Sour Lemon

This weekend has been a whirlwind. I was busy from sun up to sun down and I barely saw my house. But those weekends are necessary to keep you on your toes. Household chores like laundry and vacuuming will just have to wait for a later day. There are things to be done!

This weekend I was lucky enough to attend the Music City Eats food and wine festival. It was everything I dreamed of and more. There will be a full recap coming up shortly- and trust me it will make your mouth water. I got to meet some of my favorite chefs, taste some amazing food, and day drink. 

This is the outfit I wore on the first day of Music City Eats. I needed something comfortable and cool- since I would be standing outside for hours. Also, I always love a dress that matches the occasion so why not wear a dress with food on it? 

I got this dress a year ago during a modcloth sale and I never wore it until this weekend. I have no idea why because it turns out I really love this dress. It was perfect for the festival because it has nice deep pockets to keep a phone and some business cards. I also love the little bow detail on the back of the dress, but I'm pretty sure my hair covered it the entire day. 

And because I would be on my feet all day I opted for my old standby tan boots. It was a smart move because my feet didn't get tired at all! Boots and skirts are a perfect match.

Dress: Modcloth

Boots: Old Tan Boots

Necklace: Gift from a dear friend

Nashville Food Friday: Smiling Elephant

The Smiling Elephant has been on my radar for a while, but for one reason or another I just never made it there until recently when a sweet friend of mine wanted to have her birthday dinner there. Good food and good birthday celebration = win-win! This was really a kick in pants for me that made me re-evaluate everything. What have I been doing wrong for the last five years that caused me to miss eating at the best Thai place in Nashville? WHY DIDN'T Y'ALL TELL ME I WAS WRONG!? Smiling Elephant is, in my humble opinion, the best Thai food I have had in the south.

Located on 8th Ave South, the Smiling Elephant feels like a retreat. The front is adorable and there's a little patio where you can enjoy your curry al fresco. Inside, the dining room is small and heavily decorated with wood. I was surprised by how small this place truly is. We were there pretty early, about 5:30pm and the place filled up quickly, and it was just a Tuesday. This is a sign that you are on the right track for a good meal.

To start, we ordered the fresh rolls. I love these things, but you would be surprised how many places mess them up. These rolls were great; sticky on the outside but crunchy and fresh on the inside. The chili sauce gave a nice little spice to balance out the mild vegetables.

For my meal I ordered the "set" which comes with soup and dessert. I chose the Tom Yum lemongrass soup and I was impressed by its mild and pleasing taste. It was full of fresh vegetables that were still crunchy. I love that they threw the spinach in at the last minute so it was just barely cooked.

For my entree I ordered tofu pad thai. I know it's boring and the typical Thai food go-to but hey, it's a good way to find out if a Thai place is solid. They warn you in the menu that this is not the sweet/sticky "Americanized" pad thai that you are are used to, so I was intrigued. Their pad thai is prepared how true pad thai is supposed to be. It was filled to the brim with bean sprouts and egg and I could taste the vinegar in it. The best part was the wider-than-average green bean noodles. The texture of these was sublime and makes me never want to go back to regular rice noodles.

Steve ordered the Karee curry, which was the curry of the day. The Smiling Elephant only does one type of curry a day to ensure the freshest and best taste. This is an idea I can get totally behind. The Karee was a variation on a red coconut curry and it was delightful. The sauce was smooth and the vegetables once again were crisp- not soggy and overcooked. I really enjoyed the pickled cucumber and red onions that accompanied the spicy curry.

For dessert we both had coconut custard. At first I was surprised because it was really tiny, but it was so rich I don't think I could have eaten more than one. It was full of coconut flavor and very creamy and sticky- the perfect consistency where it sticks to the spoon and your tongue.

Overall, I was very impressed with the Smiling Elephant. The staff was friendly and the food came out super fast. Everything that we had was delicious, the best Thai I've had in Nashville. I can tell that this is the beginning of a long love affair with the Smiling Elephant.

Music City Eats

Hey y'all, I don't know about you, but I am really excited for this weekend. I've been counting down for weeks. Why you ask? It's Music City Eats! If you haven't heard about it, Music City Eats is a two-day food festival in downtown Nashville where you can taste some of the best food made in town and listen to some of the best chefs from across the nation talk about their craft. There are tons of things to see and do, but here's a list of what I'm most looking forward to!

• Seeing Jonathan Waxman talk about roasted foul
• "Hog Talk" which involves some amazing chefs talking about my favorite meat, the pig
• The Bourbon vs. Moonshine debate
• Edward Lee's talk on "How to eat your Bourbon"

The best part is that during both days of the festival you can sample some food from Nashville's best chefs at the Flavors of Nashville event. Here is just a smattering of the chefs who will be showing off their cooking skills:

• Erik Anderson & Josh Habiger from The Catbird Seat
• Deb Paquette of Etch
• Larry Carlile of SILO
• Philip Krajeck of Rolf and Daughters
• Tandy Wilson of City House
• Margot McCormack of Margot and Marche
• Roderick Bailey of the Silly Goose

Tickets are still available if you feel like partaking in all of this culinary goodness with me!

Nashville Food Friday: Nomzilla

I stumbled on to Nomzilla almost by accident. I just got out of a wonderful massage from O.liv Body Bar (seriously people, they are the best!) and wanted to continue my blissful day of self love by taking myself out to dinner. Nomzilla happened to be right across the street and I knew that they had a deal on Scout Mob that I could take advantage of, so why not? Unfortunately, there are a bunch of reasons why I should have just hopped in my car and gone somewhere else for dinner. Please, let me explain.

I went to Nomzilla around 6:30 for dinner. The place was completely empty- not a soul in sight. This is never a good sign but, eh, I was hungry and tired. The decor is, how do you say this nicely.... horrendous. The color scheme vacillates between eye-popping neon abominations and boring neutrals. The Nomzilla mascot mural near the trash cans in the second dining room was poorly done, looking more like a high school art project than an actual piece of wall art. Also, in the boring dining room there were a bunch of Nashville-skyline-with-keyboards paintings, all the same, with different color schemes. These were also of high school quality. So now that I'm done taking a massive poop on the decor, let me explain what this place is about.

Nomzilla is a make your own sushi place. They offer a bunch of fish, fillings, rice, sauces and toppings for you to make the roll of your dreams. I was not feeling very creative at the moment so I decided to order off the regular menu with the rolls already put together. I'm happy they offered this for indecisive people like me. 

To start I ordered an eel roll, which is normally one of my favorite go-to sushi staples. I was taken aback that everything was served on disposable dishes. This is not eco-friendly in the slightest and If I go to a restaurant I want to eat off real dishes and not pretend I'm at a backyard BBQ at a friends house. The roll itself was really disgusting. The eel sauce tasted really funny, like no eel sauce I've ever had before. It was oddly tangy and full of spices that just didn't seem right. Does eel sauce go bad? Because that might have been what happened here. Another big issue was that this roll was ice cold. The eel must have been pre-cooked and kept in a freezer. I have never ordered an eel roll at a sushi joint where the eel wasn't cooked right when you ordered and was served to you warm. The hot eel-cold rice combination is what makes the eel roll so tasty! The only way I was able to finish the roll was to cover it with wasabi, which wasn't even that hot.

For my second dish I ordered the inari (sweet fried tofu) spring roll and it was a snooze. The inari itself lacked flavor and you couldn't taste it mixed in with the lettuce, carrots and cucumber. I could barely see it when looking in the roll; the inari should have been more pronounced. The roll itself was also super cold, like it was kept in the fridge for a while. When you got to the bottom, the whole thing was juicy and wet, like it was defrosting and melting as I ate it. Soggy spring rolls are a no-no. The sweet chili sauce for dipping was the same stuff you can buy at your international market straight out of the bottle. Any Vietnamese place on Charlotte Pike could make this a million times better.

I was really disappointed with Nomzilla and could not recommend this place at all. For a city in a landlocked state Nashville some pretty decent sushi joints (Samurai, Sonobana) that you should check out if you're craving raw fish.

Honestly, I've had better sushi from Publix. 

Giveaway: Diamond Candles

A few weeks ago I was contacted by the folks of at Diamond Candles to see if I wanted to try out one of their candles. Not only do they have lots of really good scents (fresh grass, lavender, pumpkin chai), their candles contain an extra special present: a ring! Hidden somewhere in your candle is a ring that is worth either $10, $100, $1,000 or $5,000 which makes these pretty much cracker-jack boxes for adult women. Sign me up I said! I picked my favorite smell of all time: clean laundry. I know, it's weird, but when I saw that they offered I only had eyes (I mean a nose) for some fluffed fresh towels.

The location of the ring in the candle is indicated by a gold foil circle. I burned my candle for hours and hours, which felt like watching a pot that didn't boil. C'mon flame, I have a ring to find! I was enjoying my lovely scent, but I'm very impatient and after a few hours I went at that ring with a spoon and a knife. After a bit of digging I pulled out my prize, which was wrapped securely in gold foil and a ziplock baggie to prevent damage. 

And here it is! Granted, the ring is really much too big for my teeny tiny baby fingers (size 4.5 what what!) but I think it would fit most ladies just fine. I didn't get any of the fancy-pants expensive rings- but that really isn't the point. I'm probably going to give this to a friend of mine who would enjoy it. And honestly, who doesn't enjoy mystery presents? 

The lovely people over at Diamond Candles want you to enjoy their surprise candles as well and are offering one up to a lucky winner. Check out their website, instagram and facebook page and think about what scent you might want! Enter below and the winner will be announced shortly!

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Nashville Food Friday: Shalimar

When we go for Indian food, I normally only hit up two places: Woodlands and Bombay Palace. I'm very much ok with staying in a food rut when what I get is usually so good. But sometimes we decide to be adventurous and try a new place. Shalimar was a place I had never been to, and since it's located in Green Hills, it was convenient to have dinner there before seeing a movie at the Regal 16.

The inside of Shalimar itself is fairly small. The building appears to have gone through many additions, making the dining rooms look haphazardly cobbled together. It appears that they added on to the front of the building at some point, but left the original store doors inside the restaurant- which is just totally bizarre. They have the hotel ballroom style banquet chairs that Indian restaurants seem to favor, and of which I am not a fan. But the large built in green cabinet in the back of the dining room is beautiful and worthy of admiration. 

We ordered garlic naan, which we thought would come with our meal, but it turns out that Shalimar's version is an appetizer served before the main dish. This naan was a lot more like pizza dough than traditional naan, and the fact that it was sliced into little strips and served with a dipping sauce didn't help the matter. I'll be honest, the garlic naan tasted good and the green-yogurt sauce for dipping was lovely, but it wasn't what I was expecting. It was more like an Italian garlic knot than anything, and very Americanized.

For dinner we ordered lamb korma and saag paneer. I was pretty disappointed by the saag paneer as there was only four little bits of cheese in the whole dish. The cheese is the best part and I was sad to see it used so sparingly. The saag itself wasn't much to write home about. It was good, but I've had way better at other places. Perhaps one of the reasons I wasn't blown away was that there was so much cream sauce and not a lot of green in the dish. I would prefer a better sauce to spinach ratio.

The lamb korma was the better dish. The lamb was very tender and melted in your mouth. Once again the sauce was good, but not amazing. The portion was also really tiny and after eating the korma and the saag paneer Steve and I were still hungry.

Which brings me to the issue of price. For what we got at Shalimar, it seemed way more expensive than it needed to be. I thought it was just in my mind until I compared it with some of my favorite places.

Lamb Korma

Shalimar: $16.99

Bombay Palace: $13.95

Tamarind: $13.00

Sitar: $14.95

See, it wasn't just in my mind! For what you get there, the price just doesn't make sense. For meat and rice, $17 is absurd. I can buy a whole leg of lamb for less than that. Shalimar was a little cheaper for the saag paneer than the other places (by about $1) but still, I would pay more for better food and more cheese.

For dessert we ordered gulab jaman; it was standard. The balls were a little dryer than I prefer normally, but it's always good to end the meal on a nice sweet note.

I also have to mention the service, which I unfortunately found pretty poor. We were one of two couples in the restaurant at the time, and it took the waiter forever to come and take our order. While he did come and check in once while we were eating, we had to wait a while after we finished our food for anyone to come back in. During this time, the other couple had to walk to the front to ask for their check. Finally a waiter came and asked if we wanted dessert, which we ordered, but he did not clear the dirty entree plates from our table. We sat there, waiting, while looking at our empty, dirty dishes. The plates were cleared at the same time we got dessert, which is a big no-no. When we were finally ready to leave, we also had to go and ask for our check from the front desk. 'Cause we had a movie to catch!

Unfortunately, I think I would have to recommend skipping Shalimar. They might be the only Indian restaurant in Green Hills (which might explain their crazy prices) but just a short drive away you can eat something better at Woodlands or Bombay Palace, that's sensibly priced and comes with better service.

Shalimar, you best step up your game.

Enter to win a KITCHENAID MIXER!

One of my favorite bloggers, Amanda from Little Lady Little City is celebrating her blogiversary and I'm super stoked to be participating in it! So myself and a bunch of other cool ladies teamed up to to give one lucky reader a Kitchenaid Mixer of of their own! (I'm kind of in love with my mixer, so I'm super excited about this giveaway. Trust me- it will change your baking).

All of the ladies participating are awesome and you should be sure to check out their blogs!

This giveaway will be open until September 30th at 11:59 pm EST and is open to all US and Canada readers. There are a ton of ways to enter, so please do one or all of them!

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Tiny Print: The giveaway is open until September 30th at 11:59PM EST. The winner will be chosen at random shortly after the giveaway closes, and will be notified. Once notified, the winner has 48 hours to respond otherwise they will forfeit the prize and another random entry will be chosen. Please note that the color of the Kitchenaid mixer is subject to change due to availability.