The Palm - Nashville — Restaurant in Nashville-Davidson

As a 30 year + long customer of The Palm (primarily in DC and Tysons Corner, VA), as well as a lifelong member of the 837 Club and now Landry’s Select Club, I wouldn’t write a negative review of a lone disappointing situation, but the story of my experience at The Palm in Nashville needs to be told.

My wife and I had originally made a reservation at a Michelin rated restaurant in Nashville, but after reviewing the eclectic menu, we decided to run with something a bit more familiar for dinner. My wife wanted an East Coast Gigi Salad (which we know is no longer on the menu at any Palm restaurant, but always get accommodated nonetheless). Just to be sure, I called The Palm in advance of making the reservation, to confirm that they can accommodate the special request. After being put on a brief hold, I was assured that it would not be an issue. Fantastic - so we thought.

We arrived on time, we were quickly seated and then ordered drinks while deciding on what to order for dinner, and the waiter informed us that bread would be on the way. “What was the soup de jour?” we asked. We were told that the chef “didn’t have time” to make the soup de jour because of a concert (not sure what that was all about). Didn't have time? Had he attended the concert and got to the kitchen too late? Our dinner reservation was 9 pm! The drinks came to our table maybe 2/3rds full. That has never been an issue in any Palm Restaurant that I frequented. Strike one.

After about 15 minutes (and after the waiter had commended us for knowing about the East Coast Gigi Salad), our East Coast Gigi salad arrived at our table, but our bread had still not arrived. The server apologized but said that “he put the bread order in already” - as if we would feel better knowing that he was on top of it, but his wait staff wasn’t. Not sure how that works when the couple sitting to our left received their bread before us even though they arrived 10 minutes AFTER us. Strike two.

The East Coast Gigi salad came out (nicely split for us to share), but completely wrong. There were eggs, avocado, no bacon bits and a few scant onions. The traditional vinaigrette dressing was off as well. We sent the salads back, explaining to the waiter exactly what was supposed to be in the salad. After a second attempt, our salads came back again with avocado (which I hate), no bacon and the wrong dressing. We gave up at that point and unhappily decided to eat our salads as is. Strike three.

Our salad plates sat in front of us for quite awhile without us touching our silverware again and then what happens? Well, a server comes out with our entrees and side dish. Since so one took away our salad plates, we were asked by the wait staff to move our salad plates so that he can place down our entrees. Excuse me?!? What top tier restaurant asks its patrons to move the prior courses dirty plates that were sitting in front of us way too long to accommodate the entrees?!?

We asked the server to first clear our salad plates - so he took the entrees back into the kitchen. Our waiter then approached and asked why we sent back our entrees. We didn’t “send them back” - we simply asked to first remove our dirty salad plates before placing the entrees down in front of us. Clearly, the wait staff had a linguistic issue - not understanding our request. We then told the waiter that the salads were still completely wrong and asked for the manager. He was not your typical accommodating Palm manager - getting us only more frustrated. I gave him my business card - they already had my cell number from making the reservation - and asked that he have someone “higher up” give me a call. We offered to pay for our drink and salads. Management wanted to comp us but we continued to insist on paying for what we had and then just leaving. He wouldn’t give us a bill - so we left.

Here’s the icing on the cake… I accidentally left behind my glasses and glasses case on the dinner table. Not even a phone call or email advising us that my glasses were...

Went to the palm tonight with my wife for a delayed valentines day. I will start out with a disclaer, we are not fancy people, and the only reason we were there was because we were given a gift card.

We arrived for 5 o'clock reservations about 10min early. They open at 5. The door was locked and people were standing outside... I guess they choose to not even open the door till time... It was chilly, so we were shivering by the time we got in.

About the time we sat down, the fire alarms started strobing. Out server played it off as a non issue and even made a joke that it was club palm tonight. She mentioned that they are attached to the Hilton, so it was probably an issue there causing them to go off. They kept going off for probably 10 min. No sound, but bright strobes.

The atmosphere really lacks a "high class" feel that I would expect at the prices. Cheesecake factory feels more high class.

We mentioned we do not drink alcoholic, so our server gave us non alcoholic options. However she only mentioned sparking, or flat water. At $10 a bottle. Later I saw others with plain tap water...

Our waiter was good and gave suggestions and did explain all the options and answered our questions about the food.

We got an appetizer/starter of the gian meatball. It was good, but a little bland and lacking a ton of flavor.

We were them asked if we wanted bread and then given bread with no explanation. Apperantly they have plain bread and jalapeno bread. So much to my surprise I bit into a spicy price of bread while my wife game me strange looks as I explained it was spicy. Also, the butter was rock hard and very hard to spread.

Our mains came with our sides in a reasonable amount of time. We did not order and soup or salad.

The steaks were good, but really just okay. They were obviously very good cuts of meat, but I have had better steak at longhorn, outback, and cheap chain outlets.

The fried asparagus was good. With the fried batter had se flavor added to it. The batter seemed like an after thought.

The half and half (chips and onion straws) was just bad. No flavor, and the chips tasted burnt. It's also strange because it's served with their house steak sauce... Chips and steak sauce?

We finished our meal and the waitress asked of we wanted her to bad anything up. We instructed her what we wanted to keep. She still had not asked about desert. We thought maybe they did not do dessert. She came back with our take homes, and she finally asked about desert. We ordered a Crème brûlée. So we then had to stot for about 7 min to receive our desert. Just seemed like she should have asked earlier about desert so it would have been ready...

This was the first time my wife had had Crème brûlée. It was very different then I have had before... Not quite a sweet and much colder than others that I have had. It was tasty, but again like a lot of the food it was just good, but not spectacular.

Final notes: our server was great, and she did check in often. The couple of slip ups above were probably just the way they are trained. Overall the Palm does not live up to the prices. If you took money out of the equation I would have given them 4 stars. I regularly give Logan's 5 stars... Overpriced average food. I would place our $200 meal on par with cheesecake factory at over...

I have lived and dined in Nashville for the past 20 years. I had actually never been to the Palm. This place was willing to host a large dinner party and even put us in a private room near the front that was nice. We were served by three or more servers. My party was actually very easy that night but our main server was clearly annoyed to have to serve the table. I’ve never spent $300 for 2 people at a place and felt like an inconvenience. Our party of 11 split the tab in 2/3 people, which was a huge problem for her. All together the table spent between $1000 to $1500. We were immediately profiled as not a high end client, which I’m sure they have them constantly, but we were easy, polite, and well mannered. I’m actually shocked this particular server has a job here. She just doesn’t seem like a nice person.

The food is honestly ok. The side portions are way too big, the steak was blan, the fish wasn’t amazing. Definitely not something you couldn’t make at home. I feel like it’s another historic Nashville restaurant that has stayed open and busy based on their reputation, but times have changed and there are way better restaurants for your money. Kane Prime is a much better high end steak option, Saltine is 1/3 price and much better seafood, and fifth and Taylor’s atmosphere is another comparable, but better restaurant. There’s plenty more.

I’m really on the fence between 2-3 stars here. I’ll give them 2 because I just can’t seem to get passed the disappointing 30th bday party dinner. They were accommodating for our party on a management level. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they need the high prices to keep the idiots out, but our party unanimously agreed it’s not worth coming back to and it was not worth the price. If overpaying for dinner is your strategy to avoid being around common folk or makes you feel superior, this place is still...