Date Night: Jacqueline and Mother’s Ruin

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.” 

Eighteen years ago, my then-fiancé Dom and I were in the final stretch of planning a destination wedding in New Orleans: Mass at St. Louis Cathedral. A second line through the French Quarter to the courtyard reception. Canoes full of raw Gulf oysters on ice. 

Hurricane Katrina had other plans. We kept the date and cobbled together a Nashville version in six weeks: Mass at Church of the Assumption in Germantown. Stretch limo to the Parthenon, where we danced at Athena’s gold-sandaled feet. Cupcakes instead of a wedding cake, which felt cutting-edge at the time. 

Many literal and metaphorical hurricanes have blown through our marriage over the years, shearing off a lot of the schmoopiness I felt in the early days. But every time I’m in Germantown, it brings back that warm fall afternoon, a long veil looped over my arm as I crossed Seventh Avenue from the bridal room to the church. I feel the overwhelm and anticipation (Should I have worn my hair down instead of in an updo? Is there time to change it?) and the peace that came over me when the chapel doors opened — when I saw Dom smiling on the altar steps and remembered the real reason I was there. 

That’s why, for our recent Date Night, I asked him to meet me at Assumption, a 10-minute walk from his downtown co-working space. I watched him stride up in his Don Draper shades with the sleeves of his button-down rolled up. I leaned in for a kiss as he said … 

“Don’t even think about touching me. I’m sweating my dong off.” 

Romantic vibes obliterated, we started our steamy 16-minute walk down Monroe Street from the gorgeous Assumption — sadly still closed for renovation and restoration after the 2020 tornado — to Jacqueline, The Optimist’s patio bar. It was a scenic walk at first — a mix of original shotgun-style houses, new builds and restaurants like 312 Pizza. Then things took a turn when we dead-ended into the Cumberland River Greenway — a misnomer if there ever was one, as there’s no actual green on that stretch and plenty of abandoned or partially built structures that’d be perfect should you need to dump a body. Don’t worry: By this time next year it’ll be gorgeous and unaffordable. A few hundred feet of train tracks later we entered the pocket of Adams Street restaurants that begins with The Optimist.

Open 5 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday while the weather is warm, Jacqueline is an adorable outdoor walk-up bar, the kind that makes you feel like you’re on vacation even if you live 12 minutes away. Consider the short drink list a suggestion: Our bartender asked what we like and created cocktails on the spot. I said I’m not a fan of heat, smoke or soda: He made a clean tequila martini. Dom’s concoction had pineapple juice, heat and tequila and was delightfully over-garnished in the way tropical drinks are — with a lime, long leaf, umbrella and red skull cocktail pick with half an orange wheel and two sugar-crusted gummy sharks on it, which the bartender advised eating after they soaked up some alcohol.

When it’s this hot outside, I don’t want to eat anything hot or heavy. Jacqueline offers the perfect summer snack list: ceviche in green chimichurri with thin slices of serrano; tuna poke in citrusy ponzu; smoked fish dip topped with mustard seeds, all of which are $6 and come in a small glass ramekin with tortilla chips on the side. We got The Works, $17 for all three, a dozen chef’s-choice raw oysters on ice and a couple bar stools overlooking the colorful courtyard of The Griff apartments, where we sweated our dongs off together.

Inside the delicious air conditioning, The Optimist shares a hallway (and a management group) with Star Rover Sound, a small-ish music-venue-bar-restaurant with an incredible beaded curtain featuring young Tom Petty in its entryway. One way to work the night is to do drinks and oysters at Jacqueline until 7:30 and catch the dinner show at Star Rover Sound at 8 — two completely different experiences and cuisines within 100 feet of each other.

Looking back, that probably would have been the better call. Instead, we worked up another sweat walking up Taylor Avenue, past abandoned train cars covered in graffiti and up cobblestone sidewalks, then cut over a block to Monroe at the corner of what was previously Little’s Fish Market and Mad Platter, and is now Taco Mamacita and Mother’s Ruin.

Though its name is really-not-all-that-fun 18th-century slang for gin’s destructive effect on poor women, Mother’s Ruin is the Nashville outpost of the NYC original and checks every box of a great neighborhood bar: big, loud indoor area; smaller and super leafy outdoor street-facing patio space + bar strung with lights; irreverently named drinks (Demonbreun Fucks, Satan’s Rose Garden) and bar food that doesn’t come out of a box.

This isn’t the place to have a course-by-course meal; it’s a place to suck back a “dressed” Superior cerveza — which means they crack open the can, shake a few dashes of Cholula around the opening and stick a lime on top — and jabberjaw with friends while you share Old Bay waffle fries and dip fried saltines in bowls of pimento cheese. It’s where you head when you roll out of bed at 2 p.m. on Sunday, still in your oversized, ironic PJ bottoms, and can’t function properly until you’ve had a bloody mary and bowl of potatoes and eggs.

All of that is to say, it’s a young crowd. Mother’s Ruin is open until 2 a.m., and the cool kids are their bread and butter, but it doesn’t strike me as a place that’s generally comfortable for all ages, since it gets younger as the night goes on. As we were paying out, a young guy came in with his parents, who looked sheepish and out of place. “Look, babe,” Dom said. “We’re not the only olds here anymore.”

I like Mother’s Ruin best when it comes to me instead. A few weeks ago, when I had the house to myself, all I wanted in the world was a breakfast burrito stuffed with fries and eggs and a bowl of queso that I didn’t have to share with anyone. I had both delivered from Mother’s Ruin, ate them in glorious silence on my couch. I felt right at home, because I was.