Tucked away in East Germantown on the newly developed Adams Street you’ll find brand new apartments intertwined with breweries and enticing new dining options. The Optimist is well known and loved in Atlanta, and Nashville couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome this sea-lovers’ restaurant to its new home. The food? Divine. The cocktails? Flavorsome and functional; their menu has a sort of hierarchy to it, so if you’re into the “bitter and dirtier” drinks as our spectacular waiter put it, he’d recommend starting at the bottom of the list.
The bread service is rather irresistible, whether you think you’re a carb-lover or not. Personally, it’s hard to beat a soft, yet crispy, dinner roll glazed in butter with fresh, flaky sea salt atop it. Rather miraculously, I limited myself to one, as the Edit team had quite a few rounds of dishes on the docket. As far as appetizers go, there were some off-menu corn cakes topped with fresh crab, a decadent seafood “tower” (dubbed the Opportunist) featuring shrimp, oysters, ceviche, smoked fish dip, and tuna poke, heirloom tomatoes (a personal favorite), whiskey smoked salmon, and a yellowfin tuna carpaccio.
If you think that was a lot, you’re absolutely correct and we didn’t have a ton of room in the entree department; however, we did manage to order their Alaskan halibut en papillote in addition to their rather refined take on chicken and dumplings. Both proved to be extremely delicious and left us wanting more (though that proved to be physically impossible). If you want to take a peek at exactly what the team ordered, take a peek at the gallery below. Most likely, you’ll be making a reservation.
