Originally Posted by
dolcevita
No one has disagreed with that, but unless your spouse and friends are also beer connoisseurs AND they find pub grub appealing, you're seldom likely to visit such places for social events. If they prefer wine or food instead of grub, then you may have a problem.
The sensible thing to do is to stock up on your favorites, enjoy them at home, and abstain if you don't like a restaurant's offerings. Some do seem to take offense when you do that however.
Sure. Fine dining and fine beer rarely go together, especially since it seems there's more disagreement over what constitutes a "fine beer" than there is over what constitutes a fine wine. Therefore, in most cases, you must decide what is more important - the beer selection, or the food. This is universal, not just a Nashville thing.
Incidentally, the post you quoted in this section was referring to Beer Advocate's ratings of Nashville brews, not his personal observation. Nothing really stands out aside from a few with very small sample sizes. Are there any that really stand out for you?
I don't find Beer Advocate to be a great arbiter of beer quality. I'm something of a hophead, but not to extremes. On Beer Advocate, only the extremely hoppy beers (Imperial and Double IPAs and the like) get top billing; everything else is at the "doesn't stand out" level. My friends who are into other beer types say the same. Just as an example - Pilsner Urquell is considered by most people who know beer to be the worldwide gold standard for a pilsner. If you were to go by the ratings it gets on Beer Advocate, you'd think it kinda sucks, and should be avoided. But a bitter ale from an obscure brewpub in Pennsylvania that's so hoppy it tastes like bad medicine, and has a name so long it won't fit on a bottle label, is rated a 5 with shooting stars and rainbows
Anyway, my brother likes the wheat beers and the Belgians. He says that a couple of the regular wheat and Belgian-style brews from Black Abbey Brewing in 100 Oaks are very tasty. There aren't even any real reviews of Black Abbey's beers on Beer Advocate, despite Black Abbey having been around for a year or two.