There are parallels between the chef and rock-star vocations: long hours, years of apprenticeship and often low pay. Changing “set lists” from night to night. Performing to the best of one's ability, whether the paid crowd that night is 30 or 300. Oh, and there's this: Chefs, like rock stars, seem to really love music.

“Yeah, we listen to music here in the restaurant,” says Josh Habiger of The Catbird Seat (pictured right with co-chef Erik Anderson, far right). “I think part of the experience here is that people [are in] our kitchen. We choose what they eat, what they drink, and what they hear. We definitely listen to the music a lot louder before we open. The content is not always noisier, though.

“For service, we put together playlists that are intended to correspond with the pace of the room at the time, so generally we start off with some quieter stuff: Americana, Tom Waits, Vic Chesnutt, Will Oldham. And then we move into louder and faster stuff. The busier part of the night will get to Fugazi, The Minutemen, The Pixies, The Hold Steady, and such. Then we sort of wind back to mellower things like Andrew Bird and Tortoise," Habiger adds.

“I think I have listened to music in every kitchen I've worked in except Bouchon in Napa,” says Ashley Quick, formerly of Flyte, who now works in the kitchen at the Capitol Grille. “At the Fat Duck we had one radio for two kitchens. The first person in would have to steal the radio for the day's tunes.

• Curtis Stone and a buddy (photo courtesy of blogger Lindsay Landis, loveandoliveoil.com).

When Curtis did arrive, he was as friendly and charming as you could imagine, visiting with the local purveyors, taking pictures with his fans and even an adorable service dog (pictured at right — awwww) and addressing the assembled crowd about his passion for local foods. On his show Take Home Chef, Curtis used to prowl the produce section at grocery stores to find women who would take him home with them so he could cook for their families. Invariably as part of the interview to figure out what sort of food to shop for and eventually prepare, Chef Stone would ask, "So what does your husband like?" Not once did I ever hear the expected answer, which would be, "Well, I'll tell you what he doesn't like: For me to bring home big, tall handsome Australian surfer dudes."

The promotion, which you can still participate in on Hotel Indigo's Facebook page until mid-October, seeks to solicit input as to what makes a great local dish great. Winners of the promotion will win a trip to New York City to discover that local cuisine; and one of last year's winner actually came from Nashville, so we have a good track record.

One by one, locals lined up to tell Curtis what their secret favorite dish in town was. Interestingly, a pattern emerged. You all really like Mexican takes on sweet potatoes, as the the first two participants raved over the sweet potato enchiladas at Mad Donna's and the sweet potato tacos at The Wild Cow. Budding food truck entrepreneurs, take note.

The Fried Green Tomato BLT at Whiskey Kitchen was also recognized as a winner, after which Curtis turned to us and said, "That sounds good. Is it?" Pretty soon, Chef Stone moved aside for some media interviews while Lindsay and I answered questions from the audience about where we suggested they should try. You can imagine the usual suspects we mentioned, but we were surprised that so many people hadn't considered some neighborhood gems where they lived which we thought were no-brainers. I guess they weren't Bites readers.

• Jude Ferrara
• Allan Benton in the smokehouse

Benton makes a mean country ham at his Madisonville, Tenn., smokehouse, but it's his bacon that gets the most notice. Restaurants in Nashville and New York treasure his frilly strips of genius. Benton's Bacon even played a prominent role in an episode of HBO's New Orleans-set drama, Treme.

My favorite Benton's Bacon story is something I heard from a female server at a local restaurant that fries up pounds and pounds of the popular bacon every day — and where the delightful smoky smell anoints everyone who works there. She said that if they happen to stop in a bar after work, the bacon aroma is a powerful pheromone for attracting the attention of men. Who needs perfume when there's bacon in the air?

If, like me, you stopped watching Season 7 of Top Chef the minute Padma Lakshmi told Arnold Myint to pack up his Louis Vuitton knife bag, you might want to resume your viewing — at least until the voting for Fan Favorite is over.

The cheftestant who earns the most votes in an audience poll stands to take home $10,000. Not bad for a Miss Congeniality-style honor. That chunk of change would be a pretty penny for Myint to put toward his goal of starting a foundation with an international focus on children, education, food and the arts. Or he could buy some more hats.

According to the omnipresent media rep assigned to Myint by Bravo network, Fan Favorite voting will take place in August. More details to follow. (And remember, you can't vote on your DVR. Doh!)

It was the first I’d heard of it, and I jumped out to snap pictures of the tidy raised boxes behind the locked gate.

A white BMW pulled up, and a gardener walked over. “You with the paper?” he asked. I said I was, and that the garden had taken me by surprise as I rolled past on Jo Johnston Avenue.

MDHA granted funds for the John Henry Hale Community Garden, and the project began this spring. (Read more about it on Gloria Ballard's blog, Turning Toward the Sun.) You can see it from the air on Google Maps, in the earliest days when the boxes were being filled with dirt.

The friendly gardener had brought along sets of elephant garlic and watermelon plants for his box. He let me into the locked enclosure. It’s just a gardener’s dream of well-built boxes brimming with well-tended plants, a handy water pump in the center. Tomatoes are already ripening, eggplants are coming along nicely, and yellow squash is ready to pick.

But the gardener was most proud of the okra. Rows and rows of it, planted in the dense hills of someone who's clearly never experienced the full majesty and exhausting abundance of a single 7-foot okra plant.

• From left: Carmelo and Maria Savarino, Guy Fieri, Corrado Jr., Corrado Sr. and Francesca Savarino

As polarizing a figure as Fieri is among foodies (some chafe at his “regular guy who just likes to stuff his gut” image and theatrical trappings like the aforementioned blond-on-black Sonic the Hedgehog hairstyle), he seemed to have made a good impression around town.

At Savarino’s, he tried to keep up with chef-owner Corrado Savarino’s deadpan sense of humor and generally charmed the whole family, including Corrado Jr., who got an autographed hat and a Guy Fieri wristband. Scene editor Jim Ridley, who chatted with Fieri during that shoot, said the super-chef seemed genuinely interested in Nashville and asked a lot of questions about the Hillsboro Village neighborhood and concentration of restaurants.