Rudie's Seafood & Sausage

2017 passed by in a blur of work, travel, and bursts of activity followed by bursts of hibernation. We did somehow manage to summon the energy for a road trip down to Nashville after Christmas, and so found ourselves at Rudie's on NYE.

Which turned out to be a pretty great thing, especially in the biting cold. It's a warmly lit, well-heated, neighborhood restaurant in East Nashville, filled with comfort food options. Not much more you could ask for right on the cusp of healthy new years resolutions.

Resolutions for me which include a Dry January, so I was definitely ordering a Vesper Martini:

Vesper Martini

Smooth, intriguing, and full of alcohol - perfect.  

As mentioned, the menu is comforting. Which means indulgent. Wanting to warm up from the inside out, I ordered the Half Hog Stew.

Half Hog Stew

This consisted of a stew of tender braised pork (including unctuous pieces of fat), red potatoes, leeks, rosemary, accompanied by a gig and cave-aged cheddar grilled cheese, drizzled in honey. Sweet, salty, rich, and crunchy, all rolled into one dish. Heaven on a plate (and a bowl). 

Friends ordered similarly decadent dishes (but from the Chef's Specials menu) and were similarly happy with their choices:

Lobster Pot Pie

Lobster Pot Pie with lobster tail, lardon, fennel, leek, and grilled corn, accompanied by a lobster butter popover.

Pork Chop Tomahawk

Pork Chop Tomahawk (16oz!) with collard greens, black-eyed peas, and a sweet potato and relish puree. 

From a glance at some of the blackboards decorating the joint, the sources for the meat and seafood can be attributed to single farms across the country. Which would cater for the hipster-vibe of the place. 

Even with all the decadence, we couldn't pass up on a chocolate lava cake for dessert - split three ways of course. 

Dark Chocolate Lava Cake

Which came out not looking quite like a lava cake, but did have an interesting blueberry-lavender ice-cream (give me all the lavender ice-creams please) on the side. A perfect end to a wonderful NYE meal.

Overall, Rudie's is deserving of it's high rating. The ambiance is cozy, the servers are efficient and friendly, and the food is rich and decadent. Definitely a nice dinner date location, or for a indulgent catch-up with friends. If only I lived closer to Nashville.

Rudie's Seafood & Sausage

1402 McGavock Pike, Nashville, TN
Mon - Fri 4:00pm - 10:00pm, Sat 1:00pm - 10:00pm, Sun 11:00am - 10:00pm

Gitane

After the craziness of moving countries, and flying off to another state barely a week after I arrived in San Francisco, I finally have a chance to sit down at my computer to something other than work. There are a few terrible meals not worth mentioning and I'd much rather start with delicious dinner fare accompanied by great cocktails. 

An impressive dinner in a gorgeous restaurant, it turned out that the lighting wouldn't be the best for my food outing in San Francisco. We're all more interested in good food rather than good photos though right?

Gitane

The menu has a decidedly Spanish feel and doesn't suffer from choice overload. There's a nice range of meat and vegetarian dishes for both appetizers (what I know as entrées), and entrées (what I know as mains). We sipped on cocktails while we mulled over the choice of dishes.  

Smoking Lady

As I'm not a fan of sickly sweet drinks, the Smoking Lady with its heavy-hitting combination of akvinta vodka, amontillado sherry, laphroaig, honey, lemon and sage was right up my alley. 

To kick off our meal, we had a couple of entrees of share.

Cuello de Pato

The Cuello de Pato was a succulent combination of crispy duck roulade, duck confit, pine nuts, mustard greens, English pea puree, fava beans and sour cherry jus.  An almost perfect mix of fatty meat and crunchy pine nuts, with a combination of flavours that was just brilliant.  

Canalones

This was a sizeable dish of pasta filled with roasted veal breast, lacinto kale and tetilla cheese. Not a dish I would usually order, I was glad that my dining companion chose this as most of the dish was morishly good. This bits that weren't good were the pockets of undercooked pasta that resulted in odd crunchy textures.

Having finished my cocktail by this stage, a second one was ordered that was just as impressive as the first.  

Bitter Forrest

The Bitter Forrest was a heady combination of new amsterdam gin, aperol, zibenz, citrus, bitter lemon soda topped with a sprig of rosemary. Strong in its herb taste, I could almost pass this off as delicious medicine.

Conejo y Caracoles

Neither of us were particularly hungry for some reason, so decided to share a single main. The Conejo y Caracoles, with its interesting combination of pancetta wrapped rabbit loin, morcilla blanca, braised snails and smoked marble potatoes had to be ordered. The dish was texturally interesting with the comforting flouriness of the potatoes offset by the slightly odd squishiness of the snails. I would have preferred larger serves of both the rabbit and the sausage, but that's just me being greedy for the rich flavours of the dish. Pancetta really does make everything taste better.   

Gitane is perfect for an intimate dinner, and while the food is certainly good, the cocktails are unique and outshine even the food. Next time, I'm bringing more friends and trying even more dishes and cocktails. The food is on the pricey side though, so maybe I'll have to leave it for a special occasion. 

Gitane

Mon-Tue 530pm-12am, Wed-Fri 530pm-1am, Sat 530pm-12am