Music City Roadhouse
By Phyllis C. Richman
Washington Post Restaurant Critic
From The Washington Post Dining Guide, November 1996 Music City Roadhouse is an immensely pleasing restaurant, not only because of the music - ranging from jazz to gospel - and the outdoor tables lining the C&O Canal. People go just for the food.
Surely nobody expects to go to a down-home Southern restaurant for a vegetable plate, but that's what I'm tempted to order at Music City Roadhouse. This big, sprawling barn of a place, with a decor that runs to CAT caps and barbecue signs, serves family-style, fixed-price lunches and dinners (and sensational brunches, as well as … la carte salads and sandwiches) that allow you to order all you can eat of three different meats (say, fried chicken, pot roast, barbecued chicken or ribs) or fish (fried catfish, broiled trout). And with them you get all you can eat of three different vegetables, plus some of the best, richest, creamiest skillet corn bread this side of Georgia. Who could complain?
My problem, though, is that the great greasy fried chicken, the carrot-laden pot roast and the meaty ribs don't leave me enough room for the vegetables. And I can never happily pick only three from the list of six. So one of these days I'm going to order just the vegetable plate (not vegetarian, mind you, since the greens are flavored with pork). Then I can have all of them, and concentrate on those spicy, just-vinegary-enough and truly wonderful cooked greens, the slightly lumpy mashed potatoes with chicken-flavored cream gravy, the sweet potatoes that are light and airy and so delicately sweetened that for once I don't think they should be served as dessert, the sometimes-available black-eyed peas, the slaw and whatever else happens to be on the menu.
