The Dotted Lime, A Restaurant
It’s really nice to be rounding out a year of 5 Heart Ratings with such a nice experience.
I’d heard about The Dotted Lime from a friend who has lived in Columbia, Tennessee, where the restaurant is located, her entire life. It’s a bit of a drive for me so I’ve put it off for a while and finally got around to checking it out. Boy am I glad I did!
GPS took me on a bit of a detour before I found the restaurant in a nondescript locale in the center of a strip mall. The building itself has a nice, welcoming appeal that doesn’t stop once you enter. The young lady, “Paul”, who greeted me and took my order was beyond pleasant, comfortable with conversation and just a delight. (I was the only person in line at this point, which would soon change with the lunch crowd, so of course we started chatting. She explained the reason her shirt said her name was “Paul” and I told her about my years at Walt Disney World and the nametag situation and policy there. We both laughed at eachother’s stories and she told me how much she would love to visit the Orlando theme park.)
A little background about this wonderful restaurant taken straight from their website:
“The Dotted Lime is a new, family-owned restaurant in Columbia, Tennessee which is the brain child of locals Paul and Chrissy Jensen. Paul is a fourth generation chef with 25 years of professional culinary experience from 5 star/5 diamond resort properties to corporate entities and Chrissy is a 18 year veteran of dealing with food sensitivities, allergies and working within doctor prescribed food elimination diets for healing specific ailments.
Together with their 13 children the Jensen family decided to bring their particular brand of dining to the traditionally “meat & three” Columbia TN culinary scene. They are available for off-site catering, and private events at their location after hours.”
I hear 9 of their 13 children are adopted which I would like to confirm before I say this information is accurate. At any rate, there were at least 8 “children” working that day. All of whom seemed to genuinely enjoy what they were doing. I watched the dishwashers whom seemed to be quite young, wash the dishes with such enthusiasm I wanted to videotape them. I didn’t.
Some things were quite clear to me even in the short amount of time I was there: 1) There’s a ton of love in this huge family, 2) the parents clearly know what they’re doing in the kitchen and the biz, 3) a tremendous amount of pride in the menu and service is apparent and had by all, and 4) there is no doubt in my mind this place will continue to be very successful. There was a line 8 people deep until I left.
I ate my cinnamon roll so fast that I forgot to take a picture. I took their chicken wings home and again, forgot to take a pic. I hope you get a chance to see for yourself how great this restaurant is.
And as much as I feel kinda (just kinda) bad saying this, I think the kids at The Dotted Lime should train many of the servers in the Nashville-area “high-end” restaurants I will never re-visit. The Dotted Lime, I will not only re-visit, but will gladly make the 40-minute drive to do so.
Well done, mom and dad. Well done!
PS Maybe the owners/parents of this great establishment should teach parenting too!
Originally published at http://www.jeanoshima.com on December 30, 2019.
