The Standard — Restaurant in Nashville-Davidson

The Standard is a restaurant with a bit of a different experience than usual defined in nature by its uniqueness but without the core defining elements: excellent food. I start by saying we were impressed by the oncoming procedure and introduced to the bar prior to our reserved table. The wait staff and pretty much everyone provided spectacular service apart from the actual important necessity of offering great food. In all honesty, my first grief was imposed by the bland onset of introduction to the history of the building. It's cool, but I honestly don't care and someone shouldn't be giving us a quick rehearsed lecture on the building made sometime in the 1800s. We were given the option of the bar and decided why not, where we went for about 20 to 25 minutes and the bar menu was meek at best, very few options and the recommended drink being so overwhelmingly zesty I could barely use my taste buds afterwards (jokingly could possibly be the reason for the food not being up to "standard"). After the bar, we were shown our table and my second grief being placed directly above the air conditioner. So I was chillingly awaiting our service and endured throughout the entire evening. On to the essence of this review: we decided to spend our evening enjoying good food and my wife being from Europe expect nothing short of something delicious. We're started out with some calamari which did not disappoint after our lemon-infused drinks at the bar, and was appropriately tasting enough for a satisfying calamari. Nothing special, but definitely got our hopes up. Bread is not hard to get right, we definitely enjoyed this as well. Now comes the problem... We are served our platters and the food is nowhere near as expected portion wise or in taste. I ordered the Standard Filet as it is expected to be more in value compared to the standalone "butcher" menu items. My wife orders the shrimp and grits. The filet I was served is not bad in the general sense of steaks, but this being a steakhouse was nothing to marvel at. It was an extremely simple piece of filet mignon atop very boring hash that all in all besides the onions that it came with, pertained an extraordinarily bland flavor. My wife dismayed that the shrimp was cooked in an older, used oil and the flavor was heavily swayed by this effect. The grits, not being anything of either of our favorites anyways, was a bland as could be. A side of Mac and cheese was also ordered that could barely be edible due to the heavy intoxication of milk that persisted within it, same symptom as the grits no doubt. Neither with any flavor. This was my wife's first introduction to American "fine dining", we both are recently from the German straits of excellent food that is common and spans wide between the lands and cities of prime restaurants posted throughout Europe. Needless to say, we are disappointed on our anniversary coming from a place in the world where we can expect great food at good prices, and even better food on particularly special occasions. We spent triple, almost quadruple for basically nothing, an evening we could get in places like Nuremberg three times over. The way I would sum it all up is this "fine dining" restaurant in its historic locale is as pretentious as most things are in America that I can't even describe how sullen it makes me. Did I pay for the experience? Did I pay for the food? I cannot find the appropriate reasoning that I have spent an exorbitant amount of money for something so easily prevalent in the place I've been living for the past 3 years. This restaurant has some serious work to do and make a shift from "expensive experience" to "delicious food". We won't be coming back, and it has placed a heavy dent in our desire to go to Nashville in...

Well, this one going to be a bit disappointing, unfortunately, particularly for a Nashville local. My family came here for my birthday a few nights ago and were promptly greeted by the valet, who was very personable and shared some of the building’s history with us and snapped a few photos. Good start. The building itself is unique for Nashville and the interior is very much reminiscent of a slightly rundown, early 19th century, Northeast stately townhouse.

The hostess/manager seated us in a room adorned with an elk head and a gas fireplace directly next to a floor AC vent that was cranking cold air. So much so, that I had to remove my sport coat, lay it on the ground to block the vent, because we were all freezing within the first few minutes of sitting down. Crisis averted. The servers were friendly and attentive, so full marks to Nash and his younger colleague, whose name I cannot currently remember.

I had a ‘New Fashioned’ to start, which was a below average cocktail. I didn’t finish the drink and informed me that I should stick to wine for the remainder of the evening. The beverage program at the restaurant as a whole needs some serious work. Completely unmemorable, multiple drinks on the menu unavailable, and nothing that I would ever seek out specifically again.

The jumbo lump crab bisque was good, a solid bisque/crab meat ratio, but was unusually small portioned for bisque. The Caesar was unnecessarily small portioned, served on a bread plate, and was unfortunately decidedly quite average. On to the entrees…My son, six years old, ordered the salmon, as there were very limited children’s options (chicken fingers, I believe) He got through about half or his meal, didn’t like or dislike. I tried it and agreed it was unmemorable. My wife ordered the pork chop, which was both large and largely flavorless. She finished less than half.

My father and I were hungry and both ordered medium rare 14 oz ribeyes with Standard sauce, asparagus, and mashed potatoes (all a la carte). We were delighted to see lovely, large, thick cut ribeyes both perfectly pink, but our elation turned to tears as both steaks were borderline inedible due to excessive seasoning and extreme saltiness. Within the first few bites, we were grasping for our waters and could taste nothing but salt. I finished less than 1/3 of my steak and my father less than that. $108 in ribeye rendered completely inedible by an unconscionably heavy hand. Unforgivable.

Let me take a moment and say that I personally heavily kosher salt my steaks to achieve a caramelized crust, which, in turn, insulates the steak, particularly if thick, and and allows it to cook in an even and gentle manner. I even brush it with melted butter as it hits the desired temperature which just sets the flavor off.

This was not that. This was not your standard salt crust. This was pure butchery, was wholly unacceptable, and sadly, it ruined our meal. Needless to say, we skipped dessert (on my birthday). We alerted the waitstaff of our dissatisfaction with our meals but didn’t push the matter as we were trying to enjoy the evening. No discount or recompense was offered, so we paid the bill, left a generous tip, determined we would not return, and fed the meat to the dogs. They, likewise,...

Not sure really where to begin with this one.

I don’t really write a lot of negative reviews—I try to give everyone multiple chances (we all have a bad days).

So you can decide if my experience was just a bad day or if you should go somewhere else before dropping $400 on dinner.

We booked an early reservation at 5:15 and upon entering we were asked by the hostess if we want to enjoy a cocktail at the bar (the place was eerily empty) we decided that since most of us were doing dry January—we’d just go to our table (which seemed to annoy the hostess).

We ordered lobster dip and fried green tomatoes for an appetizer. The lobster dip was meh but the fried green tomatoes were the worst i’ve had ( they needed some seasoning desperately)….they offered to add an another slice of tomato—it only cost an additional $5 🤷🏽‍♂️😂.

We got our meals and they were decent—probably half of my steak was plain fat but I just sort of accepted it at this point. The waiter seemed unresponsive when we mentioned how bad the tomatoes were.

Speaking of the waiter—I had mentioned to him earlier that we would love to see the house and the room they rent out for larger groups (in case the meal was good and our business wanted to host an event there). He told me that he couldn’t do that because there was another department that did that—I asked him how to connect with them and he said, “actually i’m over that department”?! He never gave me any more information or direction on how to book the place (i’d hate to be the owner and lose the potential 20-25k that we could have spent).

I went to the restroom during the meal and asked the waiter to point out the location since the building is truly a haunted maze. He told me it was at the end of the hall—when I opened the door at the end of the hall I laughed because it was a supply closet. The same hostess (behaving pretentiously)said with indignation in her voice—“the restroom is around the corner and too the left…this is a closet.”

After dinner we bought desert (the skillet cookie—ironically served not in a skillet but a ceramic baking dish). The cookie was probably the best dish of night—skillet or no skillet.

After paying the bill (which they brought us the wrong check after giving them my card)—we set at the table with our friends for about 5 minutes enjoying our time together, celebrating 15 years at the company we founded together (where i’m the C.E.O.) when the same hostess appeared and told us it was time for us to leave since they had another party coming in and needed our table.

Such a strange night and bad experience—members of our staff had given us a gift card to celebrate fifteen years working together.

Honestly—The Standard was anything but the standard for good fine dining—it was more like the Sub Par. Sadly, I am pretty confident that The Standard won’t be around when we celebrate our next work anniversary because this type of establishment won’t cut in...