Hey Y’all! I recently returned from a long weekend trip to Nashville, Tennessee for work and I was pleasantly surprise by how much fun I had!
There were cowboy boots, country songs, hot chicken and pimento cheese at every turn! Here’s a little recap of my adventures in Music City, USA.
Stay
We stayed at the beautiful Omni Hotel. It’s near the Music City Center and actually connected to the Country Music Hall of Fame. The rooms were nice, welcoming and clean. The bar, restaurant and coffee shop in the hotel were all tasty and super convenient when staying there for work or a conference.
Visit
We stopped in at the Johnny Cash Museum to see all of the memorabilia and enjoy some music from the Man in Black. Hands down, my favorite thing at the museum was a copy of Mama Cash’s cookbook! It was a great old school, small town cookbook with lots of down-home southern recipes.
Cowboy boots are a very big deal in Nashville. There are stores every half block or so, offering great deals on boots; even buy one, get two free! What would you do with 3 pairs of cowboy boots if you don’t wrangle cattle? Yeah, I’m not sure either but they were selling like hot cakes.
The Ryman Auditorium is a must see! The stained glass windows were so simple, bright and colorful. The Ryman used to be home to the Grand Ole Opry until 1974 when the show moved to another location in Nashville. But, the Friday that we arrived, it was packed with people who were there for a last-minute Foo Fighters show! Soooo cool!
Eat
Our first food stop was Robert’s Western World. We enjoyed a tasty meal (well, tasty in a greasy-dive-bar sort of way) of fried pickles, onion rings, fried baloney sandwich and burgers. Oh and did I mention that they sell cowboy boots too?!
The Farm House was one of my favorite places for dinner and drinks. We had a huge meal that we kicked off with pimento cheese and house-made saltine crackers (amazing!) . For dinner, we devoured a brussels sprout salad, seasonal veggies, cornbread, steak and black drum fish. They served up a great Sazerac, Manhattan, and for the gin lovers the gimlet was dangerously delicious.
We enjoyed a couple of meals at Kitchen Notes, the less formal sit down restaurant in the Omni Hotel. For dinner, we loved the sweet potato tater-tots, burger, meatloaf and hot chicken. Hot chicken is basically just super spicy fried chicken but it’s everywhere in Nashville from dive bars to fancy restaurants.
Late on Sunday night, we popped into Jeni’s Ice Cream, a famous scoop shop from Jeni Britton Bauer that is a must try! Even though it was around 9 on a Sunday night, there was a line out the door and the level of excitement in the shop rivaled a rock country concert. They offer unlimited free samples, so after tasting at least a scoop’s worth of ice cream samples, I ended up with one scoop of coffee and one scoop of dark chocolate ice cream. But really, you can’t go wrong!
Speaking of ice cream, Jeni recently visited my work where she shared a few recipes from her new cookbook and I helped her whip up a batch of ice cream.
Have you ever been to Nashville? What was your favorite experience?
