The Greek Touch, Nashville TN

Normally, when I really like a restaurant, I try to make sure to remember how to get there, so that I can tell people, especially the ones who find Google Maps challenging. The Greek Touch is easy to find. What you do is park in downtown Nashville in the library deck, preferably on a Monday when the library is closed (budget cuts) and there’s an extra space or two. Then you walk to a coffee shop called Provence and wait for about twenty minutes for our friend Tory to get time off for lunch. She’ll come get you and take you through the lobby of the Fifth Third Bank building, out the loading dock, down past the dumpsters and you’ll take a left in some alley and wind up in a shopping arcade. You’ll take a right and it’s a little past the post office on your right.

I imagine that Google Maps could probably get you there with a little less intrigue, but who’d want that?

This was the last stop on our road trip, and I do wish we’d have been in more of a mood to chow down and get into it, but honestly, after all those great meals and that blistering heat, neither of us really had much of an appetite left. And that’s a shame, because this food is indeed very good, and considerably better than a few similar quickie Greek restaurants in the Atlanta area that I have tried. It really deserved more attention and love than we could bring it.

Tory recommended the chicken, but both Marie and I wanted to try the gyro meat, so we both ordered the same thing, which we almost never do. We each got the combo meals, which have chicken and gyro with rice and a salad. I’d say the chicken’s not at all bad, but the gyro meat was better, and very tasty.

When I was in college, I would frequently eat at the old Gyro Wrap on Broad Street downtown, before that chain morphed into Great Wraps and started trying to sell everything, badly. The Greek Touch reminds me of the great quality of the food back then. It’s very good, no-frills, quickly-prepared lunches for workers in the area with little time to spare, most of whom are going to rush it back to the office. There are maybe five tables in the place and two outside. It’s cramped and not entirely comfortable, but I could spend hours here smelling the food and listening to the noise of the crowd.

The line died down as we had almost finished our meal, and had successfully distracted Tory from her awful morning’s work with even more awful jokes and puns. (Have I ever told you the one about Patricia Whack’s first day in the loan office? Remind me some time.) With a brief lull in the business, the owner stepped out from behind the grill to stretch his arms and asked us how everything was. We said we liked it and thanked him, and he asked where we were from. I told him Atlanta and he grinned widely and said “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

I wasn’t remotely offended. Oftentimes this town wants to drive me from it and I have, on a couple of occasions, gone to Nashville to just get away from everything. 2004 was one of those occasions. Nashville’s so packed full of great things that we were really considering moving here, until Asheville stole our hearts.

Then again, neither of those cities has a Frankie’s, about which more another time.