legitimacy to the downtown district. And it really did change things. And it's funny you mentioned Bar 23 because I was a pretty harsh review of that that I remember when I was reviewing and I was joking. So that was opened by Austin Ray and Ben Goldberg. Austin Ray has gone on to do amazing things with M.L. Rose and in that concept. And he's got the Suttler. He took over Melrose Billiards. He's a good guy and he runs restaurants well. He's a good restaurateur. Plus, he's got Von Elrod's over there by the him and Jason. Yeah. Yeah. By the by the ballpark. And so Ben and Max Goldberg had not joined as brothers and built strategic hospitality yet. And I was I wrote a pretty harsh review of the place and mainly because, you know, they had the sort of insouciant hostess there who ignored you. She was a beautiful young woman who just didn't even greet you when you came in. And the service was spotty. And it was it was trying so hard. You're right. There was nothing else like it at that time. And I think I knocked it pretty hard for just trying too hard to be different and forgetting the fundamentals of

13:20running a good place. And it didn't last very long. But I joked with Ben and Max recently that, you know, going back and reading that, I was surprised that Austin, whose mother was I think the sheriff of Nashville at the time, didn't didn't hire some of the jail trustees to come and break my legs after that review. And and I think Ben said, Well, I can't say that he didn't. So we had a laugh a laugh about that now. I remember just walking in there and it was just all white. And it was it was like walking into some sort of a dream that you had of what it would be like in New York if you were at a cool club. And I was like, but we're in Nashville, this this this is crazy that this type of place is here. It just stuck out like a sore thumb, but it was wildly popular bottle service, the whole thing like who does this? And everybody was I was not even close to being cool enough to go there. I don't know who the people were. Like you said, the hostess was rude. And almost similar to like the Patterson when the Patterson house first opened, again, it was like, you have six different kinds of ice. Come on, guys, like, is this a little pretentious?

14:37Right, right. But it was so ahead of its time, that it absolutely worked. It was and it was, it was a harbinger of what the Goldbergs would would go on to do, which is sort of scour the land for things that interested them and trying to aggregate ideas and concepts and bring new things to Nashville, like the Patterson house, like the catbird seed, like Pinewood social. I knocked them pretty hard on Paradise Park, too. You know, I think I was probably a little bit too harsh on that. My biggest complaint about Paradise Park was the whole redneck southern culture thing. And I still kind of take this position that we're better than that. Yes, it's funny. You know, the toilet seat planter and the El Camino inside and the whole trailer trash. AstroTurf. Yeah. And it's fun. And man, talk about wildly successful. That place did really well. And they sort of, they kind of saw the tourist boom coming and that that fit in very well. And it was very successful. And I think they regret dismantling it. And they have since brought it back. But it just it shows what those guys were doing with Nashville. And that's kind of to have the kind of boom that we've had. It takes people with some vision, like the Goldbergs, to say, hey, we're going to try some things. We're going to put ourselves out there a little bit and be a little bit different and see if it works.

16:21That's scary to do that in the restaurant business. And because most people say, well, let's just nail something down really well and then replicate it. And that's how we're going to create tremendous wealth. But they've taken a completely different approach. And it seems to to seems to be working for them. I just, you know, I agree. I love their innovation and what they've done. And I think that there's plenty of criticism out there for everybody. But from what they've done, just the vulnerability to have the idea to take something that they're doing in a bigger city and introduce it somewhere and work is just it's really, truly amazing, just their execution and how they run their business. I feel like when you said that Paradise Park, you don't like the way that it looks. I feel the same way about the tractor that drives up and down Broadway that pulls the bachelorette parties. I don't mind the pedal taverns. I don't mind all that stuff. I think it's good fun. Everybody's having a blast. But the lasting image of a John Deere tractor pulling people dancing behind them down Broadway to me, I don't think paints Nashville in the best. The one thing I wish would go away. Yeah, I mean, it's just being protective, I think, of Southern culture and trying to, you know, cringing at the fact that that's what people think of when they think of the South. And they forget that the South is so rich with storytellers and literature and our cuisine. You know, the foundation of the Southern Foodways Alliance, really the first academically based organization to look at the intersection of a place and its people and its food and its culture to treat all of those things with respect.

18:13And, you know, yes, Paradise Park is tongue in cheek in the tractors. But I think it just it feeds into a stereotype and detracts from really the beautiful, subtle, amazing culture of people that we have here. So I'm going to use that as a segue because I want to talk more about that. And one of the reasons why I really wanted to interview you today on Nashville Restaurant Radio is because you've been writing about food and drink in Nashville for a long time, 20 plus years. I think I've interviewed chefs. I talk about what it's like to be behind the lines. But one of the things I've over my career, I've read a lot of articles you've written in Chris Chamberlain and Dana Cop Franklin. There's a bunch of people that I've been reading for really a long time. Now it's turned digital. But your perspective on what you do, how you do it, why you do it, I thought was super unique. And if I was a chef, I'd want to learn more about what makes you tick.

19:15What are some of the things that you do on a daily basis that most of us don't realize? Because we're just reading kind of the final culmination of this body of work that you do, all the research that goes in. I want to get into the fundamentals of how that happens. So let's let's pretend like there is no quarantine. And let's pretend that this is regular old April. And what are you doing on a Wednesday? What does your day start off? What does your day look like? Oh, man, that's a tough one. Well, now that I'm, you know, working independently from home, people say they're morning people, or they're evening people. And I can pretty much function either way. Everything's a function of sleep. So I need to get a good night of sleep. So when I'm going to bed early, I'm going to be getting up early and I'll get up, you know, 536. That's what I read. Look at I'm a news junkie. I'll try and read everything that I can scan the headlines. Is there a particular site or something that you read daily? Yeah, I love the New York Times. And I love the Washington Post. I'll scan other other sites. But those are those are the two primary ones. I also just having worked in newspapers, I'll look at UPI and Reuters, just because I know you're going to get some good straight reporting on things. And, and then, you know, I read. It's funny, I've been talking to some old high school friends who are both writers. And they're talking about all the literature they're reading. And for so long, all I've read are trade magazines, when I say that, like restaurant news, and food and wine and Bon Appetit and gourmet and savour, art culinaire, all of

21:15those, reading those and reading cookbooks that that's pretty much consumed my life for so long. And I'm trying to get back into actually reading literature and nonfiction, just to keep my interests alive. Because I didn't grow up wanting to be a food writer. But so just in terms of routine, and then I'll sketch out notes for what I want to write about that day. And I'll sit and write, if I can, although this is in the perfect ideal world, you know, when you don't have the dog to walk, or you're, you have to get your son fed for breakfast into school by 715, or you have to help your wife with something. So, but I'll try and write for a couple hours in the morning, and then I put it away. And then I'll sit down, and I'll look at what I wrote the day before and edit that. But I mean, it's, it's, it can be very disjointed within that. And I think working in a newspaper, you learn how to do that, how to work on one thing, and then shift gears and work on another thing. The hardest thing to do, depending upon what kind of writing it is, is to change voice, change style, format, length. Because it's, it's so much easier to get into a rhythm when you're doing one kind of thing. For example, writing a column, you know you have so many words, and you get into your head this internal rhythm where I'll outline a piece and just put key words every 10 lines, and then I'll just, it just flows. And I'll go back and edit it.

23:06And you just, you know in your, in your head how that rhythm works. And when you're coming up on the thousand word point, and you need to be wrapping it up. Let me interrupt you just a little bit here and say, when you're writing, the actual topics that you're writing about, do you, do these just come to your head? Are you, are you looking for, and I know, talking about food and drink, are you looking for, are you scouring the business journal to see which restaurants are opening? Do people call you and say, hey we're opening a restaurant? Or do you just look for a unique nugget of something out there that piques your interest that you might think that a reader might find interesting? Yeah, I mean I, I, I don't want anyone to study how my brain works because it's just its own little world. But yeah, you try and find something that fits into your kind of worldview if that makes sense. I'm not saying that you're prejudging a story because I'm a firm believer and it's why I always over-report everything. It's why I lose money writing because I will, I'll get an hour of interview and only have space for a hundred words.

24:27But the, the story often emerges in that process depending upon what kind of story it is. But you just have to be open and, and observant in, in how things come to you. I know I'm a little bit all over the map on this but, but writing a, a more cultural piece about food and people and trying to put that into some kind of cultural context is very different from a formal restaurant review or a straight-up news piece. You know, how you go into each one is, is different because you're going to ask different questions. If it's a straight-up news piece you have to have in the back of your mind, what are we trying to get at here? What is happening here? And what kinds of questions do I need to answer that, that help this story? Is there typically a sense of urgency with that too? Well, there isn't. Yeah. And if it's, if it's timely news-wise, yeah, it's, it's deadline reporting. And with the internet, there's this expectation of immediacy for everything. And, and it's even a mandate from the, you know, the editors at the Tennessee Ann and at Gannett is, you know, get the story up right away. You can fill in more later, which is the beauty of digital.

25:51You can go back and edit a story and change something, add something, get a photograph to go with it. Cause you need images for everything today. But yeah, it's get it up immediately. And you know, that you bring up a great point there. I, I, when I was at the paper, I would take people around the newsroom and show them what it's like. And the thing that always amazes them are the banks of, of TV monitors mounted throughout the building. Some of them always playing the news, especially when news is breaking. But we also had these monitors that, that show the metrics of what's going on in the website. It's like a, this moving list where you see people moving up the list or moving down the tracks in real time. How many people are in a story and how long people are in that story. What's the average engagement time they call it. And it's the, it's the real kind of hard truth of online journalism and of, of, of clicks and click bait and, and all of that stuff and lists why lists are so popular because readers love lists.

27:07They're quick hits. So the engagement time is the real telling thing. And you, and people were flabbergasted. I said, guess how long, uh, like a, a grand slam home run, man, I really, uh, kept people in that story for a long time. Uh, they, they read down, they, they, you know, they didn't just sort of glance at it and move on. I really had them like a home run is if you can keep someone in the story for a minute, it's depressing, but it's the reality that we've, we've come to. Um, I think I read somewhere that when Twitter launched with its character limit, that was based on the average length of a political soundbite on the evening news. So, uh, that doesn't mean that there aren't, uh, places and opportunities for longer stories. And I'm not even talking about long form journalism, which is its own thing. Like the stories in, uh, um, in bitter southerner, for example, um, that they're, that's still out there, but what I see is kind of disappearing is that mid range, you know, the, even 1500 to 2000 words, which is not very much is a long story in daily journalism now.

28:27Well, I think that with the internet, ADD is like rampant because everybody has whatever they want so fast and it changes so quickly that we don't have attention spans anymore because we can have whatever we want. We want it right now and there's no researching and spending a lot of time. It's like, Oh, I just flipped through my phone. First thing I do when I wake up and I can read 20 stories in nine minutes, which if you think about short attention spans, we go to our conversation. We were talking about your day and you're talking about getting in writing, going back editing. I kind of had mentioned to you, how do you get those stories, which took us off another tangent and I love that, but let's keep going with your day. What does your day look like after you do that initial writing and then you go back to edit? Where do you, what do you do next? Yeah, I mean, I try and find some time to exercise in there and, um, go for a walk, a long walk, walk the dog, um, live in a pretty neighborhood of valleys and hills. So, uh, but I'm also five minutes from Warner park, which is a Nashville treasure, uh, to go for a hike. Um, I love nature. I love the natural world. I love reading about it. I love the poets like Mary Oliver and writers, uh, like Wendell Berry. So the park really, uh, recharges me, but, uh, and then read throughout the day. It's really just a mishmash. Um, my son plays baseball and one of the beauties of, uh, of being home and working from home is having that flexibility so I can go to his games and go to his practices. And, uh, part of the day spent cooking, uh, meals for the family, uh, reading when I can, uh, usually by the end of the night, I am not as productive because I'm just tired. And, uh, if I don't read early in the day, uh, I don't read at night cause I fall fast asleep and it's just a narcotic for me. So, um, that's, I mean, that's, that's the reality of that. So

30:34yeah, that's pretty much it. And so with, with the virus now, uh, my wife works from home. She's a silversmith. I work from home. The only difference is we have, uh, the teenage boy home all the time now. Uh, so, uh, it, which takes some adjusting, especially for him, but, uh, but for us, it hasn't been a radical lifestyle change. We're going to take a short break to tell you a little bit about Trust20. Reopening your restaurant comes with great responsibility. Are you doing everything you can to keep your staff and guests safe? With Trust20 certification, you and your guests can feel confident you're doing everything you can to keep everyone safe. Trust20 is home to the new standard of restaurant safety and consumer comfort. By becoming a Trust20 certified restaurant, diners will know the practices you follow to create a safe and healthy environment. Have confidence you're going above and beyond minimal requirements. Have comfort knowing your practices have been independently verified. To learn more, visit Trust20.co. That's Trust, the number 20.co. Trust20 restaurants have access to a suite of resources that include expert-led training in four key areas, individual consultants, communication material and signage.

31:48When you visit Trust20.co and tell them you heard about them on Nashville Restaurant Radio. Trust20, partnering with you to keep everyone safe. Faux and Beaux was the newest way to hire and be hired in the hospitality industry in Nashville, Tennessee. So visit foh and boh.com for more details. Except the fact that I can't go out, which I do like. I am social. I like going out and seeing friends and being with people and interacting with them and not being able to do that. It's been challenging. So again, I'm going to pivot a little bit here and I just thanks for the insight as to what you do. I think that a lot of people are curious. If you're a writer, what do you do all day? How does that, how does, what do you do to spark creativity in your brain? Because I'm just looking for ideas over here. Well, no, it's, it's hard. I mean, one of you, you joke with especially newspaper people and so many stories or, or your requirements are, okay, this is the perfect example. Valentine's Day.

32:55Huge food holiday. A lot of people go out to eat in restaurants. So there's the service journalism side of doing roundups of, of what special things people are doing with restaurants. You want to help people to make reservations in a timely manner so that they don't wait to the last minute like a lot of people do and then can't get a reservation for Valentine's. But then, then there's the, okay, fuck, what am I going to write about this year? How am I going to write something different about love and food, romance and food, food movies that are romantic, foods that are aphrodisiacs, foods that are suggestive of sex. It's, it's hard. You go, you, you, you've kind of run out of ideas and that's one of the challenges. How do you do something that's fresh and, and interesting to you as a writer that you're not just doing the same thing again each year. Yeah. So what have you written about one year I wrote about saffron, just the history of it, how it's harvested, how like nimble little fingers have to pluck these stamens from crocus flowers and how if it's adulterated, it was like punishable by death or by having your hands cut off or something in, in countries like Iran back during empire days and how it's so expensive and exotic. And I remember we were able to find an online source and you know, most saffron that you buy is in a tiny little glass vial and it's just precious. And you, you know, you learn how to take just a couple threads and put it in some warm water with some acid to bring the color out and you treat it just as this precious filaments of gold. And we, we got like this whole tin of saffron in from this importer from Iran. And

34:59we, we, for the photo shoot, we, we dumped it all out on a white board and, and shaped it into a heart with an arrow going through it. So that was, you know, that was one time. Another time I got Vivek Surti, who now has Taylor Restaurant in Nashville. Vivek is a huge proponent of sabering bottles of champagne open. It's the sabrage society. So I said, well, that's kind of sexy in its own way. You know, here's how to open a bottle with a sword. So we went onto the roof of the Tennessean and Vivek taught me and one other person how to, how to savor a bottle of champagne. And then he poured it into my mouth directly from the bottle overhead. So that, you know, that was a little bit out there, but that was a, that was a fun thing to do. So honestly, I can't remember all the other ones, but there's something like that, but just using creativity versus, Hey, look, somebody's doing a heart shaped beat this year. I mean, you're, you're looking at more personal interest stories that are involved around a holiday. But I see where that can be something that can be a challenge. Yeah, it is. And, and you know, there, there are other avenues you try and connect it in some way to people in a way that the story is going to resonate because not, not everyone is a total food geek and we'll get off on the, just the hardcore cooking food ingredient kind of science stuff. So you've, you know, you want to try and make it as engaging as possible. And that, honestly, we talked a little bit about this. I mean, I think that's what, what drew me to food writing originally was looking at it from a cultural perspective.

37:00My background was in anthropology. So I think that's more than just the food itself and cooking. When we started writing about it more from a cultural context, food writing became a lot more interesting. So one thing that is part of food writing is doing kind of reviews, talking about a new restaurant, talking about a current restaurant, going in and doing reviews. And one thing that everybody and their brother is these days is a food critic because we now have Google and Yelp and TripAdvisor and OpenTable and Seven Rooms. And every single one of those is saying, hey, you should, you should put a review, which we know there's a lot of amateur critics out there that aren't necessarily qualified to be critiquing the dining establishment. I thought it would be fun for somebody who is somewhat of a professional, albeit not what you do like on a daily basis, but somebody who is able to fashion a review of a restaurant. I think it'd be fun to talk about how to do it the right way. Well, there are lots of right ways. But yeah, to go back, everyone's a critic. I don't remember who said that line originally, but it's so true. Everyone is a critic. Everyone has opinions about things, especially something as fundamental as food. We all eat. But yeah, doing it from a professional standpoint. And that's getting to be a little bit of a lost art. Fear and fear. Newspapers have dedicated restaurant critics anymore. For one, it's a staffing issue. It's the newspaper industry, which is just going down and down with each passing day. But it's, it's, it's just a, it's a budget issue as well, not just for the talent, but the budget to review, to do reviews properly. So,

39:01you know, I, I came up through that old school vein and I'll never forget, I happened to be in Austin. And this is when I was working as a formal restaurant critic for the Tennessean. I was in Austin, just on a vacation and in our hotel, there just happened to be some kind of food conference. And they had this panel of Mimi Sheridan from the New York Times was there and Danny Meyer and from New York, Union Square Hospitality Group and Drew Niperent, another big restaurateur from New York. And the title of the talk was Restaurant Critics, Who Needs Them? And I go, well, this'll be fun. So I'll jump right in there. Yeah, I went, I stood in the back of the room and Drew Niperent had one of the funniest lines. I'll never forget. He said, restaurant critics are, they're sharks, they're sharks swimming in the sea. But as restaurateurs, we need to get across the ocean.

40:04And to do that, we need to ride on the backs of these sharks, which was, you know, a fairly aggressive portrayal of the relationship. I don't think most restaurant critics, most good and credible restaurant critics are not out to eat anybody. But you have to be truthful. You have to be just honest in your opinions. You have to be prepared to back them up with reasons why you feel a certain way. And you have to be informed to make critical decisions. And so, you know, everyone asks, oh, man, how do you get to be a restaurant critic? That's like the best job in the world. It is a great job. I don't miss it at all. But I would tell people, number one, you need to know how to write. A restaurant critic is a writer. You are writing, hopefully, well-crafted type opinion pieces. And you need to be able to know how to do that well.

41:14Meaning you state your case, you back it up, you make it interesting, you come to your conclusions, and you wrap it up. And that's harder to do than most people, I think, realize. And then you have to know your subject. You have to know something about food. You have to know enough to be able to judge the quality of something. If it's trying to be something and it's not measuring up, you need to state that. If it's trying to be something, but in a different way, you need to be able to explain that. If it's a riff on a dish, you can't slam the dish because it's not exactly the way the original version of that dish was made. But as long as you know that they're riffing on it, and that's what they're trying to do, and it's done within the context of that place. But the thing that always got lost, I know this podcast is geared towards chefs, is from the old school restaurant standpoint, people would lose sight of the fact that a good newspaper restaurant critic is a consumer advocate.

42:26It's okay to be a foodie or whatever term you want to use. You hopefully love food and love dining and love that experience. But people would often conflate a restaurant critic as someone who should be a booster for the restaurant industry or for chefs. And in that old school approach, you can't do that. That's not your job and that's not your role. Your role is to go into a place and evaluate it and then report on it in a way that tells people what they can likely expect and help them make an informed decision on whether they want to spend their hard-earned dollars in that place or not. And that's what it what it boils down to. And people go, you should be nicer to these restaurants. They're struggling. Their margins are thin. Yes, I agree with all of that and I've always been fascinated with how kitchens work.

43:30But at the end of the day, when you're writing about it from the perspective of a formal restaurant critic, you don't care what's going on in the kitchen. All you care about is the immediate environment of the seat you're in, the table you're at, and the environment of the restaurant. It's almost as if you have to take the emotion out of it and kind of just look at it from logic. Through what you've learned before going in and being educated. Being educated about what you're doing. You said riffing on a dish. If somebody's riffing on a dish and you're trying it, it doesn't quite hit the market. At least you know what they're trying to do, which I think helps a lot. It helps a lot when you're doing a true review of somebody's work. What was the biggest miss you think you've had? Where you just put a review out there that was not positive but turned out to be great? What's the worst reaction you've got from a chef? Those are a lot of different things there. I don't know that I've ever really screwed one up.

44:35Not to say that I'm infallible in any way. But I think I've mostly gotten it right. But for example, Paradise Park. I said, hey, the burgers and tater tots are really good for a place that is mocking trailer park culture. I talked about how I hated what they were doing there. But the food was pretty good. What I got wrong is that it was the right concept for the right place. And that does matter. And it became very financially successful. Very popular. I don't think a bad review has ever put a good restaurant out of business. A bad review only really hurts a place that is not doing the things that it needs to do. And it exacerbates those things. I think if you're being honest in your view, and I'll go back and say based upon what you just said as to how you do the review, you're really just calling out things that people aren't doing well or that didn't work. And I think that restaurateurs have an opportunity to listen to that. And if they're objective and they say, you know what, you're right, we didn't do that right. And they can make changes, which I think is what everybody out there would say is the best thing about Yelp or TripAdvisor is that they're getting immediate feedback and they can now fix things that they didn't know were wrong. Yes, absolutely. And I will say the successful restaurateurs and chefs would contact me and now they may have go, that motherfucker, I can't believe he came in here and said that and did that. But the good ones would call and say, hey, thanks for reviewing us because they know any kind of press is valuable. They need that kind of exposure. If they're honest and I'm honest, they'll say, hey, you busted our chops on that. You're absolutely right. It's something we need to work on. Those are the ones that continue on and do well. And no one's ever going to get it right all the time, especially in restaurants,

46:43which is like theater, daily theater performed over and over in the space of a shift. Some will call and try and say, well, let me explain to you why it's this way. And that happened for a review of Flight when they had opened. Yeah. And he sent a really beautiful, very long email explaining how their kitchen is set up in a certain way and they're working through some things and they're struggling with this because it's always a work in progress. It was fascinating to me because I always loved learning about that and what they're going through in the back of the house and the front of the house and everything to always continue to inform my own base. But again, at the end of the day, I said, hey, Jeremy, that's all really interesting and fascinating. Thank you for taking the time to tell me that. But for the person who's sitting there, again, in the seat in the restaurant, they don't care about any of that. All they care about is the food that's in front of them. Is it coming in a timely way and is it well prepared and are they getting what they expected to get? Exactly. And that's kind of harsh, but you have to have that kind of, like you said, operate from logic, a dispassionate distance from everything. It doesn't mean you don't love and respect these guys and women who are toiling away in what is essentially a blue collar job that's physically demanding and with low margins and really hard to do. But again, in that role, I was writing for the consumers, not for the chefs.

48:34And we still, you know, I was operating anonymously. My picture wasn't published, trying to do it so that you got as honest an appraisal of what a place was like as you could. I'm fascinated. What is the best? You walked into the restaurant and you went, oh my gosh, it's beautiful. You just were greeted with like welcoming home and everything. You left there and you went, this place is going to be amazing. Like this is it. One of the times when that happened was I did Sean Brock's tasting menu when he was at the Capitol Grill. I don't think I had been in the Capitol Grill many, many times before that. And I just love that room, even though it's a basement room. I love the vault, the old vaulted ceilings. Very elegant. Yeah. And you know, I love the, even the banister as you walk down to that level, it's this beautiful oak banister that is, gosh, it's like 18 inches wide. It's just huge. It's massive. And you go down and, you know, the bathroom, which is cool and iconic, but that dining room, and I think they did something, they changed something, but with those vaulted ceilings, you know how you go to the state Capitol rotunda and one person can stand on one side and whisper and it bounces off the dome and the other person can hear you whisper on the other side of the room. The Capitol, the Capitol Grill had that, but because it wasn't a singular dome, there were times where you would hear whispers of conversation in your ear and you wouldn't know where they were coming from. And you'd hear like things that, oh, I really shouldn't be hearing this right now. You know, personal things, business things. I think they did something to change that because I didn't experience it recently. Anyhow, again, sorry, I am the tangent king, but I walked in there and Sean did, it was,

50:38I think, a 30 course tasting menu. It was obscene. And it was way too much. It was over the top and it was at the height of his molecular gastronomy phase. But just immediately you knew, okay, this guy has an understanding of not just the science, but of taste and texture and juxtaposition of flavors. And he's pushing the limits on everything. He's not afraid to experiment and he's wildly creative, clearly intelligent and borderline obsessive because you just can't do food like that without being obsessive about it. And that turned out to be a pretty prescient window onto this young, up and coming, totally driven talent. In that case, it was more about the chef than the place, but it was just an extraordinary experience. And I think I remember those things more in terms of how are my chops at evaluating this and predicting success.

52:01And I got pretty good at that. I knew right away Tandy was going to do something. I knew right away talking to him on the phone that Pat Martin was going to be something special. Yes, it's just barbecue. But he understood barbecue and he understood the sides and he understood Southern culture. And he also understood business and how to run a business and how to be a personality and how to bring all of those things together. I remember meeting Julia Sullivan at a New Year's Day party and she had just moved back to town. And I said, there's something really special about this person, the way she talks about food, the way she carries herself. It's that sixth sense of realizing that something's going on. And one of my greatest disappointments at the paper was I talked Julia and Max Goldberg into letting me chronicle the process of opening Henrietta Red. I said, I want to be there through the whole thing so that people understand what it takes to launch a restaurant from the ground up. The decisions you have to make on fabric and colors and everything, how it all goes to your vision and your strategy and your mission.

53:28And they agreed. I couldn't believe it. I said, I want it all warts and all. Like when you pour the concrete slab and the plumbing was laid wrong and you have to rip it up and do it again. When you order the wrong size of something and it doesn't fit in the space. All of the things chefs and restaurateurs go through. And the paper said, no, we don't have the resources to devote you to something like that. So the world missed out on that opportunity. Yeah. And I think I bet on a good horse there. She has done amazing things along with Ali and it's just, anyhow. She's on my list of people that I would love to have on the show. Julia, if you're listening, call me. Every time I've met her and I used to do the Iron Fork when I was at U.S. Foods and she won one year and I got to hand her the trophy. She has always been the example of professionalism and grace. And she's, every time you go eat at Henrietta Red, now we like to sit right there at the bar next to where the oysters are and you just see them working. They just, she's like a maestro. She's in the middle, but she's just so in control. I'm just so impressed with everything that she does. She's just amazing. Yeah, I agree. I concur wholeheartedly.

54:53What a cool project that would have been. All right. So I've got a million more things I want to talk to you about, but what do you want to talk about? Is there anything you or I didn't ask you about that you kind of want to say or anything you're working on you want to talk about? Well, yeah, I, again, to bring it back to this city, this place we live in Nashville, the incredible growth we've gone through. Years ago, I used to go to Arnold's Country Kitchen with John Edgerton, the Dean of Southern Food Writers, who was a tremendous mentor of mine. And we would eat at Arnold's a lot and just talk about everything except politics when Jack would start, when going in different directions when Jack was there working the line, telling jokes in his overalls. But John, he loved Arnold's. He loved Meat and Threes for the authenticity of it. And he begged them to do a book and they never sort of got interested in doing a book. And John passed away suddenly. And one day Rose came to me and she said, you know, John always wanted us to do a book. And we lost that opportunity with him. Would you do a book with us? And that's like a command performance from Her Majesty the Queen. Oh, yeah, we talked about it forever.

56:24I either didn't have the time or it just was never right. But finally, we agreed, let's do this book. We need to do it now. It's been really one of the pleasures of my life is becoming part of the Arnold family, of getting to know all of them, getting to know Rose, Khalil, Little Rose's sister, Man in France, the whole family, and getting to see how they work, their trials, their tribulations, the difficulty of running a restaurant in Nashville, the beauty that they were able to buy the real estate wrapped around them, which gives them some security and longevity. And to see how restaurants, the food has to be good. That just has to be a given no matter what you're doing. But the relationships of the people that they have with their customers, it's just been such an honor to be a part of that and to be working on it and to hear the stories that we're going to have in this that are just crazy, like how Gore Vidal came in one time and ordered a martini, and they made a martini for Gore Vidal. How Shel Silverstein used to sit there with Chet Atkins for hours. But it brings me back to thinking about John Prine, who would be in there almost every week when he was not on the road and was such an integral part of the fabric of Arnold's. I think one of the first stories I read about his passing last night on NPR was, you know, how are we going to walk into Arnold's and not see John there? But in Nashville especially, there's a beautiful relationship between music and food of songwriters going to meet-and-threes,

58:31songwriters going to bars and hanging out, deals being done, record deals being signed at the old Elliston Place soda shop. It's just the two are linked very closely. And I think over the last few years, chefs have kind of become rock stars through their celebrity. But also musicians that are on the road all the time, food is one of the pleasures they have of coming into a town and discovering the greatest places to eat, the joints and the high-end places wherever they go. And musicians have always had that relationship with restaurants and chefs and food. And now those relationships are even closer, especially in a city like Nashville. And that's one of the things that does make this place something extraordinary. The respect musicians have for chefs and the love chefs have for nurturing other people in the creative industry.

59:41And I think a lot of it goes back to the story about Bess Tootsie, who kept a pot of soup behind the bar to feed struggling songwriters like Roger Miller and Willie Nelson, this nurturing of the creative community. And some of the earliest restaurants in town, the old chili parlors, were founded by Italian musicians who worked on cruise ships and traveled the world and opened up restaurants in Nashville at the turn of the century. So we have this long history of food and music being joined together. I don't even know what to say after that. That was beautiful. Kind of everything you just said kind of brought it all home. I cannot wait to read that book when it comes out. And the day that you want to bring Rose and Khalil and anybody else on Nashville Restaurant Radio and talk about the book and tell some stories, I am more than happy to host.

01:00:47And Jim Myers, thank you so much for joining us today. And this meant a lot to me. This is a really special interview. I appreciate you taking the time. Well, Brandon, thank you very much. I'm a fan of this podcast and what you're doing and bringing people together. I'm glad you're doing it so people can stop telling me to do something like this. And I appreciate being asked on. It's always nice to be acknowledged. As my favorite thing to say to people who critical or praising is thank you for reading. You just appreciate people who take their time to read or to listen or to eat. And so I appreciate being asked on. Thank you very much. The honor is all over here. Jim Myers, ladies and gentlemen.