Great, you're thinking — another article where a relocated celebrity shows an out-of-towner the same five restaurants everybody's covered to death. But this piece by Andrew Knowlton in the February Bon Appetit stands out for several reasons (not least of which is the nimble, colorful but never condescending writing). First, his guide is The Black Keys singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach, who proves he's as knowledgeable about his adopted hometown's specialties as he is about vintage gear and obscure garage-soul sides.
Second, Knowlton's flat-out love letter to Nashville's restaurant explosion manages something few such pieces ever do: It ties what's going on here in local food not just to the city's creative energy in other areas — temple of denim Imogene + Willie is one reference point — but to the "Southern food revolution" spreading like kudzu tendrils across the country. I've never seen it put better or more succinctly:
Suddenly, New Yorkers were eating grits (and loving it). Critics were talking about biscuits and fried chicken like they were blinis and caviar. Nose-to-tail eating, canning, curing, bourbon—things that have been part of the South's culinary traditions for centuries—were now obsessed over from coast to coast. Being Southern and eating Southern were cool; the restaurants and ingredients down South are better than ever. And nowhere was this more apparent, I'd heard, than in Nashville.
