Crab Rangoon Crispy Rice Squares

Nashville is known to be a foodie’s Barbeque mecca. World-class chefs like Andrew Little and Sean Brock have tasty famous restaurants in Nashville. Iconic Nashville foodie favorite restaurants like Prince Chicken Shack and the Pancake Pantry with the line reaching around the block are cherished restaurant choices in this part of Tennessee. We just spent five days sweating everywhere in Nashville and here are my takeaways from this food lovers paradise. (Also there is country music) I personally love food but no way was I standing outside in the one-hundred-degree heat for an hour to try one of Nashville’s most trendy restaurants.

Okay, Nashville is also known to be the place country icons like Dolly Parton and Kenny Chesney were discovered. This summer when we drove three thousand miles across the country to Nashville, Tennessee it was a very interesting moment in history for country music. It was the week that Jason Aldean’s song, Try This In A Small Town was all over the national news and every liberal idiot I know was getting their panties in a wad over how racist it was. Some people may travel to Nashville Tennesse for the love of country music but these two country

music lovers also wanted to relax at a scenic lake and check out the Nashville foodie scene.

We live in a crazy day and age where if you support standing up for your country and your neighbors, well that makes you a bad guy. I feel like we live in a Stephen King novel more and more each day here in 2023. And now we may have just entered the Twilight Zone because why is the Nashville foodie scene just so bad?  These days you travel four thousand miles across the country to Music City and you expect to inhale some good barbeque, right? Am I in a twilight zone? Is the humidity going to my taste buds? Why is the restaurant food so bland and just terrible here? And why is so much of the food so crazy over-salted? Yet it’s still just God-awful? My boyfriend and I spent five days recently in Nashville Tennessee in the middle of the hot and humid Tennessee summertime and man was the food scene disappointing.

Hot chicken and humidity

The restaurant experiences we have had the last few days in Nashville have been so bland and tasteless I’m craving my own cooking. Except for traveling across the south, I can’t buy ethnic ingredients until we return home to California next week. And with this extreme heat and humidity who wants to cook? So out to eat we went. All over the city of Nashville, Tennessee.

Of course, while traveling to Nashville we had to try some Nashville hot chicken asap. We are spice lovers and drove straight to Hattie B’s as soon as we got into town. Hot chicken was invented in Nashville in the 1930s and it is a Nashville foodie staple. Hattie B’s is known to be the place to go for good quality Nashville hot chicken. I actually did not realize that Hattie B’s was more of a fast food-like restaurant but that was okay with us as we were out and about running errands just looking for a lunch spot on this occasion. Okay, I have to say the Nashville foodie in me loved Hattie B’s hot chicken. It had to be the best fried chicken I have ever had in their life. We paired it with the lime Hefeweizen they had on tap and the wheat beer was great with the spicy chicken. This was probably one of the best things we had to eat in Nashville. Except for one thing. The side of fried pickles we ordered was just terrible. It wasn’t even that they were served a bit not warm. They just had no flavor. Yet they were oversalted! What the hell Nashville? Overall the Hattie B’s experience was just great but every person in line was ordering the fried pickles and I had to wonder, did anyone like them? So I love pickles. Fried pickles seem to be a staple of fried foods in the south. Now I’m afraid to try them anywhere else!

So what did I love about Hattie B’s?

• Even though it was a fast food kind of place, they let us try every beer they had on tap. You had me with free beer. And their beer selection on tap was just fantastic! On a hot day (Are there any other kinds of days in this part of the country?) It was a hard choice on which delicious wheat beer to order.
• The hot and spicy chicken was out of this world good. The “Hot” level of spice was perfect for these spice lovers.
• The blue cheese dipping sauce for the fries and tasteless pickles was on point. I so judge a good restaurant by its blue cheese dressing.

  

• The employees were so cheerful and fantastic! They all had great attitudes! Our food came out so fast, at lunchtime, most of it was piping hot.

So Hattie B’s for lunch was more or less a success. We met an ex-chef who worked at our fantastic lake-side campsite and he told us about the best restaurant in Nashville. Yea! I put on my best summertime country dress and my newly thrifted cowboy boots and off we went as the sun set and that Tennessee sun still beat down on us.

Ribs So Bad I took them Home for My Dog Steak House

I’m not going to tag the bad restaurants we dined at. It’s just embarrassing for them, I mean the food was so God-Awful. The steakhouse that I cant stop thinking about because how do they have such great Yelp reviews and their food was not even Outback good, let’s just call them, Ribs So Bad I took them Home for My Dog Steak House.

I mean ribs are supposed to fall off the bone. These ribs were so, I don’t want to say burnt but overcooked, I could barely chew them. Not only were they overcooked but the barbeque sauce they served them with tasted like that cheap Bull’s Eye brand my parents always bought when I was growing up. It was just embarrassingly bad. I mean we did send back our deep-fried pork appetizer because it was beyond tasteless, but how do you send your whole meal back?

The food in Nashville was beyond disappointing.  It had me craving my own ethnic food I make at home. I prayed the barbeque in Memphis, the next big city we would visit would be better. As we traveled east towards Memphis and home ten days later it was just way too hot to cook in the motorhome. I had done so much research on where we should go out to eat on this trip. Eating out at terrible restaurants was beyond disappointing. Thank God the food got better as we traveled west.

A Nashville foodie favorite

Okay, we didn’t actually go out for sushi in Nashville. The rest of the food scene was so bad maybe it wasn’t a good idea to eat fish here, four hundred miles from the ocean. But I did come across this recipe while we were camped out on a beautiful humid lake in Nashville.

What are crispy rice squares? Well, they might have a fancy Japanese name but I just call them a bit of sushi appetizer deliciousness. These crispy fried rice squares decorated with raw fish are one of my favorite apps to order anytime I go out for sushi. Are they keto? Well no, but they are gluten-free!

What the hell is Worchestershire besides a word that you might always spell wrong? Well, it is a fermented flavoring sauce actually invented in England of all places! And did you know it’s not vegetarian? True Worchsetershire sauce actually has anchovies in it!

Crab Rangoon Crispy Rice Squares

For the krab

1/4 cup mayo

1/4 cup cream cheese

2 cups fake Krab

1/2 teaspoon grated garlic

1/2 teaspoon grated fresh ginger

1 teaspoon sweet chili sauce

1 green onion, chopped fine

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1/4 teaspoon Worcestershire

1/4 teaspoon sesame oil

Dice up the Krab very fine. Mix the mayo, cream cheese, ginger, garlic, sweet chili sauce, Worcestershire, same oil and then the green onions. Fold in the Krab.

Are you ready to create your crispy rice squares? Fit your cooked sushi rice into a square pan that has been greased with butter. Set in the fridge for at least 20 minutes. When you are ready to fry, heat your ghee in a saucepan. Fry squares on both sides. Set aside to drain.

Are you ready to serve now? Serve the rice squares with a dollop of the fish on top. Garnish with a slice of jalapeno, sesame seeds and chopped green onions.

Shove in your mouth happily!

Chili oil for frying

1 cup cooked and cooled Sushi rice

3 teaspoons of Ghee

1 jalapeno, chopped into rings, for garnish

Chopped green onions, to garnish

Sesame seeds, to garnish