Eat Out for Nashville: The Acorn

Based on all the accounts I've heard, Eat Out for Nashville was a great success with restaurants experiencing a boom in business on what would otherwise be a rather quiet night for dining. There was a really great list of participating restaurants, but we chose The Acorn. I've never had a bad experience there (and even hosted a really great private party there last year) and, well, we know the chef, so it was kind of a no-brainer. Also, despite being on the fine-dining side of casual restaurants in town, it's fairly baby-friendly. We had dinner upstairs on the patio. It was busy enough to have a pleasant din of noise enough to drown out any fussiness from the baby without being so loud as to prevent decent conversation. Perfect.

Dinner started out with one of their new cocktails. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name but it was the one with St. Germain and lemon. SO refreshing. Incidentally, dinner ended with a second one of these cocktails, too. Anyhoo.

The food portion started with a lovely amuse bouche--chopped strawberries with balsamic vinegar, celery leaves and croutons and topped with a bleu cheese (I think--sorry, the cocktail had kicked in by this point). I generally don't like celery, but this really worked. And it's strawberry season in Tennessee; we have the best strawberries on the planet. Dinner started in earnest with the arugula and butternut squash salad. The spiced walnuts and brown butter hollandaise were such a nice compliment to the arugula. I so love brown butter but rarely have it at home any more because Mr. Eats should really stick to his Smart Balance. And brown Smart Balance?...just doesn't work.

For a main course, I chose to have a double portion of acorn squash ravioli. Turns out, this dish typically is served with a pecan pesto and herbed apple cider that has a base of chicken stock. Luckily, chef Andy (er, Andrew) Hunter caught that for me and prepared an alternate sauce with the apple cider. It was delicious. The ravioli had a nice, delicate flavor and the sauce also had a light touch so even though I had a double order, I had no trouble polishing off the whole plate. I was eagerly anticipating dessert (I heard there was a wonderful strawberry dish served with something pretzel-y), but Baby Eats decided it was time to go...good thing I had that second cocktail. Ha!