The Friday of indulgence was behind us, and it was time for a simpler pair of meals for Saturday. We had lunch at I Dream of Weenie, enjoyed some goodbye hugs with our awesome host, Tory, and waved goodbye to the Music City again. I always like to leave cities in central standard as early as possible; the time change always messes with my head. We made very good time back to Chattanooga and took a nice detour for our early dinner. It was so early a supper that, four hours later, the girlchild got frustrated with me when I reminded her that we’d already had supper in Tennessee. Continue reading “Shuford’s Smokehouse, Chattanooga TN”
Category: tennessee
I Dream of Weenie, Nashville TN
As always, we enjoyed some terrific conversation, shopping, and eating in the Music City, but we saved the best meal for last this time. Over in the East Nashville neighborhood, where half the folk are kicking back and having fun and the other half are grumbling “blankety-blank hipsters” under their breath, there’s a beat-up old VW bus parked in a grass lot, and the good folk there are serving up some of the tastiest hot dogs that we’ve ever had. Continue reading “I Dream of Weenie, Nashville TN”
Gerst Haus, Nashville TN
When we were last in Nashville, on our way downtown to a place called Tazza, we drove past a place that I’d seen a dozen times, easily, without it ever registering. Our friend Tory pointed out a German-themed restaurant called Gerst Haus that has been packing in vistors since the original owner, William J. Gerst, opened it in 1955. The restaurant started after the closing of the Gerst-Moelin Brewery (later William Gerst Brewing Company) the year before (1890-1954). Over the decades, it has transitioned from a dark and uninviting pub into a big palace for families. There are still dozens of beers for guests to sample, but I’d had calories aplenty on this trip already and stuck with water. Continue reading “Gerst Haus, Nashville TN”
Judge Bean’s Bar-B-Que, Brentwood TN
As we continued our little tour, the road took us south for the final stop of the afternoon before we needed to take I-65 north again and drop the girlchild for her appointment. I’d never visited Brentwood before; it appears to be the upscale community where all the local pro athletes and celebrity musicians have bought homes. It’s also where the owners of Judge Bean’s Bar-B-Que has, after several years of hiccups, have chosen to locate. Continue reading “Judge Bean’s Bar-B-Que, Brentwood TN”
Drinking in Nashville
Nashville looks very much like a town in which a man can go a-drinkin’. The bars open early and don’t seem to close until late, and there appear to be more hospitals per resident than any other place this side of Miami to take care of what you do to your liver. But if you’re a family like ours, where three of us don’t drink alcohol and the one that does maybe has a single beer a month, it’s also a terrific place to drink all sorts of other wonderful things. When my daughter and I first got to the Music City on this trip, we skirted around the south side of the metro area via I-440 and started things off with a great milkshake at Bobbie’s Dairy Dip. Continue reading “Drinking in Nashville”
San Antonio Taco Company, Nashville TN
On one of those whirlwind tours around Nashville that I experienced from the back seat of one of my friends’ cars in the early 2000s, we whizzed past San Antonio Taco Company and I said that I must try them one day. It took me a few years, and while I was never a regular, I ate there three or four times before we began blogging. It is a fun and very busy place that goes a small way toward remedying the inescapable reality of being a Vanderbilt undergrad. Nashville isn’t a college town. There’s no culture here, like you see in Oxford or Athens, of small, quirky, inexpensive places for college students to go off campus and eat dirt cheap. Well, there’s a stretch a little down the road in the Belcourt neighborhood, where Pancake Pantry is, that almost feels right, but on the north end of campus, there’s Rotier’s and Hog Heaven and the Ellison Place Soda Shop going one direction, and this place and Noshville on another, but it’s all spread out across very busy roads and punctuated by lots of national chains. Continue reading “San Antonio Taco Company, Nashville TN”
Rick’s Barbecue, Murfreesboro TN
So the road took us back to Tennessee for a couple of days. Marie had some time off and wanted to visit her family, and I didn’t quite have the hours accrued to take the days that she wanted, so instead, she took the baby and went south, and I took the girlchild and went north. I even did the good deed, perhaps, of ringing the girlchild’s mother and offering to let the two of ’em have a few hours together. Continue reading “Rick’s Barbecue, Murfreesboro TN”
Marie, Let's Eat! 