Cheap Eats: Varallo’s Breakfast Bowl — $10.25

Located deep in the heart of Nashville’s downtown core, Tennessee’s oldest restaurant still stands proudly, serving breakfast and chili options — and still doing it at a price the working class can afford. Varallo’s has a vast menu of options that are so affordable you might feel like you’re walking back in time. But I want to focus on the one menu item I keep coming back to time and time again.

The Breakfast Bowl is basically a full American breakfast in a large foam cup. It’s packed tight with biscuits, scrambled eggs, hash browns and your choice of bacon or sausage, drowned in sausage gravy to make a bowl of pure Southern-style comfort food. I recommend a few splashes of Louisiana hot sauce, which is available on the table, to give the bowl an extra bit of kick. Altogether, the Breakfast Bowl is a quart of delicious food that’s representative of the traditional culture of the area for just $10.25 — a competitive price anywhere in Davidson County, let alone downtown Nashville.

Varallo’s is a special treat that comes with nearly 120 years of history. In a part of town beset by rapid development, it’s important to hold onto the historic parts of downtown and have a few bastions of affordability for the hardworking people who keep the wheels of our city turning.