Unorthodox goodness shining through the dark
Trina’s Starlite Lounge is not so easy to describe. It’s noir — as in dark (they only put in windows a couple months ago). It has craft cocktails, but not classics; draft beers, but only six taps; 17 bottled beers, but that’s including Miller High Life, Bud Light, and Black Label. It’s nostalgic (old beer signs, girly-magazine pages, comfort food, and water poured from antique milk bottles). It’s vaguely Southern (sweet pies, quasi-soul food, and a soundtrack from Patsy Cline to alt-country). It’s insider-y, promoting an industry brunch on Monday to attract restaurant workers (the kind of buzz that made the original Franklin Cafe and also Nebo). It’s full of anomalies — a Reuben sandwich on scali bread, chicken and waffles, a hot dog of the day, wine you never heard of before — that break any frame you put around it.