We
like to take trips on short weekends, long weekends, or just any ole weekend
that are quick jaunts from the city. We
love the North Fork of LI (wine country) and Atlantic City (because the casinos
are hurting and need our money). While
searching for something different, Nashville came to mind. It’s only about a 2 hour flight, and
Southwest Airlines had a direct flight (I also like to play the credit card
point game and have earned myself a number of Southwest miles). So off to Music City we went. It's been more than a decade since I was last
there and Maribel had never been. Gluttonous gastronomes that we are, one of
the things we were most mindful of was where to eat - so we started our research
weeks in advance and had a list of places in mind long before we touched down.
In
fact, shortly after dropping off our luggage, we hit our first stop: Monell's.
Monell’s at the Manor honors classic southern food served family style at
communal tables. We were seated with two
other groups and before long the enormous bowls filled with deliciousness
started to arrive: moist, crispy skillet-fried chicken (FANTASTIC for a
breakfast), biscuits and gravy, bacon, the fluffiest pancakes we’d ever experienced,
country ham, and corn pudding that I still dream about. It was like a southern
Thanksgiving with a bunch of strangers! After
we came out of our food coma and found the strength to stand, we were invited
to go upstairs and check out the gone-with-the-wind-esq decor (which is really
probably more of a way for them to drum up wedding business).
Monell’s
proved to be the first of a number of awesomely delicious meals. No, eating
isn’t the only thing we did in Nashville - lots of great music, lots of history.
We visited a plantation, saw the Parthenon of North America, and even checked
out the Johnny Cash museum (that guy had quite a remarkable life). Those stops
might have to make for another blog post.
Back
to food: one of the places Maribel learned of was the Loveless Café. It was probably a solid half hour drive from
downtown Nashville and worth every mile (would've been worth it if we had to
walk in 110° heat). The Loveless Café is
reputed by many (including the Food Network) to have some of the best biscuits
in America –so that pretty much means they are the best on the planet, since I
don’t know how many other biscuit eating countries there are.
Waits
can get lengthy - we arrived at the compound around 10 AM and waiting about 90
minutes. And yes I did say compound. Brilliantly, they've devised ways to get
money from you while you're just waiting to spend more money –the former motel
rooms are now shops where you can buy everything from their biscuit mix to art.
The
highlight of the meal was the biscuits - they were nothing short of amazing. They came with great, homemade preserves (bourbon-blackberry,
strawberry, and peach) but really, just slap some butter on those bad boys and
you're in biscuit freaking heaven. While
we could've (possibly should’ve) stopped at the biscuits, of course we didn’t. We also ordered brisket, which had just
enough fat melting in your mouth, and a rocking pulled pork sandwich with
perfectly sweet yet spicy sauce. In short, the food made us wish we had 4
stomachs.
In part deux I'll share a couple of other gems that help make Nashville worthy of a spot on your short-list of places to visit.
In part deux I'll share a couple of other gems that help make Nashville worthy of a spot on your short-list of places to visit.
I didn't realize Nashville was that close of a flight, nice! And yummy food mmmmmm!