It’s a miserably, unseasonably cold and rainy Friday night just days ahead of Halloween. A lonesome Mario Brother sits at the bar of the Hermitage Cafe downtown. He’s the only person out of the roughly 15 diners in the small all-night restaurant wearing a costume.
I ask my waitress if this is about as busy as it gets this time of night, and she tells me rush hour doesn’t usually hit until about 2:30 or 3 a.m. — when the bars close. The fella washing dishes later tells me that just last night, parties with as many as 12 or 16 people were coming in right after the cafe opened. Coming from some event in Midtown, he thinks.
Hermitage Cafe is a longtime late-night destination for downtown partiers, working musicians and tourists who have the good fortune of getting a Lyft driver who recommends the place or who just stumble by it on the way back to their hotel. Every day of the week, the Hermitage opens at 10 p.m., and closes the following afternoon at 1:30. The diner was renovated about two years back for Food Network’s American Diner Revival, but you probably wouldn’t know that from the look of things. Nashville has shot here too.
There’s no pie, but I’m looking for something sweet. My waitress tells me the French toast is really good, so I go with that and a cup of coffee. While I wait, I glance around the diner. The only others in the room — aside from Mario and me — are a table of six or seven good ol’ boys in hats and plaid, plus a couple other single diners. Chris Isaak, Stevie Wonder and Rihanna all play over speakers as I wait. Later it’ll be a Rick Astley song. You know the one.
The French toast arrives, perfectly crispy and covered in lots of cinnamon. It really is about the best French toast I’ve ever had. As for the coffee ... well, it’s hot.
Eventually Mario strikes up a conversation, asking if the “100 people move to Nashville per day” statistic he’s always hearing is true. I tell him that from what I understand, it’s a little more nuanced than that. It depends on what metrics you’re using, but yes, lots of folks move to the Nashville area every day. “Well, I’m one of them,” he says. His name is Josh, and his mustache is real. He moved up from Birmingham, Ala., about a month ago and works in radio.
My waitress asks if I need anything else.
“I probably don’t need any more coffee,” I say. “I’ve gotta go to bed at some point.”
“Bed?” asks the cook before flipping a pair of omelets. “What’s that?”
The clientele will turn over a time or two before I leave, mostly parties of three or four splitting biscuits-and-gravy or plates of fries. My photographer asks if he can snap a couple of shots, but both the waitress and the dishwasher say they’d rather not have their pictures taken. Fair enough.
Lee Greenwood comes on the speakers around 2:30, and I figure it’s about time to leave. I ask my server what her name is.
“Little Bit.”
“Little Bit?” I ask.
“I’m here every Friday to Saturday.”
