Long before the Nashville landscape was scattered with great restaurants, Randy Rayburn’s Sunset Grill and others restaurants were the places to go for the best meals in town.

-- Photo By Michelle Morrow |The Ledger

Randy Rayburn has been a fixture in the Nashville restaurant scene for nearly 40 years. He was interviewed for a Nashville restaurant oral history project. A longer version of this interview has been submitted for deposit at Special Collections at the Nashville Public Library.

Nicki Pendleton Wood: Tell me your profession.

Randy Rayburn: “I’m a hospitality worker, for the last 45 years. I’m a restaurateur that’s opened 13 restaurants (one in Chicago), and I’ve worked in more.

“From ’85 when I came back from culinary [school] in Hyde Park, New York City … I did Tavern on the Row, Dunham Station, Third Coast, Mere Bulles, F. Scott’s. I did a couple that shall remain nameless. Just … because. Let’s see. Henry’s and Moonbeams.

“Then I went into sobriety at 39 and decided I was sick and tired of working for people I didn’t like or respect. I sold my home and opened up Sunset Grill in 1990. Then I bought Midtown Café in 1997 and opened Cabana in 2005.

“And closed Sunset Grill on New Year’s Eve 2014. Because being overleveraged going into the recession of a lifetime is not a good business model. Cabana was able to pay itself off after five years, but it was a lot of debt.

“And I’m now running Midtown Café [with] Craig Clifft, who’s my sweat equity partner, and Cabana, along with former chef Brian Uhl, who was with me at Sunset Grill.

“I thought I wanted to be an entertainment attorney till I got in that world and did some internships and clerked for some different lawyers … and clerked for one music industry guy who handled bookings for an artist named Waylon Jennings during the Luckenbach era and found out that I just wasn’t a big dog enough to hang with all those big dogs. And couldn’t see it as a future for me.

“I was working as an urban planner for the Office of Urban and Federal Affairs for the governor’s office under Gov. Ray Blanton.

“Well, about 10 days into my job, I was asked to participate in an ongoing conspiracy. I got to testify and helped put the governor’s brother, Gene Blanton, in prison for fraudulent efforts involving Section 8 housing. But I became persona non grata, so I went to work for my old roommate, Jack Whally, who was at the second Cafe Ritz. (Not the original Ritz Cafe, which became the Gold Rush later.)’’

NPW: Can you remember the first restaurant dish that just completely rearranged the molecules in your head about what a dish could be?

RR: “It was at Justine’s in Memphis in high school. Justine’s was one of the bell cows of Southern cuisine in Memphis, outside of the Peabody Hotel.

“We went to Justine’s, and I had Pompano en Papillote and I thought, this is not the Milan Motel and fried chicken with butter beans.’’

NPW: In the late ‘70s early ‘80s, what were some typical restaurant dishes of the time that you remember?

RR: “At the time you basically had imitation French and Italian restaurants that I worked in. Papa Leone’s was Italian. Then the Ritz, the menu was hand done in French every day – Mary Walton Caldwell had gone to Cordon Bleu School of Cooking.’’

NPW: Were there foods you had on your travels or even at people’s tables that you thought, “I’m putting this on my menu”?

RR: “My Voodoo Pasta came from K Paul’s, Paul Prudhomme, from standing in line 45 minutes and then being seated at the table with three other people.

“And when I came back – Deborah Paquette was my chef at Third Coast – I said, “Order me some andouille I’m going to show you a trick.” I didn’t know the recipe – that was just my version of it.’’

NPW: Was it possible to live on a server’s pay in Nashville in 1984?

RR: “Oh hell yeah. When I worked at Mario’s, my last week there, I made $1,000. [about $2,500 in 2019 dollars]. And that was some money in 1984. Plus, I got two tickets in the orchestra for Zorba the Greek from Anthony Quinn, who was one of the guests. You could make $100 a night.’’

NPW: Let’s talk about the menu at Sunset Grill, which was pretty amazing for its time.

RR: “I consciously wanted to do a lot of shareable appetizers. And I wanted American food that was not an imitation of something else.

“We did some things we had from Third Coast, the smoked trout from [Bucksnort Trout Ranch]. And we had a roasted elephant garlic with great fresh baguettes, which was an Alice Waters staple.

“And then I made sure that I had, you know, a handful of salads. I had five or six pasta dishes, including stir-fry. And one of the things I had to learn was the menu wasn’t about my ego. It was more about pleasing my customers’ palates and making a profit.’’

NPW: And then I want to move on to Cabana. Which was a different kind of restaurant originally.

RR: “The idea of being able to walk next door to your other business and share management was there. Emeril [Lagasse], I once asked him, “why are you opening so many damn restaurants?” And he said, “If I don’t give somebody a chance to grow, somebody else will.” Craig had had some offers to go. And I knew Brian would have some offers too because we were the hottest thing, as hot as anybody in town.

“Well, we started out [Cabana] as a sports bar because it was so small. We put the TVs up above. The bar itself – we said “we’ll make a bar here in the center.” And you had the long shotgun room.

“But I realized it was too small to make enough revenues for three investors and three partners. So I took it upon myself to add on the big-ass room in the back.

“I said to Brian, we need a menu that ... the whole idea was to not be Sunset Grill, to be for a different demographic, the 20-40 demographic that live within one-mile radius of Hillsboro Village. You know which are a lot of students, graduate students, young professionals and otherwise.’’

RR: “And it worked pretty darn good. It paid off in five years, even during the recession. It’s evolved and it’s been kind of a laggard the last two years because of construction of the Moxie Hotel that just opened up Monday the sixth [of January] after 26 months of construction. That was my old parking lot.’’

NPW: Did you own that land?

RR: “Yes, I did. And I traded that for an interest in the hotel. It’s a business. I’ve got a family to support and made some hard decisions that broke my heart.

“I’ve never had mailbox money. I think it might be nice as I get older. I actually [just] turned 70, so I’m not a young go-getter anymore. But I think I do have one more restaurant left in me. So that’s why I’m doing the [Elliston Place] soda shop, for the rebirth of Elliston Place, aka, the Rock Block.

“Working with Tony Giarrantana, we’re going to strip down the menu to the basics. Linda Melton, the 27-year general manager (I call her the pie lady, aka the biscuit lady) – Linda opened up a dozen and a half Po’ Folks back in the day.

“She started [at the soda shop] in ’92 and she’s on Tony’s payroll right now. We’re working on the visioning process, but looking to expand the business into the nighttime and have more entrees rather than just two entrees at lunch.

“We’re looking at it as a legacy brand, but also trying to take part of that, and, as I call it, “put some south in your mouth.” And how to, in its own way, help revitalize Elliston Place and stabilize the tenants.’’

NPW: You’ve said closing Sunset Grill broke your heart. Would you want to address the details of Sunset’s closure?

RR: “We had added to the costs of creating Cabana – the back room – and had borrowed all the money I could borrow from traditional sources: bank, mortgage, the business – and was a half-million short.

“Ultimately debt strangled Sunset’s cash flow after 2011, when the recession and effects of the flood were beginning to recede. We had an influx of pent-up demand AND a new supply of restaurants, both local and carpetbaggers who were coming to our city. The shiny new places…

“Sunset’s business, we were back for a year or two, but then it dropped. Even as I thought we were getting better. Really, I thought our food was better than ever. The reality is Midtown and Cabana’s business came back, but there were so many new chef-driven restaurants that we were forgotten, to a certain extent.

“I ultimately closed for lunch to save money because dinner was subsidizing lunch, and had been for years. Due to Nashville traffic changes, people who work downtown could no longer drive Hillsboro Village [for lunch] and get back to work in time.

“And strangely enough, after we did taxes for 2014, having closed for lunch, Sunset made a profit. But it was too late. Cash flow was strangled.

“Ultimately, I had to make decision to do triage on Sunset in order to save Cabana and Midtown.’’