Now, That’s What I’m Talkin’ Bout

I wanted to mention this before I forget it.  I have found the parental dining holy grail.  Let me explain.

Parents of small children are normally given a choice: if you want really good food, get a babysitter.  Otherwise, it’s either stay at home or be confine yourself to FastFoodShoney’sO’Charley’sTGIFridaysPizzaHut McFood.  If you’ve ever eaten the pizza at Chuck E Cheese, you know that it’s not exactly Valentino’s. 

Or, you could buck the conventions, and drag junior downtown and ask for a high chair and kid’s menu at Morton’s .  Even if you pass this hurdle, you must either pray that junior doesn’t get bored and loves fois gras, or endure the stares of the childless, old folks, and “those parents” (the ones that got babysitters).

Believe it or not, I’m going somewhere with this.  I’m saying this as one who recently became one of “those” parents, who has older children and is losing his aptitude for patience with the preschool set.  We accidentally stumbled upon what, for food lovers who happen to be parents of small children, might just be the perfect restaurant.

We have discovered Pie in the Sky.  Sorry I’m late to the party.

We went to the Cool Springs restaurant, but it’s my understanding that the one in Lenox Village is just as cool.  Let me say that this is one family-friendly restaurant.  So family friendly (just shy of Chuck E Cheese), we asked to be seated at one of the outside tables.  Like I said, I’m now one of “those” parents, who does not have a high tolerance for little kiddie noise anymore, and there was LOTS of it.  They have a “dough bar”, where the kiddies can make “stuff” out of pizza dough, and generally the atmosphere is one of “children should be heard, and quite well, thank you”.  I’m not complaining, I just came off of that shift.  If my kids were that age, I would have been in heaven.

Why?  Because it’s the best pizza I’ve ever had.  And I’ve had the best Nashville has to offer.  Obie’s held the title for years (you NY pizza purists, just shut up now; I prefer something between the in-need-of-Viagra NY style and the “you want toppings with your dough?” Chicago style), but this pizza at Pie in the Sky is slap-your-mama good.  The crust was absolutely perfect.  Not dough-ey, but not too thin and flabby either.  It was crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, with that sweet-and-nutty flavor all good pizza crusts have.

The sauce was flavorful but not too sweet, and the cheese was plentiful but not overpowering.  We had “The carnivore” (guess what kind of toppings those were), and a small four-cheese pizza.  OMG, they were absolutely heavenly.  They weren’t cheap, but they were worth far more than we paid for them,IMHO.  We also got the swirly breadsticks (which is really a “cheesy bread ring”) and that was delicious also.  To top it all off, it was happy hour.

We ate the leftovers for two days.

Now here we have a restaurant that caters to families and still has world-class food.  A rarity such as this deserves high praise.  I wanted to chronicle this before my transformation into a crabby old person, complete with an intolerance for little kids, is comlplete.