Logan's Roadhouse

Prior to the pandemic, the Logan's Roadhouse on Music Valley Drive in Nashville was our go-to, our favorite restaurant, and we ate there about once a month.

What happened to this place?

I know we haven't been nearly as often as we once went, but we just don't eat out as much, and we've both have health issues. However, when friends came in from Arizona and requested a nice meal for their last night in town, we immediately said that Logan's was the place to go.

I have never been more disappointed and embarrassed in my life.

We arrived about 8:00 p.m., and the restaurant didn't appear busy. There were numerous empty tables, with no wait to seat our party of 6. Upon sitting down, we all started talking and barely noticed that we had been there 20 minutes and had yet to see our server. One of our party mentioned it to the bartender, and we proceeded to wait for another 15 minutes before she appeared. She apologized, said that she had 2 tables of 25 and was arguing with the manager, as she took our drink orders. Another 15-20 minutes rolled by, and we still had no drinks, so my friend went up to the bar to get her own soda. We finally received our drinks about 10 minutes after that, brought by someone other than our server, just as another party of 6 was seated in the booth next to us. Our order was taken right about 9:00 p.m.

About 9:15 someone came from the kitchen to ask a question about our order. At 9:30 that same person came out, apologized for the wait, and told us that everything was being plated at that moment.

At 9:45 our out-of-town guests decided to leave and head back to their hotel, since they were catching the red eye the next morning. With the remainder of our party still seated in our booth, and before our food had been served, someone ran out of Logan's, screaming at our guests, demanding they return to the restaurant and pay for their meals. We demanded to see the manager, and that was about the point that our food finally came out of the kitchen.

Everything was cold. I ordered grilled shrimp with broccoli and a baked potato. There was the tiniest bit of warmth in my bare baked potato. I requested the butter and sour cream that was supposed to come with it, as well as a refill of my tea. Only one other member of our then 4-person party received anything even remotely warm. By the time I received butter, my potato was too cold to melt it.

We attempted to tell the person we thought was the manager that things weren't going well. We even pointed out that the table behind us, also a party of 6, had much better service. They ordered, received their food, paid and left. and we hadn't even been able to eat the first bite. His reply was, "Well, they had a different server. Yours had a table of 50."

That's the point at which our server came with the check for the full amount. After all of the mess, they had offered nothing as an apology. They were more worried about closing.

This was when the actual manager finally showed up, leaned against the booth, and asked, "What do you want?" I believe one of the members of our party paid for his dinner, but my other friend and I refused.

Playing the devil's advocate: I can't say whether or not our server had 2 such large parties, or one, because the restaurant was not that busy when we arrived. If there were 2 parties that size then they had them tucked away. However, if our server was that covered up then I wholeheartedly fault the manager for this situation because no server that busy should have been give a party of 6 on top of it all.

Also, having worked in the restaurant industry many years ago, I know how it can be, how quickly things can turn bad, what it's like to get slammed with a bus, etc. I'm usually extremely forgiving, but this night was beyond belief. In fact, I will probably never go to a Logan's Roadhouse again.

Date of Incident: Tuesday, June 13, 2023, 8-10 p.m.
Number in Party: 6 adults

Issues:

• Extended wait for service
• Extended wait times to place drink orders, place food orders, receive food, speak to someone
• Embarrassing incident where staff member screamed at our guests to return to the table and pay for food they never received
• Cold Food
• No Drink Refills
• Rude Manager

Kentucky Cream Candy

Growing up in small-town Kentucky I experienced some of the best home cooking that exists. We didn't have fast food, and the restaurants we had were mostly little diners.  That meant that everyone I knew cooked, and they did it from scratch.  I remember frozen TV dinners, but they were a treat.  We ate home-cooked, made-from-scratch meals every night.  My mother made meat loaf and macaroni with a homemade cheese sauce and topped with buttery, toasted bread crumbs.   Her mother wasn't a great cook, but I always loved her coleslaw.  My aunt Doris made an incredible blackberry jam cake.  Dad makes the best gravy.

With food and mentors like that I learned to cook at an early age.  Betty Henderson taught me to bake peanut butter cookies and how to flip pancakes before I could even reach the stove.  Mom taught me to make things like divinity and cabbage au gratin. The first cake I ever baked was in a wood burning oven with my aunt Joyce. 

I can, and have, cooked just about everything.  I make a pretty good transparent pie from a family recipe. I love to bake cheesecakes and make candy.  In the winter I relish a big pot of soup or stew.  Summer finds me crafting salads for myself, and dishes with fresh vegetables for anyone who will eat them.  I enjoy cooking, but there are, regrettably, two things I just never quite got.  One is my dad's gravy.  He's shown me.  I've practiced.  I just can't get the hang of it.  

The other is Lorene's cream candy.

Cream candy is a Kentucky specialty.  It seems so simple because the only ingredients are sugar, heavy cream, vanilla, and water.  It's pulled like taffy, cut, and then left to sit overnight.  That's when the magic happens.  The candy transforms into a delightful airy confection that will absolutely melt in your mouth.   

My step-grandmother, Lorene Fultz, made incredible cream candy, and one of the last days I spent with her involved her showing me how to make it.  She boiled the mixture and knew when it was ready without even using a candy thermometer.  I hauled the marble slab in from outside, where it had been chilling in the winter air, and she poured the mixture onto the cold marble.  When it was time, we pulled it together.  Then it was cut and left to do its magic.  The next day I had cream candy to enjoy as I drove home to Cookeville.  

I tried to make cream candy after that.  I got a small marble slab I could put in the freezer when I made it.  Mine just never worked.  I don't know if I didn't pull it long enough or what happened.  I just know that I tried it three or four times, and it never came out right.  

I found a good tutorial on cream candy at My Country Table.  If I can find a marble slab, perhaps I'll try it again someday.  Until then, I have some delicious memories.

When will we protect our children?

Nashville suffered a horrific tragedy today.  Lives were taken, and we ask why?  What happened?  What failed?  What caused this?

While we grieve as a city, we ask questions and demand explanations, but they may not come for days, weeks, or even months.  They may never come.  

The families directly affected grieve in a way we can't understand, with hearts so broken that they may never heal.  They have holes in their lives and in their souls tonight that will never again be filled by anything more than memories.

We don't know what to do, what might help, so we offer thoughts and prayers.  Yes, it's good to show that we care, but those thoughts and prayers won't bring back those stolen lives, and they won't prevent more losses in the future.  

So what do we do?

Many will continue to pray.  Others will demand that we do things such as arm teachers or place armed guards in our schools.  However, are more guns really the answer?  We already have more than 393 million guns in the United States.  That breaks down to more than 1.2 guns per person.  Our military only has 4.5M, and our law enforcement agencies have a little more than 1M.  

We are, in all honesty, outgunned.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Violence begets violence; hate begets hate; and toughness begets a greater toughness. It is all a descending spiral, and the end is destruction — for everybody. Along the way of life, someone must have enough sense and morality to cut off the chain of hate."

And for those turning to prayer, there is Matthew 26:52.  "Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."

Until we acknowledge that gun violence is now the number one killer of  our children and teenagers, and pledge to take active measures to change that, there's not much we can do.  We, as a nation, are "living by the gun,"  and our children are dying by it.

And now, because I have had the audacity to even think of gun reform, many will jump up and scream about the constitutional rights set forth by our founding fathers.  So, let me share with you the words of Thomas Jefferson, one of those founding fathers.

Jefferson wrote: “Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country.

“I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects.

“Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

I am thankful for the rights our founding fathers fought so hard for us to have, as well as for those who continue to fight so that we may remain free, but times have changed.  We no longer require a "well-regulated militia" of citizens bearing arms to keep us safe. That is what we have tasked our military and law enforcement officials to do.  Jefferson foresaw the possible need to change our Constitution as we changed as a nation.  Why can't we see that?

I do not advocate we abolish gun ownership or anything even remotely that severe.  However, until we honestly reform our gun laws and advocate for responsible gun ownership, as well as better mental health care, we will continue to descend the spiral toward destruction.

What we are currently teaching our children is that worrying about dying in school, where they should feel safe, is normal.  It's not.  Solving problems with shootouts in the streets shouldn't be considered normal behavior either, but how often do we see it now?

By doing nothing, we are normalizing fear, hatred, ignorance, bigotry, racism, and violence for our children.  Then we cry and gnash our teeth when they respond with those very things.  We offer thoughts and prayers, but we do nothing real.  They say "children are our future," but look at the future we're giving them.

Please, do something to save our children.

***

Note: One of the things we can do to help our children is to talk to them when bad things happen.  This Sesame Street video may help you do that.  

What did I just hear?

I've always enjoyed music.  (I actually have a playlist for my life.)  If I'm alone I sing along to everything on the radio, even if I don't know the words.  I'll just make up my own lyrics and go for it.

But sometimes, well, sometimes...

I've always enjoyed "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind.  It's so upbeat and catchy.  I honestly thought it was a cute little love song.  Well... it's not.  I finally heard a line from the song a couple of weeks ago and looked up the lyrics.  Yeah, that is NOT a love song.  It's about doing crystal meth.  Did I hear it wrong?  Did I just not hear that line?  I have no idea, but it's not the only time I've done something like that.

In 1973 a band named Golden Earring released it's own catchy little tune.  Well, I guess it's not little since it comes in at around six minutes, but anyway...  I liked the song, and I would just belt out, "We've got a thing that's called Radar Love."  I sang it that way for two years or so, and then someone told me the name of the song wasn't "Radar Love" but was actually "Red Hot Love."  So, I changed up, and I've been singing "We've got a thing that's called Red Hot Love" for about the last 47 or 48 years.  

On my drive home this afternoon I heard the song on the radio, and I just sang my lungs out about "Red Hot Love."  As soon as I got home I went to add the song to my Oldies playlist on Amazon Music, but when I searched for "Red Hot Love" what came up was NOT the song I was looking for.  I couldn't find it anywhere, so, on a whim, I searched for "Radar Love" instead.  Heavens to Betsy!  I was singing it right the first time.  It really is "Radar Love."  I've been mishearing it for decades after I originally heard it correctly.

Misunderstood song lyrics are nothing new.  We don't understand or clearly hear a phrase, and our brain turns it into something that makes sense to us.  That's known as a mondegreen, a word coined by writer Sylvia Wright when she misunderstood a line in the "The Bonny Earl of Murray."  While Green heard "Lady Mondegreen," the actual line was "lay'd him on the green."

So, do we just mishear lyrics, or do we hear what want, like I did with "Semi-Charmed Life"?  I have no idea, but I'm getting a new Amazon Music play list out of it -- "Songs I obviously don't know the words to."