Date Night: Geist and Pelato

Date Night is a multipart road map for everyone who wants a nice evening out, but has no time to plan it. It’s for people who want to do more than just go to one restaurant and call it a night. It’s for overwhelmed parents who don’t get out often; for friends who visit the same three restaurants because they’re too afraid to try someplace new; and for busy folks who keep forgetting all the places they’ve driven past, heard about, seen on social and said, “Let’s remember that place next time we go out.”

If you’ve ever waited tables or bartended, you know that most restaurants are one world during setup and another once the doors open. During setup, you can polish silverware with one hand and eat a burrito with the other. It’s perfectly acceptable to flirt while you clean condiment tops in the side station. Back in the day, a fellow server fashioned a tail out of cocktail napkins, attached it to an unsuspecting co-worker’s belt and watched him walk around that way until service started. Once doors open, playtime is over, but a bit of banter continues as the early birds glide in. 

Stop 1: Geist

It’s rare that I enter a restaurant right at 5 p.m., as the logistics involved in making that happen require roughly the same amount of effort as a military obstacle course. So I loved sitting at the bar and pretending to read the cocktail list while the Geist bar staff finished their conversations about disgusting drinks they’ve had elsewhere and who hit on whom after work the night before.

My husband Dom surprised me by ordering the Blackberry Basil Gimlet sans gin, an admirable attempt to conserve calories ahead of a big dinner. I went with the Barracuda, a purple snow cone of ube, rum, coconut cream and pineapple in a glass, and we shared the tuna crudo. Both were exactly as light as I needed them to be, especially on these first hot nights that feel nice now but foretell the beatdown we’re about to take this summer.

If the original “John Geist Horseshoeing” sign along the front of the building doesn’t give it away, Geist is home to a former blacksmith shop that operated as a family business from 1886 to 2006. That history speaks through the exposed brick in the bar and main dining areas, and in the creak of the floors, then makes a very hard, very odd shift at the “Champagne garden” — an outdoor dining area that will drip with wall-to-ceiling-to-wall faux florals until they switch to holiday decor in November.

There was a night game at First Horizon Park, Geist’s backyard neighbor, and I noticed one lone Sounds jersey among the other dressy-ish date nights and family dinners. Geist isn’t the place to pound a few beers before heading to the ballpark — leave that to Neighbors and Von Elrod’s a few doors down. As Dom and I headed out, it felt like half of Nashville was in the area to root-root-root for the home team, and the other half was an eight-minute walk in the opposite direction.

Stop 2: Pelato  

Do you ever enter a Nashville restaurant and wonder, Where did all these people come from and how did they know to come here? That’s how I felt at Pelato, which — at the corner of Monroe and Third — isn’t exactly in a high-foot-traffic area (yet). When we walked in right at 6 p.m. it was a fully formed party, with music, servers hustling plates around and just a few open tables between the main area, patio and back dining room. Now I see why it’s nearly impossible to land a reservation between 5:30 and 8:30 p.m. on weekends, even a week in advance.

This is not the place to exercise restraint. Pelato is an Italian tapas concept, and the entire menu wants you to order too many plates, pass them around and urge your fellow diners to take a bite — but not so many bites that there are none left by the time the plate comes back around. That way you can have more burnt broccolini — especially the floret part that soaks up the toxic-sludge-looking combination of black garlic, Calabrian chili, lemon and olive oil. You may think you don’t want your broccolini to be burnt, but you’d be wrong. Every bite is like getting your face kicked in (in the best possible way).

From a section of the menu labeled “The Goods,” we also had the Pelato Salad, a classic Italian with tender gigante beans and oregano vinaigrette, and the Eggplant Parm Stuffed Bread, which sounds like a big bread-fest but is actually a very thin outer layer of bread with eggplant Parm and red sauce baked inside. From “The Meats” section, I had the Short Rib Stracotto. “Stracotto” translates to “overcooked,” but it was slow-cooked until it fell apart into a glorious heap of rich, meaty meat. Dom went with the Chicken Parmigiana and its perfect crust of crispy cheese around the edge. We shared the Radiatori Vodka, featuring pasta shaped like little radiators, which is a good choice of noodle because the thick cream sauce clings to its folds. It had a surprising but not unpleasant amount of heat.

A case for the Dark Chocolate Budino: Do you need it? No. Is it a really lovely way to punctuate a rich meal? Yes it is. Would it be even better if someone sprinkled some fleur de sel on top before sending it out? Without a doubt.

Pelato came highly and frequently recommended by a dear friend whose husband may or may not have owned and operated an Italian restaurant in Sylvan Park. It’s always a risk to try a place based on what friends like — what if I don’t like it as much as they do? — but not if those friends spent years slinging their own version of sun-dried-tomato pesto penne.

The morning after our Saturday night visit, Dom asked two questions: 1. How soon is too soon to go back to Pelato? And 2. Who can we bring with us? Though he often says the wrongest possible thing to me, this time he was speaking my love language. I longed to answer 1: Tonight. And 2. Your mom, if it were possible — because Lucy, who died in 2021, would’ve ordered half the menu at Pelato, posted fuzzy food photos on Facebook and bought a T-shirt at the host stand on her way out the door.

This is what great Italian food does: It makes you want to share it with others who’ll enjoy it as much as you have, and miss the ones you can’t share it with anymore.