As you may have read in our Dec. 12 issue, the annual Boner Awards, there were scads of screw-ups and blunders this year in Nashville. And as you hopefully saw in our Dec. 19 Year in Music cover package, Music City was overflowing with great releases by world-class artists who call Nashville home.
But this week? No countdowns. No awards or numbered lists. This week, we at the Scene have decided to simply share with you a baker’s dozen of local gems we’ve discovered over the course of 2019. From restaurants, bars and food halls to a Gaelic sports organization and an adult toy store (not that kind of adult toy store — not that there’s anything wrong with that!), below you’ll find a bunch of local stuff we’ve fallen for over the past calendar year. Some of it’s new, some of it’s just new to us, but all of it makes Nashville just a little bit better. Dive in.
White Duck Taco
6th & Peabody
All sorts of restaurants and attractions have popped up downtown during Nashville’s current boom, but somehow I missed the opening earlier this year of a pretty amazing 30,000-square-foot entertainment complex at Sixth Avenue South and Peabody Street in SoBro. It’s the flagship for one of my favorite breweries, Yee-Haw, and its sister distillery, Ole Smoky Moonshine. So obviously it’s a prime place to secure beer and cocktails, but the food is especially noteworthy.
Sharing the main taproom is White Duck Taco Shop, a joint out of Asheville, N.C., that has a large, eclectic menu of elevated tacos. And then there’s another really socko dining attraction: a permanently parked food truck serving up Prince’s Hot Chicken. Prince’s dates back more than 50 years and is the venerable king of Nashville’s hot chicken lore — it’s also been honored by the James Beard Foundation, which is no small accolade.
The 6th & Peabody complex has lots of seating, both indoors and outside in a courtyard that features cornhole and bocce, and a gigantic outdoor screen for watching the big games. Last weekend I visited twice: Saturday was packed with folks, including families, pregaming before the Predators took on the Stars. Despite the Preds’ ultimate defeat, it was a fun, convivial afternoon. (And for some reason, Nashville Sounds baseball mascot Booster was on hand to entertain kids and other fans.) On Sunday I stopped by during the Titans game, and the taproom was full, but outdoors there were just a few other hardy souls bundled up with their beers watching the game, and Prince’s fans lined up for their capsicum kick. The point is, sometimes there’s a crowd, but sometimes you can feel like you have the place almost to yourself. And the food and beer are really good. The Prince’s truck menu is more limited than that of the main restaurant, featuring hot chicken tenders and wings with fries and a couple other sides. But on Sundays they serve waffles and syrup with the hot chicken, a famous combination made in sweet and spicy heaven. Though I’d rather have Prince’s half-chicken on the bone, I found the tenders to be quite good. Paired with a Yee-Haw beer, it was a pretty special meal.
Inside, the taproom offers another huge TV and lots of seating, with bars offering both Yee-Haw brews (about a dozen on the draft list) and drinks featuring Ole Smoky spirits. If you go with an acquisitive tourist, there’s tons of merch to buy, including Ole Smoky pickles and various flavors of moonshine. The 6th & Peabody venue is tucked behind the Central Police Precinct, and I’m amazed by how easy it is to overlook. But it’s a great hangout, and I’m glad I finally found it. DANA KOPP FRANKLIN
Compost Nashville
Remember that critter who lived under the Flintstones’ sink, serving as a living garbage disposal? I’ve often wished it were that easy to compost. I remember the flavor-rich tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers that came from my parents’ vegetable garden, thanks partly to the nutrient-rich compost we got from burying eggshells and veggie peels under a big pile of grass clippings in the backyard. I also remember the hard and smelly labor of turning over the pile with a pitchfork every week. Making planet-friendly choices is also on my mind — it’s pretty distressing when I see people in control of U.S. energy policy acting like they don’t believe that human activity impacts the environment — and the less I can send to a landfill, the better.
Something my girlfriend did this year hit all of those points at once: She signed up for Compost Nashville. (My house is outside their service area, which currently includes greater Nashville, Franklin, Brentwood and some parts of Donelson.) When we’re having dinner at her place, the vegetable and meat trimmings from making the meal go straight into the 4-gallon bucket; we scrape our plates and drop the napkins in there, too. Forget some takeout in the back of the fridge? In it goes. If we order a pizza, we can just tear up the box and drop it in — Ashland City’s The Compost Co., which processes the waste, accepts quite a few more materials than I imagined.
The service isn’t cheap at $35 a month, but you do get the convenience you pay for. All she has to do is drop the bucket by the curb each week, and she’ll get a delivery of ready-to-use compost twice a year. If she doesn’t have time for her own garden, Compost Nashville will donate the compost to a local farm, community garden or other organization, ensuring that a lot less of our garbage goes to waste. STEPHEN TRAGESER
Area Bear
After more than a century, Davidson County became a bear area once again in 2019. A hunter’s trail camera snapped a photo of the juvenile male black bear in August, and though it was obviously a bear, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency confirmed a few days later that, yes, it was a bear.
At first, the TWRA hedged a bit on the prospects of Nashville adding a permanent ursine urbanite, saying that it was “not uncommon to see young bears moving through the area,” though since one hadn’t been seen in Davidson County in more than 100 years, perhaps TWRA’s definition of “not uncommon” is different from everybody else’s. In any event, another trail camera captured an image of the same bear in late October near Goodlettsville, and the TWRA conceded that our bear was likely here to stay — at least for a little while.
It remains unclear what, exactly, the Area Bear is doing here. Though juvenile males in particular roam away from home in an effort to set up their own range, there isn’t a breeding population of black bears anywhere close by, and as yet there’s no evidence of any females around here. So the young bachelor is having a tough time if he moved here with the intention of breeding. But things are often tough for brave pioneers, and we should celebrate Area Bear’s tenacity at reopening the territory for his species, even if he is ultimately unsuccessful. Just give him plenty of room, don’t leave the trash out too long, and marvel at the fact we live in a city where a bear hangs out eight miles from downtown. J.R. LIND
Pastries at D'Andrews Bakery & Cafe
D’Andrews Bakery & Cafe
I absolutely hate driving downtown and fighting to find a space to park at exorbitant prices, so I try to take the bus into town and walk from the bus stop whenever I can. Unfortunately, this means my quick dining options are pretty much limited to sandwich and taco chains when I need a bite between errands. That is, until I discovered D’Andrews Bakery & Cafe.
It’s easy to miss at street level, tucked in the shadows of The Cumberland Apartments at 555 Church St., a block from the downtown library — but David Andrews’ cozy cafe is well worth the hunt. Andrews is a born-and-bred Nashville local, but if you ask him, the personable young baker will happily dish with a twinkle in his eye about his years working in and leading the kitchens in Manhattan at Gotham Bar & Grill and the Kimberly Hotel.
His expertise at both sweet and savory cooking makes him a dual threat, and the food at his semi-eponymous restaurant shows off his talents working with a whole gamut of flavor profiles. His delicate laminated pastries are unparalleled and make delightful morning treats. But don’t miss out on the midday meal at D’Andrews either, because not only does Andrews bake all the foccacia for his breakfast sandwiches — he also bakes the bread for the lunch versions. Oh, and he roasts the delectable chicken, turkey and roast beef that lie between the slices of bread. Andrews’ versatile Tennessee Prosciutto Twist is the ultimate walking meal, with house-made ricotta and local ham encrusted within flaky layers of pastry. I’ll never worry about finding a lunchtime parking spot downtown again! CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN
Rappers on the Rise
Nashville hip-hop is a lively scene, but what really makes it exciting for me is the diversity of the sound. Regionalism in rap hasn’t totally vanished, despite the way the internet has flattened the landscape — trends and subgenres may cross state borders, but sensibilities that stretch back generations are still anchored in their communities. There’s still a New York sound, a Bay Area sound, a Houston sound and so on.
But the Nashville rap scene features a melting pot of these sounds — you’ve got some lyricism with your trap music, soul with your battle raps and a whole lot of charisma and energy spread among the talent pool. (Southern rap roots are still easy to spot in this mix of styles, of course.) Trapperman Dale is releasing solid, lyrical trap tracks, and Brian Brown has been dropping singles that remind me of artists like Chance the Rapper, Kid Cudi and Curren$y (who shared one of Brown’s songs in an Instagram video earlier this year). You’ve also got deft lyricists like Daisha McBride and Tim Gent and bold entertainers like the BlackSon.
Nashville also has the year-old organization Nashville Is Not Just Country Music, which seeks to spotlight these acts and link them to resources and colleagues behind the scenes. But there are also showcases like Tuesdays!, which now takes place at Nashville’s venerable Springwater, that offer cyphers and open mics for emerging MCs. Nashville rap isn’t a new phenomenom, but as a newcomer to the city, I’ve had a lot of fun exploring the discographies of the artists leading the way. ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ
Nashville Gaelic Athletic Club
In 1884, a handful of Irishmen interested in preserving their country’s native sports, long in decline during the time of British rule, met at a hotel in County Tipperary and established the Gaelic Athletic Association. The GAA standardized and modernized the ancient sports of hurling and caid — with the latter given the English name Gaelic football — and a phenomenon was born.
The Gaelic games — along with hurling and football, there’s camogie (essentially women’s hurling), Gaelic handball and rounders -— spread around the world with immigration of the Irish. New York’s Gaelic Athletic Association has been around since the late-19th century and actually participates in the All-Ireland championships alongside the Irish counties. As anybody who has found themselves transfixed by hurling and Gaelic football while flipping through the supernumerary cable sports channels can attest, the sports are compelling. Hurling is regarded as the fastest game on grass. It’s a lot like ice hockey — if ice hockey were played on grass, in all three dimensions, and had 17 players on each team. Gaelic football has elements of soccer, rugby and even basketball with thrilling runs, quick passing and sharp kicking. One of the greatest things is that hurling and football have very similar rules and identical scoring, and learning how one of them works gets a person most of the way into learning the other.
In 2013, a group of dedicated fans and Irish expats founded the Nashville Gaelic Athletic Club and started out with hurling before adding football a few years later. The club has an active league structure for both sports, plus a fledgling camogie division. Observant boozers may have noticed a hurling stick — a “hurley” in the parlance — hanging behind the bar at Smith & Lentz, where the Nashville GAC enjoys pints after training sessions and games. The Nashville GAC is a jolly and welcoming bunch and hosts regular learn-to-play sessions when the weather is right. (And since the sports in question come from Ireland, most weather is right.) J.R. LIND
Hunters Station
If you’ve been in a serious relationship, then you’ve had that conversation before: Where are we going to eat? It’s your turn to decide. While those of us who live on the East Side have a nice array of eateries to choose from, deciding on one that satisfies both members of a couple has no doubt been the seed of countless arguments and hangry meltdowns.
Enter, mercifully, Hunters Station, the new food court courtesy of the seemingly ubiquitous restaurant group Fresh Hospitality. In the Five Points-area lot formerly home to Hunter’s Custom Automotive, the “Food Spa” — as some of my friends have come to call it, somewhat inexplicably — is home to locations of Hugh-Baby’s BBQ & Burger Shop, Vui’s Kitchen, Tacos Aurora, The Picnic Tap, The Grilled Cheeserie and Citizen Market. If you’re in the mood for a bone-warming bowl of pho but your boyfriend wants a burger, split up and hit Vui’s and Hugh-Baby’s, respectively. You want tacos but your gal wants tomato soup? Hit Aurora and Grilled Cheeserie. Grab a local brew at Picnic Tap while you wait on your order, and cap it all off with a slice of cake or a hand pie from Citizen Market (which carries the delectable locally made CaityPies). Citizen Market offers items made by the entrepreneurs of Citizen Kitchen, a culinary incubator located in the basement of Hunters.
Hunters has been open only a couple months, and thus weather hasn’t been ideal to check out the food hall’s outdoor patio spaces. But come springtime, the dog-friendly dining area will no doubt be humming with families and their furry pals — Hunters even promises “a designated patio for off-leash play time.” Welcome to the neighborhood, Hunters Station — you’re a great new discovery, and are likely destined to prevent countless hangry moments. D. PATRICK RODGERS
The Division Street Connector
It’s been open for more than a year, but I’ve only recently discovered the efficacy of the Division Street Connector that extended a previously fragmented segment of SoBro roadways across the railroad tracks from Eighth Avenue to Second Avenue in Chestnut Hill. The way I look at it, it’s basically a luge run of excess from liquor emporium Frugal MacDoogal to Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint’s massive downtown shrine to smoked meats and good drinks.
I hesitate to share this info, but in the two hours before a Preds game, the Division Street Connector is like a Star Trek transporter that helps whisk intelligent fans (and now Scene readers — you’re welcome) from the West Side of town to the heart of SoBro while bypassing the traffic jams of the interstates and other popular major arteries. Once you discover that Sixth Avenue covers the north/south entrance and egress from the neighborhood with only a couple of traffic lights to fight, you’ll be an expert at navigating downtown traffic. That is, unless you think there’s some reason to drive any closer to the craziness of Lower Broad — then you’re just crazy, and I got nothin’ for you. CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN
HCA Healthcare Veterinary Center
On Nov. 15, a red ruffed lemur named Apollo who lives at the Nashville Zoo had an appointment for an exam to address dry skin. A few weeks later, a giant anteater named Dulce was due for a mid-morning procedure. They were brought to the zoo’s HCA Healthcare Veterinary Center. And I know this because the center has a delightful and informative Twitter account — @nashzoovet.
The 23,000-plus-square-foot vet center opened in March with nurseries and procedure rooms that are visible to the public through large viewing windows. Through this criminally underfollowed Twitter account, the vet center alerts animal lovers about its scheduled visitors. So if you happened to be at the zoo on Oct. 30, you could swing by to see the vets performing eye surgery on a rhinoceros iguana. If watching surgery doesn’t interest you, there are cuter options — earlier in the month, for instance, the account announced the schedule for baby flamingo feedings. My year was marginally better after I found this account. It’s a stream of useful information if you’re at the zoo, and a source of fun animal pictures and info when you’re not. STEVEN HALE
Hurt’s Hot Chicken
Though it’s still one of the best dishes in town when done right, Nashville hot chicken has become a victim of overexposure. Thankfully, local chef Lamont Hurt and his mobile venture Hurt’s Hot Chicken join the proud faction of local hot chicken peddlers who pay proper homage to the dish’s origins while trying to make it their own.
A roving enterprise that traditionally sets up shop in Mt. Juliet (3288 S. Mt. Juliet Road, to be exact, conveniently by a Dollar General if you need a couple of sodas), Hurt’s has an adventurous menu, with items like tenders, hot chicken cheese fries, a “Hurt Dog,” fish and its take on the hot chicken sandwich. Hurt’s breast quarter — that’s the dish you always want to try first to see if a hot chicken purveyor has conquered the standard — might have the most flavorful coating this side of Prince’s. It’s rich to the point of almost being sweet, but appropriately so. The fries, seasoned in lemon pepper, are a must — and make sure you ask for Hurt’s house-made ketchup. We won’t give away the special ingredients, but if you wind up eating it on its own, we won’t judge. CORY WOODROOF
Totally Rad Toyhouse & Collectibles
When my husband said he was taking me to an adult toy store, I was not expecting to find Jem and the Holograms, M.U.S.C.L.E. figures and a Teddy Ruxpin. But that’s exactly what I encountered in the little shop at 2517 Nolensville Pike, where a sign on the building reads, “I found my childhood at Totally Rad Toyhouse & Collectibles.”
Owners L.J. Landrum and Matthew Powell are collectors of toys — Dream Girl dolls, Thundercats, Ninja Turtles and Marvel action figures are among the items in their collections. Four years ago, they started selling collectibles online, traveling often to visit other cities’ collectible stores. Nashville didn’t have one, so they decided to bring the concept home. They opened the shop in September.
At Totally Rad Toyhouse (totallyradtoyhouse.com) you’ll find bins of toys you can buy for a couple bucks — perfect for, say, a weird art installation. There are also midgrade toys that go for $8-$25, like Star Trek and Marvel figurines, the aforementioned Jem and the Holograms dolls, plush Care Bears and more. And then there are the rare collectibles kept in glass cases, like a hunky Tygra Thundercat, an Ewok habitat and a mint-condition Ghostbusters lunch box.
Landrum and Powell say the shop attracts serious collectors in search of that one item to complete their collection, as well as folks just looking to scratch a nostalgic itch. “The main thing that drives us is the people who come in and are so happy to find something that reminds them of their childhood,” says Landrum. “As we get older,” adds Powell, “we look back on those things that made us happy. A lot of people want to get that back.” ERICA CICCARONE
Auntie Claus at Nashville Children's Theatre
Parenthood in Nashville
There’s one thing that every new parent has in common: inexperience. We’re all just flailing around trying to make sense of this new series of activities we’ve chosen for ourselves, which may include unfamiliar territory like waking up extremely early, bringing special plastic cups into restaurants, and resigning to being partially covered in some kind of gunk at all times — might be oatmeal, might be vomit. So it’s pleasantly surprising to discover that there are so many local institutions that have been waiting for us, the new parents, to bumble out of our questionably stained sweatshirts and onto the Music City streets.
At the top of that list is Nashville Children’s Theatre (nashvillechildrenstheatre.org), a spot I always loved from a distance without fully understanding how superlative its productions are. In 2019 I saw The Itsy Bitsy Spider, which was a production of the Snuggery, a kind of toddler-friendly play-production series that utilizes the language of theater with the interactivity of a children’s variety show. And the lead actor was none other than Tamiko Robinson Steele, one of Nashville’s most talented actors, who brought an air of sophistication to a production that easily transcends the realm of silly kids’ things. The more traditional production of Auntie Claus kept my 3-year-old and her 2-year-old bestie rapt for about an hour, and honestly I liked the play more than the Radio City Christmas Spectacular.
In the years between being a child and becoming responsible for one, I was vaguely aware that playgrounds existed, but it was never something I thought about much. But now that I’ve got a kid, the neighborhood playground, with its plastic alligators and multitude of slides, has become incredibly important. That said, Hendersonville’s Mary’s Magical Place (marysmagicalplace.org) is more than just a playground — it’s an inspiration. Seriously, the mission statement alone is a tearjerker. Named in memory of Mary Elizabeth McAuley — a local child with cerebral palsy and epilepsy who died in 2015 — and with more than $500,000 in donations supporting it, the Hendersonville playground is a fully accessible wonderland. It opened in 2018, but will continue to be a new discovery for parents — and it’s especially a blessing for children or parents who have special needs. Look for another similarly inclusive playground in 2020 — Miracle Park broke ground in late November in Gallatin’s Triple Creek Park. LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
Ellington’s Mid Way Bar & Grill
Though it’s just four floors above street level, Ellington’s Mid Way Bar & Grill at the Fairlane Hotel feels miles away from the rest of the once-sleepy downtown dining scene. Evoking midcentury New York City, the establishment’s bar can make one feel like an extra in The Irishman. But thanks to one of the central business district’s best happy hours, one doesn’t have to be a gold-encrusted union boss to pay the bill.
While Ellington’s opened in 2018 and further established itself as a downtown staple this year, 2020 could be the year when it reaches cruising altitude. The hotel recently announced that it’s bringing on Kristin Beringson as executive chef. Fans of her past work at The Green Pheasant, Holland House and other local favorites should look forward to the new menu she’s rolling out at the already-unique hotel bar and restaurant. STEPHEN ELLIOTT
