J. Alexander's Restaurant — Restaurant in Nashville-Davidson

This trip to J. Alexander's is brought to you by my friend Brent A's birthday. I planned it with another friend of mine a few weeks ago and neither of them had ever been to Kayne Prime. So I promised we would go but my lapse in judgment thought it would be easy to get a table because people aren't going out due to COVID. Fast forward to earlier this week, I forgot 1) I live in Nashville and 2) everyone had given up on quarantining. So not only was Kayne fully booked, so were other high-end steak houses.

Then of course, they suggested Stoney River, which I despise. Stoney River's food is good but it's overpriced. The price you pay for Stoney River pales in comparison to even chain steakhouses like Fleming's, Morton's, or Ruth Chris. Then I remember years ago when I was married, my ex-wife and I would always go to J. Alexander's! I remembered I loved that place.

I placed a reservation online and had plenty of options to choose from. Fast forward to today and we were off to the races.

Upon being seated, I ordered my usual. Fire-grilled artichokes, a house salad with the cilantro lime vinaigrette, a New York Strip (med rare) with a loaded baked potato. It brought back memories of times when I was in love. Not of my ex-wife (haha) but of how delicious the food was!

What I really like about J. Alexander's is the wood-fired grill. There's something about the flavor of grilling over open wood that enhances everything. That's why you have the eternal debate of charcoal VS gas. It's that slight taste of char/smoke from wood that enhances the culinary experience. So to start off, the artichokes. Nobody at the table likes artichokes, which was fine. I didn't want to share anyway. Two whole artichokes, seasoned with herbs and butter, split in half and served with remoulade. Despite being more work than eating several clusters of crab legs, it's worth the effort. Buttery, garlicky, with my teeth scraping/nibbling the small piece of heart attached to the base of every leaf. Maybe it's the butter? I don't know... I just know I like it.

Next up is the house salad with cilantro lime vinaigrette. As far as salads go, as long as the veggies aren't wilted, all salads are the same. It's the dressings that make or break it for me and this cilantro lime hits the spot everytime. Now I know, cilantro is as polarizing as anise seeds so if you think cilantro has the flavor of soap, blame your genetics. It's fresh, it's tart, it's sour, and it's sweet. It's the best house dressing since I discovered the Hot Bacon dressing at Rafferty's.

Now the main course. Loaded baked potato. Again, like salads, it's hard to mess up. The bacon is real (not imitation) and it's loaded with sour cream, chives, and butter. The outside skin is seasoned with butter and salt. If you screw up a baked potato, consider yourself a failure.

The prize here is the steak. I've never ever had a bad steak here. Always cooked perfectly with the wood smoke enhancing the overall flavor. Each bite had the right amount of salt, splash of creamy melted butter, slight crispness to the cooked fat (which is why I like NY Strip) and was absolutely juicy and tender. It was like that from beginning to end.

Now here's the bad part. I got so caught up in the food, I forgot to take the pictures except of the artichoke hearts (which I got first). So... That's my fault. If you're looking for a good meal with friends or your significant other/date, you can't go wrong with J....

I'm basing my 4-star review off the food and not the service. My daughters took me here for Father's Day to treat me to a nice dinner. We made reservations online prior to going to be sure we could get in on what we knew would be a busy night. Upon arrival, we did still have to wait about 20 minutes before having a table available even though we did make reservations. As a restaurant, one thing you don't want to have to do is instruct your servers to tell your patrons as you seat them "I just wanted to let you know that we are very busy tonight, we are short wait and kitchen staff so you can expect a long wait for your meal." I heard more than one wait staff telling the same story to others that were being seated. Unfortunately, they were right. First it took our waitress quite a while to even take our order (I would say at least 15 min). Then once we ordered we probably waited another 30 minutes before our food came out. Sad part is that at the same time I placed a single meal "to go" and it came out to our table before our dine-in food did. From start to finish, we were probably at the restaurant close to two hours. That aside, the food as usual was delicious. I had the Steak Maui (Ribeye), one of my daughters had the salmon and the other had the NY Strip. I had the smashed potatoes as my side. Though the steak was delicious, I had ordered mine medium and it came out more well done than medium. This place is a "special occasion place" as the prices are pretty steep. My steak meal alone was $40. Between three meals and tip, my daughters forked out around $150 without alcoholic beverages. At those prices I would expect much prompter service. Grant it, we were warned and I know with post COVID that restaurants are having a tough time finding anybody who wants to work. Because it is J. Alexander's, I would visit again because the food is always good though I hope that on my next visit they are fully staffed and and wait times are...

Sometimes restaurants lose credit for being inhumane. I applied for a dish washing job here that posted on indeed which held OPEN interviews. When I walked in no one acknowledged me until I said " hello I'm here for the open interviews" then the manager NEVER came out simply sent messages between me and the host. As I sat there for 30+ minutes I happened to check my email and I had received an email that said I was OVER QUALIFIED for a dish washing position that paid $20/hr. I mean at least talk to me before you make that decision? What should my criteria had been? I mean obviously I needed the job. Behind the scenes I used my last $10 to pay for gas to get there!!! & According to the site you needed help! I guess just not my help. The person you didn't even meet in person. I felt judged and discriminated against BC I was not the same skin tone as 95% of the staff. Literally saw one person of color on the floor. A little diversity would be appreciated J. Alexander and shame on the management who posted a position wasted my time and didn't even respect me nor my time enough to come out and tell me I wasn't even going to be interviewed let alone considered. Talk about equal employment opportunity? I just sat there until I read the email. You'd think with the shortage on finding people to work I would have at least been interviewed. I left there with no job, no respect, and a sense of fear employers don't ever think of how this person tried their best to get it and not even be dignified with an honest interview which online stated were open daily. Didn't even get to meet them. Over qualified to wash dishes....