Nashville Favorites: In Memoriam I

Blue Moon Waterfront Café
1994-2004

This summer just wasn't the same without our beloved Blue Moon. While some complained that the quality of the dining experience had become less than consistent over the years, Jamye and I ignored the criticisms. We spent many a late afternoon wiling away the final moments of daylight at Rock Harbor Marina imagining we were somewhere else. Most of the time, we'd just have a couple of drinks at the bar and maybe devour an order of grit cakes with sun-dried tomatoes and mornay sauce, but rarely were those times any less special than the "special occasions" we enjoyed there.

Jamye and I had dinner on Thursday night before our wedding with several of our in-town and out-of-town friends who were a part of the festivities (Laura, our friend from the Bay area, was a big fan of the risotto). Jamye took her youngest sister, Linsey, and her bridesmaids there to kick off Linsey's bachelorette party. We had a wedding shower for Tracy and Jody there. The list could go on.

My brother confided to me this weekend that one of the best seafood meals he had ever eaten was Chef Dave's Siamese Cat (a pan-fried catfish filet served with hot mustard and plum sauce), and this was coming from a guy who's eaten seafood all up and down the gulf coast and the southern end of the eastern seaboard. Jamye and I would tend to agree, and we can throw the left coast into the mix.

Jamye and I heard that some months after the restaurant closed, the building itself sunk into the harbor when the outer decking was removed, but I have not verified this with my own eyes. Apparently, Uncle Bud's founder Buddy Rogers now serves catfish, barbecue and steak at the Waterfront Café at Rock Harbor Marina very near the old Blue Moon site, but we can't bring ourselves to check it out, starved as we are for local color these days (and waterfront local color at that). I'd like to believe that in that corner of the harbor our favorite summer place is just resting peacefully on the river bed. I imagine that a piece of the building is still protruding above the surface, and a gull of some sort is perched on it. It's early evening. The sun is setting, and the moon is full.