Recently, my husband and I spent a weekend in
Nashville, which was wonderful. He has wanted to see the Tennessee Titans play
in LP Field for some time now, so we decided to make the trip. Our yearly
tradition of going to see the Titan’s play when they came to town started 6 ½
years ago when I got him an early Christmas present of Tickets! I was WAY too
anxious to wait and told him at Halloween.
When I am planning a trip, I search for restaurants
to try out, and not just chain restaurants, small business restaurants. On our
trip, we went out to eat 4 times, and 3 out of the 4 times were at small
businesses. I have a friend who lives in Nashville and she was able to give me a wonderful list of restaurants to try, and the 3 we went to were on her list. I also looked at www.yelp.com for reviews of each restaurant to make sure we would enjoy them.
Right after we landed our first stop was The Pancake
Pantry. It is no joke that you will be outside waiting for at least 30 minutes,
which is worth the wait. It was a lovely fall day in Nashville, I loved being
outside in the cooler weather with leaves falling all around us. My husband
ordered the original pancakes and I tried the Sugar & Spice with the Cinnamon cream syrup (it smells
just like cinnamon rolls).
For dinner that evening we made a trip out to The
Loveless Cafe. This is another Nashville favorite that can have waits up to 2+ hours.
Luckily they have cute little shops all around the parking lot so you have
something to do while waiting. In the gift shop, I learned about the history of
an Apron, and I now have more respect for them (yes, respect for an inanimate object).
My husband got Unsweet Tea and Fried Chicken. He said that is the best sweet
tea he has ever had and same goes for the fried chicken. Although I do not like
tea (I know, the horror!) I tried it, still didn’t like it (no offense to
Loveless) but the fried chicken was divine. It has a thin crispy fried layer
and it is not greasy at all. I had the Pit-Cooked Pork Barbeque, which had a
lovely smoke flavor to it, just the perfect amount. I am saving the best thing
for last, their biscuits, buttermilk biscuits. Loveless Café
makes 7,000 buttermilk biscuits DAILY, which is about 2.5 MILLION biscuits a
YEAR! They serve their biscuits with three of their homemade preserves, Peach,
Strawberry and Blackberry. The blackberry was our favorite.
The next day it was still chilly and overcast so it
was soup at Panera bread for lunch, I know, but it is so good, and soup with a baguette,
who can resist that??? For dinner we went just outside of Downtown Nashville to
the lovely German Town Cafe. I absolutely LOVED the
area that it is in. The street you walk down to get to the door feels like
something you would see in a movie. The leaves were turning yellow and falling
onto the street below. The best part about this restaurant is the view. You can
see downtown Nashville from where you sit. The food was wonderful, and so were
their rolls. My husband says that they remind him of donut holes, minus the
sugar, they surely were wonderful.
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Everyone singing together at the end of the show.
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After dinner we went to The Grand Ole Opry for their concert. Headlining was Vince Gill, with Charlie Daniels Band, Matraca Berg, Canaan Smith, Jean Shepherd, Connie Smith, Alison Krauss, Lil Jimmy Dickens, Riders in the Sky, etc. Alison Krauss was wonderful, she sang 2 songs, one of which was "Down to the River" from 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?'. One of the guitar players with her was the vocals for George Clooney in the movie and then they sang "Man of Constant Sorrow". (I love that song!)
My favorite part of any trip is the great food you
can find. Since we flew and did not check our bags, we could not purchase any
of the Blackberry Preserves from Loveless while we were there. Luckily, they
have a website where I was able to purchase not only the Blackberry Preserves,
some of their Tea Mix (for my husband of course), Biscuit Mix AND their
Desserts cookbook! While at Loveless, we overheard our waitress at the next
table over asking if anyone wanted dessert and proceeded to list off their pies
they had available. Needless to say, as stuffed as we were, took some of their
Muddy Fudge Pie home. The recipe is available on their website and in their
cookbook. While perusing their recipes I found a recipe for Coconut Chews, a
wonderful coconut cookie that I made for my Granny. She LOVED THEM, and so did
I!
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| Christmas came early! |
How do you plan where you are going to eat at when on vacation?
As Always, Victoria
