merchants restaurant

consistently good food and service. my husband and i have dinedupstairsand downstairs at merchants for regular dates and special dates such as our anniversary. we've always received genuine care from everyone from the hostess to the servers and chefs. the food is wonderful and fresh.

2nd time here - first time wasupstairsand a bit more formal - didn't rate it highly.  this year we ate casual outside and it was much more enjoyable.  just dropped by for a lunch snack - was busy but well organised and wait staff were helpful finding us a good seat.
had some wings then built our own burgers - so many options - enjoyable.
beers were good and the champagne cocktail was a hit.
pricing was fine and service fairly quick especially considering that it was reasonably busy.
tip - sit outside and you get all the vibes and music overflow from broadway!

i've eaten here twice, over a 2 year period. both times wereupstairsand both were excellent. last night we had the strip steak, smoked pork chop, with a few sides: carrots, mashed potatoes, and truffle mac n cheese. dinner was delicious . service was very good.

ateupstairsfor the seafood and steak...service was excellent ....location was perfect.....enjoyed the pumpkin soup...food way too salty.....

we've eaten many meals at merchants and the food is always great.  i can't think of anything that i haven't liked.  the building itself is historic and dates back to 1892 according to their website.  it was an old pharmacy/retail space originally and then a hotel and finally, a restaurant.  you can read about this stuff on their web page. i like the atmosphere and the crowd is rather professional.  this place is refreshing considering its location...a bar-lined street full of bar food, music, and beer. 

i've had most of my meals downstairs but there is also an upper level that is a bit more formal.  there is a different menu for upstairs.  many times we have reservations for lunch but i they aren't required.

 i love their duck fat tater tots! they are so good and come with three sauces.  the tomato bisque and guacamole are also great choices.  as for entrees, so far, all the selections i've tried have been great.  some of my favorites are  the salmon blt, the bbq pulled pork sandwich, the soup n sammie, and the cheeseburger.  the also have a full bar and fun drink menu. theupstairsmenu is fantastic.

avoid theupstairsdining.upstairsoffers a vastly different menu then downstairs. on a recent visit,upstairswas the only option for a table. we ordered the chopped steak medium well; it was served raw. after returning it, the meat came back medium with a crust so seared it was tough to cut. and, it had no flavor. the side salad looked appetizing but the scant salad dressing had puddled in the bottom of the bowl.
avoid theupstairsat all costs.

wonderful dining experience. a last minute decision to dine here on a saturday night without reservations ended up being a terrific experience. after being seatedupstairsin their lovely dining room, we were presented a menu as well as an ipad to peruse their offerings. our server took her time to go over the menu and make recommendations, even presenting a mini wine tasting. my boyfriend and i decided on an appetizer (charcuterie; which was great), a glass of wine and one of their tennessee specialty drinks (mad hatter; very good). we decided on the swordfish and waygu. our server checked on us promptly after our first tastes of the main course and the waygu was a bit tough, so no questions asked, we were given a chance to try something else. we went with the pork dish which was highly recommended. the swordfish was delicious and we ate that as we waited for the pork. the manager came over and apologized right away and soon enough the pork arrived. we were understanding that it was pushed through the kitchen so we didn't have to wait but it was a bit undercooked. after mentioned that, let's just say we were more than taken care of...end result--i would like to commend our server jen and manager sarah for over and above service and their superb handling of this. we will definitely talk them up and visit again!!

ateupstairslast night. lots to like but it was ultimately ruined by salt. ( and i love salt... literally this is the first tome its ever happened to me.) we really liked dave the waiter and he gave great wine recommendations and knew flavor profiles very well. we started with pork belly wraps and pimento cheese on flap jacks. pork belly was good but finished with heavy salt. i had a salad, duck fat fries, eggplant, and collards, and the wife had short ribs. the short ribs were great, salad was nothing special, fries were very salty, eggplant was bland, and collards were unedible because of salt. it all was nicely presented and menu looked good, and its a shame about the salt.

all-around awful. eating in the lower-classed bistro section, i understood that we wouldn't be getting the optimal merchants experience (as to why any restaurant still retains the archaic practice of demanding certain qualifications for you to pay them money is beyond me), but after my experience with the place i'm absolutely not going back. having a fancy placeupstairsis no excuse for having such a dump down below.

i'm glad to see that other people have had a better time here, but that certainly wasn't the case for me. the "ambiance" of deafening retro-modern 80's synth pop-channeling electro, stale popcorn, and a rude server who would hide presumably unsavory comments behind aforementioned casio keyboard torture at 150 decibels (which i assure you was uncalled for, our party did nothing to impose on him whatsoever) failed to impress. he stalled for nearly a minute between my drink order and the person next to me (i'm not complaining about this detail, i had no trouble being patient for him), then expressed frustration at me for "staring at him" while i waited for him to look up from his pad and turn to me. after a few grumbling comments toward me, he half-heartedly tried to pass it off as a joke, as if to say: "oh, hah, of course i'm not really that bad of a server!" yes, yes you are. did it to me again when i wasn't even looking at him.

i do have to give him credit for warning me about my "vegetable burger" order on account of it containing beef broth, though. a point for him, but not for merchants. this, of course, being a baffling decision on the part of the culinary staff. i can imagine a defense for this decision, as i've heard them before, but honestly, it can only serve the extremely limited selection of diners who want (some of) the health of a veggie burger but don't really have an investment in the ethical side of things -- this is a perfectly valid dietary decision, but seeing as the main market of the vegetable burger would be actual vegetarians, the presence of a false veggie burger amongst a menu that largely alienates vegetarians almost seems just plain antagonistic, hahaha.

i ordered the macaroni and cheese without bacon instead, which while not outright bad for a bite or two became a chore to eat very quickly. just an endless drone of the same dank, skunky, overly loud cheese flavor without any sort of side or available condiment to make the meal more manageable. like i say, not awful, but difficult to down in one sitting. as i was dutifully doing my best, the server came up and tried to instruct me on how to eat my macaroni and cheese, as if the issue was that i'm too stupid to spoon food into my own mouth. if i happened to carry around applications for dick's last resort with me, i would've handed one to him right then.

with a bill that rocketed into the stratosphere for food that we agreed was a cut below what you could get at a freakin' shoney's, none of us have any interest in coming back.

fabulous, both times!. we stopped in here for lunch and liked it so much we made a reservation for dinner upstairs. great casual atmosphere for lunch andupstairsprovided the perfect upgrade to a more upscale dinner that we were looking for. the braised spare ribs with grits app was phenomenal. great simple wine list and they had an impressive bourbon selection for a tennessee restaurant. ;)

bad service, sub-par food. we recently came to this restaurant while visiting some friends in nashville. we were seated around 9 pm on a friday evening. we sat at our table for no less then 15 mins before i went up to the bar to order drinks. no one ever greeted. finally someone came out to our table and said the drinks would be out soon (at least a full 5 mins later we got our drinks). after i finished my drink about half way through the dining experience i was never asked for another, which i def would have taken. the food came out and i had the risotto, which was ok. i wanted some pepper for my dish and there was none on the table, couldn't find our waitress to ask for some so finally had to flag someone else down who brought us some. our waitress never checked on us, never refilled a drink...oh and it turns out she left before we were finished eating. so it took about 15 mins after we were done eating to get the check to pay. waitress was really bad and you could tell she just wanted to get the hell up out of there and we were majorly bothering her by daring to sit at her table and eat. wouldn't recommend this restaurant - at least the downstairs portion. maybe they know how to do it in theupstairsestablishment.

i was hesitant before arriving last night, a saturday evening. with a snow storm approaching, downtown was dead. we had to move our reservation back a half hour, but had to leave a message on the voice mail as no one answered the phone. i left the reservation name, our phone number, and a request for someone to call us back verifying the time change. when we arrived, the place was deserted. we were greeted by a friendly bartender and found the hostess at the back of the restaurant. we gave her our name and that we had tried to call. she didn't seem concerned that she had missed the call. we were seatedupstairsand our waitress arrived promptly and gave us our menus. we realized that the menu on the restaurant's website was not up to date. we were looking forward to the truffle pumpkin pierogies. i was served my husband's steak and he mine, which would have been no big deal if we had not ordered them cooked differently. for all we had heard about kobe steaks, these were not suitable for even logan's. and forth price charged, they should be ashamed. to seal the deal on the evening, a trip to the women's restroomupstairsrevealed a dirty, both toilets clogged, cigerette burned floor, tiles missing, impossible soap dispenser mess. we won't be back. we were embarrassed to bring our out of town guests there. sorry we didn't stick to ruth's chris.

disappointing. this review relates to a weekday lunch in the downstairs portion (shorter, less expensive menu) of the restaurant. i cannot comment at this time on theupstairsexperience.

a friend and i agreed to give the "new" merchant's a try for a casual lunch. i'm not taking points away for this, but it's worth noting that valet parking applies only for dinner.

with no one ahead of us at 12:50, there were no clean tables. plenty of empty ones, but no clean ones. the hostess was kind enough to wipe down a table for us. unfortunately, the table and the seats were both left very wet. when we both sat down, we grinned at each other because we realized we now had wet bottoms. before we could dry the table with our napkins, two water glasses were placed, lip down, before us. i'm no ocd germophobe, but i'm not keen on "wipedown" water touching the rim of my glass. so, we just skipped the "triple filtered" bottle of water presented by the waitress. i'm not even sure why they had to be placed upside down, now that i think about it.

one odd thing we noted before we ordered was that it was difficult to tell who worked there and who was just dining. i'm not suggesting that restaurants must have uniforms, but it was unclear who to ask for anything or who was approaching your table. the wait staff could be discerned through a little observation, but there were other people who appeared to work there just floating about in nice, but otherwise very civilian, attire. i even mistook the hostess for a patron at first, thinking she was asking me if she could sit at the bar.

in any event, the staff were friendly and polite. my friend ordered the fish tacos, and i ordered the grilled chicken breast sandwich. the waitress informed us they were out of fish but were offering crabmeat tacos, which was a more than adequate substitute in principle. each dish was served with a side; my friend ordered sweet potato fries, and i ordered traditional potato fries.

the crabmeat tacos were adequate. they weren't particularly flavorful, but they certainly weren't remarkable. my friend told me that she "would rather go to chile burrito", and comparing these to chile burrito is just unfair. but this review isn't about the amazing food at chile burrito -- perhaps another day i'll tackle that.

my grilled chicken sandwich was dry and, like the crabmeat tacos, flavorless. i was excited about trying the sage mayonnaise that came with this sandwich, but it was just lost among the other toppings (tomato, lettuce, onion). i even checked to see if it was on the sandwich -- it was. the breast itself was a terrible cut. it had a lot of sinew and gristle and was difficult to work around.

the fries were excellent, however. they appeared to be freshly cut and fried. these were by far the best part of the meal. we didn't order the duck-fat fried tater tots, but i can tell you that they certainly looked delicious and came with several different condiments.

again, the service was friendly, if slow and not particularly attentive. this seemed even more odd with five different people, by our count, all in different sorts of attire floating around in what appeared to be a relatively slow time, since the lunch crowd had mostly dispersed by the time our food arrived at just shy of 1:30. my unsweet tea was refilled once after running dry -- with sweet tea. being southern, this was tolerable, but the sweet tea even managed to have an odd, bland flavor. i'm no tea aficionado, but it just wasn't quite right.

as mentioned above, we arrived at 12:50 with no one ahead of us. it was 17 minutes from seating to ordering, and another 20 from ordering to presentation. this wouldn't be a problem at all for a dinner, but we found it a bit slow for a weekday ("business") lunch in downtown nashville. the total bill, before gratuity, was about $26.

there was no single thing that was horrendous, and i think we would have been happier if there were just one thing very badly wrong. instead, it was an all-around, consistently sub-par meal. i'll give merchant's a little bit of forgiveness since this is purportedly new management. i hope they work these things out. unfortunately, i just can't recommend the downstairs portion of merchant's at this point.

wonderful surprise. if you're in the downtown area, this is the place to go. housed in a charming historic building, this restaurant is wonderful. casual bar and grill on first level andupstairsdining room for those looking to eat a serious dinner. service is excellent. food is delicious. i will definately be coming back for more.