Best of Nashville 2023

00:00We are supported by Robbins Insurance, a local insurance agency providing customized insurance policies, sound guidance, and attentive service. Robbins Insurance is the go-to agency for hospitality professionals in Nashville. Listen, Robbins knows how hard industry professionals work every single day. They also know how devastating accidents can be. Be it a grease fire that damages the kitchen, a severe storm that cuts off power, or a customer slip and fall incident. Both the extensive experience and the savvy to create a policy that protects your business from accidents like those, you can rest easy knowing that the work you've put in will not be for nothing. Visit Robbins' website at robbinsins.com to request a consultation or call Matthew Clements directly. His number is 863-409-9372. Protection you can trust. That's Robbins. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll.

01:13Alright, welcome in to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Today is a very special day. It's about a week late. But we are excited today to welcome in Chris Chamberlain of the Nashville scene. Hey Chris. Hey Brandon. Welcome you back into the studio. Yeah, I think this is probably my fourth time on the show but my third time in the studio. And I finally learned to bring my reading glasses to your tiny ass dark studio here. So hopefully I'll be more productive. I've got all the bright lights on today. I appreciate that. Because I've got two of those lights are burnt out. I've just been so damn busy all around that I haven't like kept up the studio. I finally got waters back in here. I'm pretty excited about that. And you had marked on your calendar, don't forget Chris is old, turn the lights on. Turn the lights on. Chris is old. So every year, this is kind of becoming a tradition. Every year we do a Best of Nashville recap slash acceptance speeches.

02:14And you being one of the writers over there, we like to bring you in because you had a major part in the Best of Nashville. This is a big huge event in Nashville. The Nashville scene every year does their Best of Nashville. So this is going to be fun. Today we've got a few guests that will be coming in to give their acceptance speeches, talk about their wins. We've got Stephanie, who's my sister, over at Killjoy. She'll be here in about 30 minutes or so. We've got Will Chef going to be here in studio. He is the owner of the 12th South Tap Room in the Tap Room over at, in the Nation's 51st Tap Room. We're going to be talking with Sean Porter will be in studio, best romantic restaurant winner, best hot dog winner over at Daddy's Dogs. Also incredible human being. I love him. He is one of my heroes in this business. He really is. I just, I absolutely love him. We're going to get into my bromance with him here in just a minute. And we're hoping to get special guests. They're very rarely on the show.

03:16We can get Caroline and Tony Gals and we're hoping that they're going to hop on later in the show as the best Christmas pop up for St. Nicky's. We're going to hopefully they can come on the show. So we'll hopefully have some surprises later on. I mean, I'm set up for disappointment when it becomes can Brandon dial friends and get them to answer the phone? Yeah, exactly. Right. So there's a lot that happened this this year. And I want to break it down because in this up in this article in this is this issue issue is the word that it is because it's still in print. You know, we've managed to survive with this interesting business model of printing of actual magazine and giving it away for free. How do you do that? Well, this is our biggest issue of the year, no doubt. I mean, this is the only one that's perfect bound. This is the one that you don't want to drop on your foot. It's really hard to it's a big, thick one. It's and then we throw one of the parties of the year for the best of for the winners and for the advertisers. And this year it was at First Horizon Park and it was just a great shindig, got some great food there, had some fun musical entertainment.

04:24And it's just great to see the restaurant industry recognizing themselves. It's not so much about who our picks are, but the fact that we're just recognizing that the industry as a whole is doing well. You know, we talked back a couple of years ago that that any restaurant that survived and is horribles of twenty twenty and then the competition that's come up in twenty one, twenty two, twenty three. They deserve to be called the best restaurant. So we have we have five hundred local restaurants that I think are are worthy of recognition. What would be fun next year instead of doing this after the fact, if we set up live at the best of event and I have a little booth there, we have the microphones and as winners, I could just have winners come by and we could interview like twenty of them. I mean, I think that's worth a quarter page ad. And that's why this is the biggest episode, the biggest issue that you do all year long for the advertising. I like it. So there's two different aspects of the best of Nashville.

05:27One of them is the readers picks. So if you are a reader of the scene, you can go to Nashville scene dot com. There's a month that you can go vote and you have to vote on the twenty different categories for your vote to count. But that's how the readers picks are done. And then there's what I like to call the real best of Nashville. And I don't think I'm alone with this is the writers picks, which is where you the writers go in and you pick your best of Nashville. There's a lot of interesting categories here that aren't available to the readers. You have best chef, best there's a ton of different ones I'm going to go through. You have best chef, best new pizza, best sandwich, best Cuban sandwich, best late night bar, best new bagel shop, best new restaurant, which was kisser, best new Italian. I mean, there's categories in here that are completely different. How do you guys choose that? Who chooses who gets to pick these categories?

06:29And do you how do you divvy them up? Yeah, the readers picks are really important. I don't want to discount them. It's sometimes we we meet and think, gosh, is there a category we need to add? You know, is there something that we need the readers to have another chance to vote on? We do not list nominees so it can come out of left field, whatever readers interested in. Back in the days when you used to have to submit your your entries by print, you had to actually rip out a page and fill out a ballot. That led to some kind of crazy ballot stuffing. You know, we knew that there were people out there taking the entire stack of scenes out of the box in front of their restaurant. And after you were done rolling silverware, you had to fill out ballots and put your put your restaurant in different categories. So we went to this online system where the minimum criteria of voting for at least 20 means people have to at least make an effort, be thoughtful about it.

07:29And it's a lot harder to just stuff the box. So I think I'm still going to ask Sean how he got best romantic restaurant. I think there was some ballot stuffing of some sort done on the Internet there. I mean, he probably put the word out to. Well, he's won it for like the last three years. Yeah. His cult following like tell everybody we're the best romantic restaurant. Well, he does the I think that he does the best Valentine's event of the season in his his Valentine's dinner that he does is I think the best event of the year for for for singles going or people. It is fun for sure. It is the most fun and it's it's super laid back. And it's and he's so his picture, his his American beauty photo of him with his shirt off and the roses that they have blown up at the event like he's so unapologetic. He's just he's just amazing. And I think that's why he gets best romantic restaurant, because it's a romantic evening that he creates around hot dogs. I mean, that's worthy of something, but he still has to motivate enough people to vote for that.

08:30And that's what I find intriguing. Yeah, I can't erase that image of Sean laying there in the rose petals from my mind. So we might as well just go all in on that one, right? I mean, yeah. So let's get back to the to the writer's picks. That's the opportunity for the writers to really weigh in on the big awards. You know, we do meet as a group, a group of the writers and editors when we talk about the big awards, best restaurant, best new restaurant, best chef. But then it's kind of a pitch process process where you send in things that you would like to shine a spotlight on. And in some cases, that means that we slice that onion pretty thin because everybody has a favorite that they would like more people to know about. So we literally broke best bar into one, two, three, four, five, six categories because we had different writers that all had an opinion that no, no. The best bar is Lakeside Lounge, but the best new bar is Golden Pony.

09:33But the best happy hour is a rose pony. So we have two pony bars that one the best wine bar is Van Gogh's. The best dive bar is Betty's Grill. And the best late night is a lucky three star. All worthy. You know, at a certain point, you have to take the writers choices as literally the opinion of one person who you hope knows what they're talking about. Yeah. And we we try to keep a stable of freelancers that are plugged in. I can't get everywhere in town, but you will notice that a lot of our freelancers live in East Nashville because that's where all the best bars are. It just kind of works out that way. Well, I think when you look at the readers pick for best restaurant, you have bourbon steak by Michael Mina. And then when you look at the writers pick for best restaurant, you have Druzy and Dar, which are two completely different places. There is Will Chef in the in the house. Welcome, Will. We're going to pause the conversation we're having right now.

10:34Now we're going to bring in Will Chef from the 12 South Tap Room in the 51st Tap Room into the studio. How are you doing? Great. What's going on, man? Good to see you. Good to see you too. Grab a seat and then grab some headphones and a microphone and we'll we'll jump right in. So, Will, you probably had the the shortest commute of anyone other than me to get here since I live literally a half block away and you just had to come over from 12 South. Well, I was coming from Sylvan Park, actually. That's where I live. But yeah. Well, all you got to do is you got to pull that microphone right up right into your face. All right. Get comfortable. Perfect. Is this your first time in studio? First time in studio. Welcome in studio, man. It's good to have you here. Yeah, I think I was on before we did it. Zoom style. Probably in the middle of the pandemic. For sure. There was another best of Nashville, wasn't it? I don't recall exactly why why we're on, but yeah. Best of Nashville. And that was a was this one of one of your writers picks?

11:34This was indeed one of my writers picks. Yeah, it was. What did I say? Best O.G. O.G. Craft Beer Emporium, I think it was. Yes. And I one of my side gigs, one of my many hustles that I scraped together to make enough money to be able to live a half block away from here. Is that I lead tours for walking Nashville and we've added a 12 south tour to our to our downtown and East Nashville tours that we do. And I love taking even locals, locals and tourists down 12 south. And we pretty much make the turn and come back at the tap room. Nice. And I love telling people the story of what that neighborhood was when you when you started what you were doing. I mean, we walk past urban grub and I tell them, see that that used to be the car wash where you would get jacked. If you got out of your car, you'd find out your car would be stolen while you were cleaning it. Or, you know, see that they used to be a dry cleaner right there. But 12 south is literally the anchor point of culinary on that end of the street to me.

12:38And I just love sharing that story. And I also love showing them your sneaky murals that nobody knows. Now they are their top secret. You got to make the corner. They are my two favorite murals on 12 south because nobody knows about him. So next time you go to the tap room, walk around the corner and then walk around the corner again to get to the back where the smoker is. And you'll see some really in the backyard, some really cool art, our much coveted parking lot, which we do have free parking for customers. So which is amazing. I'm going to read what you wrote about it because this is the 12 south tap is a really special place. And I think that with the proliferation of what's happened in Nashville, I think not that people forget about it, but there's some of the history behind it. Let's put it in context. What year did you all open? The tap room 2006. I had opened up 12 south market in Delhi in 2003, which I also had up like seven doors of beer and a little gourmet market with sandwiches.

13:38But it was a little ahead of its time for the neighborhood would probably do great now. But y'all can't see all the air quotes that will. So you wrote before 12 south tap room and grill opened in 2006, most Nashvilleans had never tried a craft beer. That made sense because music city had been a bud Miller Coors town for decades and bar managers are quite happy to fill their taps with products from breweries that had been consistently giving them spot sports and concert tickets. 12 south changed everything with a wide selection of craft beers from across the country, offering the first opportunity for many feature future beer snobs to discover the hoppiness of Sierra Nevada or the fruity goodness of a Belgian ale. They're also big supporters of local breweries and we're all better off because they're here here here. I couldn't agree with those tears. So you're you O.G. draft beer Emporium. I remember my brother taking me there a long time ago. You know, my brother, Justin, I mean, it was you and flying saucer at the time. Really? Yeah, yeah, it was.

14:38And yeah, the beer distributors couldn't figure out why I was like, no, I want to put this on. Not what you tell me to. It was like they were all very frustrated with us from the beginning because I was like, no, we're going to rotate all these taps. We're going to do, you know, what we want to do. No ball football tickets for you, then? No, no, I'd probably get a lot of them now. You know, they're probably easy to get right now. Well, I mean, just because of what the long standing what you've been able to do. I mean, just an innovator of everybody following behind your lead. Right. Yeah, we we've been very fortunate. I mean, like the neighborhood, of course, evolved into just a wonderful spot, which is hard to believe what it's become. And, you know, craft beer really caught on, you know, a few years after that. What made you bold enough to stock that fridge with a hundred bottles that people had never heard? Well, I had lived in Colorado, which is basically kind of beer heaven at that point.

15:39You know, started probably drinking Sierra Nevada's Grateful Dead Show parking lot. Kind of started that, you know, my palates evolution into a craft beer. And, you know, I just love beer. I like food and seem like a natural progression to to go. And it seemed like I knew a lot of other people that like good beer and there wasn't any around or, you know, hard to find. So were you educating people just one at a time across the bar, you know, and get them to try something they'd never tried before? Definitely turned a lot of people on, you know, and change their palates and like, you know, give it a shot. Maybe the first sip in one, but take a couple and, you know, you'll develop the feel and taste and you want more. So and people don't talk about your food enough, but I mean, you had to have that. You couldn't you couldn't turn people on to all these crazy Belgians and the sours without having some food to go with it. Because I think that's where craft beer really excels over just a light lager.

16:43I mean, light lagers great for football, you know, but maybe not the best thing with a with a good spicy black bean. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's a whole it all goes together, you know. And we pride ourselves on our menu and, you know, everything scratch made and we want to give everybody a total experience from, you know, your first step to your last bite. So like I said, it all kind of goes together for a wonderful meal and time. You had live music there for a little while. Right. We did. We did. And that was a big hit for years. We had some great players in there. Dave Pomeroy lives in the neighborhood and we had Guthrie Trapp that was living around the corner and Pat Bergeson, some great, great musicians, some bluegrass nights. We're looking to start that back up again, maybe on the patio. Just with COVID, everything kind of changed and just kind of the place evolved and with the I mean, it's such a touristy place now, too.

17:43It's like, oh, no, I'm walking right past you. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's just the kind of change, you know, post COVID, everything kind of changed. We haven't quite dove back into it. We're looking to kind of dive in a little bit. Maybe start with the bluegrass night again, but. So who else was there with you in 2006? Mirror was open. Mirror was open. And then mafiosas had just opened. Mirror, man. Yeah, they were a true pioneer down there for sure. Oh, man, that was a great restaurant. It was. It was. And yeah, was Monell's open? Monell's. No, not. They were a little after that. Yeah. And then we had Mirror or Mirror, the wine bar, Rumors was down there. That's right. Mafiosas was there. Mafiosas had just opened around the same time. So we were kind of, you know, side by side, open in between the deli and the tap room transition and mafiosas.

18:44God, I remember two for Tuesdays. You didn't want to go. You didn't want to drive anywhere near that place. Yeah, they filled our parking lot many times. It was an OG like industry, get off of work, go hang on the patio at mafiosas. Late night. Late night. Before it was late. Slices, you know, till two in the morning or whatever. Do you miss those days? Do you go like because I remember back when I used to work in restaurants as a server or whatever. You get a manager and you get off work and you'd go hang out on 12 South and it was locals. It's kind of like the OG like Hillsborough Village. You got Sam's in the village or Jonathan's before that or Jackson's the patio of Jackson's. And it was just the villager throwing darts. And it was you'd see 10 people, you know, you knew this was a way for people who worked in the industry to hang out together and catch up. And I kind of felt like back in the day it was you could go to 12 South Taproom or you could go to mafiosas. And it was just a bunch of people that you knew and it was locals. 12 South has evolved so much since then.

19:44Do you miss those days? I do. I do. You know, it was a community at that point. 100 percent. You know, I mean, there's still we still have a ton of great regulars, locals. Of course, we've all grown a little older as well. So maybe not doing the late nights quite like we used to. Were cars smaller back then? Because I remember we could still drive down the streets even when people were parking on both sides of the street. And now you pretty much if you want to do a side street, if you don't have a scooter, this is true. Yeah, I feel for the people that live on those streets, too. I mean, enough y'all parked in front of Kay Westhouse that she moved. Yeah, she did. Ran her off to Asheville. That's funny. It's the evolution of Nashville. I mean, you've obviously had a front row seat of it. How's everything going at 51st? I'm just going well. I mean, that neighborhood is really coming along. It feels very similar to how we started at 12 South. It's it's growing rapidly. The whole a lot of families now over there, you know, younger, not quite.

20:49It's a little more disjointed still at this point. Caroline, you know, who's cohost on the show typically every day is a she's talked about it. She's like this. This we thought it would happen a lot faster than it has. Yeah, it's been a much slower burn to get there. She's seeing it now. She's seeing a lot of the locals in the area come out and support them on a regular basis. We thought there would be more growth in that neighborhood than there has been. Is that something you've experienced, too? I agree. I think Charlotte kind of developed started at the same time. I've lived in Sylvan Park for 20 years, 20 plus years and waiting for, you know, Charlotte to come on because I'm jump across the street. But I think all that kind of is happening at the same time. There's definitely a saturation in the market with restaurants, which I think we all feel. I think that's the difference between the nations and 12 South is that I thought when Nicky and when Nicky's open kind of pioneers that. Well, at any 51st before that 51st kitchen that they were going to get to take advantage of the growth.

21:53But I think the restaurants expanded faster than the neighborhood did, whereas in 12 South, we're still filling in the last few residential spots where there could be a restaurant. So, you know, I just feel like they're both going to reach a good maximum saturation soon. But I feel like 51st is dragged because the restaurants moved in faster than the people did. Yeah, I think I think that's true as well. I mean, they're still I mean, they're just still ripping houses down over there and, you know, building them up. So it's filling in and a lot of apartments and stuff going in over there. So it's going to happen. It's just, you know, how what's the waiting game? Well, in 51st will be able to add density a lot faster than 12 South will because 12 South is still single family home. You know, we're not putting up not putting up as many tall skinnies and multi-unit complexes there. So you'll you'll get to see how both of them work out. You'll be the you'll be the test case. Well, we're we're ready. So I mean, you powered through the pandemic.

22:53I mean, you open well before the pandemic and then the pandemic happened. How was that experience for you? What were some of the things you guys did to make it through that? Well, yeah, we opened in 2017 and we were really just hitting our stride. You know, we had our bet, you know, each year getting better and then BAM pandemic. We we stayed open doing to go food, some produce, grocery boxes, just anything we could come up with, you know, help somebody out and try and help ourselves out, try and keep, you know, some most of our employees working and getting a paycheck as best we could. It was a hard, hard time. You know, a lot of people talk about getting, you know, their home time and rest and kind of how that part was nice. We a lot of us didn't experience any of that. We were, you know, sweating it out, worried, excuse me. Oh, a lot of money. Just like what is going to happen? Just a lot of uncertainty and yeah, stress, a lot of stress.

23:55So grateful. So many of our, you know, wonderful customers supported us. A lot of people coming out, given more than we asked, which was amazing. Took just took a lot of fortitude, inner fortitude to power through that and make it to, you know, to where we are today. We made it through. Don't think we would have made it without our government funding we got. We had the PPP loans. I mean, we would be done. I mean, that was the only thing reason why a lot of us are still here. You talked about as a Sylvan Park resident, you're seeing the nations in Charlotte connect. And that was one of the writers picks that I wrote. I gave it to Carter over at Streetcar for being an important link to that, you know, trying to get people to cross that psychological barrier of I-40, you know, what's next on that? Because they really are one big neighborhood with with a happens to have a flyover highway that's breaking in half.

24:58You know, I grew up in West Nashville, so I'm born, raised in Nashville. You'll drive. All right. Davidson Road. So, you know, there was no reason to go to the nations. You know, there's some seedy bars and, you know, it was lower income area. Well, there was a reason it was illegal. Yeah. Yes. My mom said don't go over there. So, you know, I don't know. I think it's just kind of uncharted territory for a lot of people, even if you're from Nashville. So I think with all the new people moving in, that's kind of helped, you know, migrate people over. And but we still all the time have people, you know, was like, oh, you're, you know, related to 12 South Taft Room. You know, 51 North, the logos are pretty obvious. Same thing. The menu is pretty similar, a little different, but pretty similar. But yeah, so it's just amazing how many people just are unaware of that area, really, that, you know, even longtime local people.

25:58So, you know, I just think it's time more than anything. And I think it's more more and more people discover there's a bunch of great spots over there. I mean, there's quite a few awesome places to go eat over there. Really? Nicky's. I mean, you got Ringle, Smoke and Oasis. Harry over there at the Smoke and Oasis. And I just saw he just covered part of his big outdoor area. So in about 30 minutes, we will have Sean Porter, AKA Big Daddy in here in studio in a little bit. Sean's awesome. He comes and supports us often. Great guy. He's really on the move, man. Talking to him a couple of weeks ago and he's just like, you know, trying to keep up with this ever expanding hot dog empire. And that's what it is. It is. I can't wait to talk to him about it. Hey, we we've got two minutes left before our next guest joins us. So kind of the thing here is we're doing the best of Nashville acceptance speeches. So we're going to turn the mic over to you, Will, to kind of say whatever you want to say as an acceptance speech of the best OG craft taproom in Nashville.

27:07Best of Nashville winner. And Brandon's got the Oscar music if you get tired of talking, he can just play you right off. Play me off into the right off into the sunset. Well, first off, I want to thank Chris for, you know, nominating us and putting us up there and recognizing us to as a old school Nashville taproom. And it's it's great because it's easy to get lost these days is, you know, a longtime restaurant. We've been there 17 years. Couldn't have ever done it without our great community. And wonderful longtime supporters. My employees are amazing. I've got a lot of employees have been there for double digit years. Great partner and Jamie Borda. And yeah, we just like to thank our community for, you know, supporting us and keeping us going all these years through the pandemic and into the future. Any special events or happy hours?

28:08We don't really have it. Like I said, we're thinking about getting the bluegrass cracking up on the patios. We got great specials all the time. Food and beverages. Two for one beers on Tuesdays is always a good thing. Free parking on 12 South. Free parking. We did just start. We do have. We do have free parking on 12 South. We do have free parking on 12 South. Free parking on 12 South. Free parking. We did just start. We do have a PMC on our lot now. But if you go into the building, scan the QR code, you get four hours of free parking. Nice. So yeah, we're we've fought that as long as we could. But four hours should be plenty of time to go drink a few beers. It should be plenty of time. And yeah. And what's the sign say in the front? If you're don't park here. If you're not at 12 South Taproom, don't be a dick or something. Don't be a jerk. That didn't work so well.

29:09Don't be a dick would have been awesome. You know, yeah, it would have been awesome. But, you know, trying to be a little PC, I guess. Well, well, it's an honor to have you here. Congratulations. And thank you for all you've done for this community and everything. Building community and the longevity and go visit will over at the 12 South Taproom or the 51st Taproom over in the nation's both amazing places. If you're looking for an awesome local place to go have a really good beer, I think that's where you need to go. So well, thanks, Joe. Thanks for having me. All right, man. Have a wonderful day. All right. Knock them dead. All right. And hey, look, we have our next guest already lined up, ready to go. Are you there, Stephanie? I'm here, Brandon. Hey, Stephanie, it's Chris. Hey, Chris, how's it going? Doing just fine. Excited to have you on. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Sorry, Stephanie, we're jumping right in. Will is exiting the studio and you are in the studio now.

30:12Stephanie Still, who is my amazing sister, who is also a Best of Nashville winner this year. That is something that you and I have in common. Chris has anointed me in this particular podcast into that a couple of years ago. And now Stephanie, with her business venture, which is called Killjoy, is the best of Nashville, best non-alcoholic. It's a bottle shop. I'm trying to find the actual what the best of Nashville was. Best proof that zero proof isn't boring, I believe. Best proof that zero proof isn't boring. Congratulations, Stephanie. Thank you. That's exactly what I wanted to prove. So tell us about Killjoy. Tell us about like what you're doing over there. How's it going? And kind of the story behind it. I know you've told it a hundred times, but I think for our listeners, let's hear it again. Yeah, sure. So Killjoy is a brick and mortar. It's the shop in the Wedgwood, Houston area, kind of like a liquor store.

31:15We sell beer and wine and spirits. With one twist, everything is alcohol free. In addition to having the shop, which is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 to 7, we also host a lot of events. So I think that's partially what they were referencing in the best of Nashville. I think since this year in 2023, and we opened on April 1st, we've hosted 44 events. Wow. Yeah. That's a lot of event stuff. All alcohol free parties and fun stuff to do. So we're just, we're really building community and showing people that there's a new and different way to have a good time. Let's talk about some of these events. In the best of Nashville, it says that you've hosted trivia nights, book clubs, author talks, dating events, and other fun parties. Tell us what are those parties like? I mean, I think that part of this is education around the fact that you don't need alcohol to have fun, but tell us what those parties have been like.

32:19Yeah. Well, I mean, so for example, on Saturday we had like a non-alcoholic mixology class. So people came in. We welcomed them with a glass of organic French champagne that was de-alcoholized. And then they had a spot at the table where they had like a, you know, all the bar tools. And we had someone there who was a professional who was teaching about bartending. And then we mixed up three different cocktails and they got to, you know, shake them, play around, taste all of the stuff, drink the cocktails. And people were just mingling and, you know, having a really good time. It was a party. And yeah, so that was an example of something that we do. So usually there's like some kind of activity, but a lot of the time there's not necessarily. We're doing happy hours. A lot of what we're doing is just educating people about the vast variety of different things you can drink that don't have alcohol in them. So for example, we have a happy hour coming up on November 3rd.

33:22And that's just going to be, you can just come hang out. We have a space adjacent to the shop where you can hang out. And we'll have a couple of guys there that are going to be opening up a cava bar. They're going to be serving up fresh cava that they've made. And if you don't know what cava is, enough cava with a K, it's a root from the South Pacific that kind of gives you like a little bit of a body buzz. It doesn't give you a head change, but it makes you feel kind of relaxed. Kind of the good parts of alcohol without any of the bad parts. That's amazing. Introducing people to new things. Well, I go back and I remember sitting in the jacuzzi at our parents' house talking about this idea because we had both quit drinking and just how much better we felt and how much of a life change this is. And you're kind of like, wouldn't it be awesome? Because there's no bar out there that's exclusively for people that don't drink. And when you go places, it's almost like you're this, hey, I'm the weird one who doesn't drink. And you're like, what if there was a place that people could go and you had all the vibe of a bar and people could order drinks and it could feel normal, but there's no alcohol.

34:32So it's really a safe place that you could feel normal and it'd be so much fun. And I feel like you've executed on that so well. You've created this really cool shop that has all the non-alcoholic options. You've got books there if people want to learn more about not drinking or just kind of like sober curious, what is this lifestyle like, without being pushy, like you need to do this. Like, hey, look, this is your own thing. We're just supplying these products that you don't have to, you know, liquor stores sell non-alcoholic products now. And you can go, every time I go or if I walk into somewhere to buy a non-alcoholic beer, there's also bottles of bourbon and all this other stuff which can be triggering. So for you, you offer these products in a safe place. There's education around them. And then you host all these events that are kind of like being at a bar or being at a social event, but there's no alcohol. But you still get the joy of having a drink with friends and without the regrets.

35:32Is there a question in that, Brandon? It's just a comment. Well, I'm just saying, I just think it's so, I'm just so proud of her because this idea that we were sitting around talking about, what do you want to call it and all this stuff. And then now she's the best of Nashville winner for doing, for executing on this and really making it happen. It just warms my, it just makes, I'm just so proud of you, Steph. Thank you. That's really sweet. So I've got a question that I'm curious about. You know, when I write about non-alcoholic drinks, a lot of cases it's either someone that's trying to replicate the flavor of a cocktail or it's someone that's trying to come out with a brand new concoction. Something that you would not, it's not somebody like, you know, seed lip trying to make you think you're having a gin and tonic. Do you see both trends growing or is one, you know, among your customers, are they looking for something new or are they looking for a replacement for a flavor they already knew? Yeah, that's a good question. I think right now both exist.

36:34So there's definitely replacements that are trying to be a perfect facsimile of the alcoholic version. And we have all of that and we have people who are looking for that. However, I think the space that is really growing is the space for just new and different products. And that to me is really fun and exciting because like, you know, maybe you've tried non-alcoholic whiskey and you go, man, this tastes weird. Like, well, why do we really need that? And it's great because you can make, say, an Old Fashioned if you really want one and that's what you really miss. But also now there's all these new spirits that have new flavors. And the space that's expanding rapidly is the functional beverages, the drinks that have adaptogens in them, and are kind of trying to give you a good feeling and make you a little bit healthier while you have your drink. And there's a lot of fun stuff that's growing in that space. And I just want to share, I've been seeing a meme going around this week that says, alcohol is boomer technology.

37:38And I think that's really true because people are realizing, like, there's a different way to catch a buzz and to have fun. And you don't have to feel like garbage the next day. And that leads me to one more question. So as someone, you know, both you and Brandon kind of thought leaders in this concept of, you know, having fun without alcohol but still making it sociable. Where does the rise of CBD and Delta 9 drinks fit into that? Is that something that you actively promote and include in your offering? Or is that too close to the other side of what people are trying to get away from? It is something that we include. A lot of our customers are, a lot of our customers are not sober. A lot of our customers are curious. A lot of them are just trying to be a little bit healthier. And many of them are what people call California sober, Cali sober. So we have several drinks that have CHC in them as well as CBD, Cava, and Kratom.

38:41So we're, you know, every person is on their own journey. And we're just trying to be supportive. And I mean, mainly to make sure there's no alcohol in anything. That's kind of our only, our only guideline. And it's so good that you're offering something that's interesting, you know, after generations of, if you were at a bar with friends and didn't want to drink, you were down to just mixers and juices. Yeah. If you're lucky, they'd give you sweet tea. Or there's a kid's table. You know, you go somewhere and there's a bar somewhere. You're like, what do you have non-alcoholic? Like, oh, over in that little bucket over there, there's some Coke and Sprite and juice. And you're like, that's it. Well, and dare I say that's the best of Nashville party. The only option was Red Bull or water. Oh, you must not have advertised with the scene. We had lots of coffee. Yeah. Next year. Yeah, absolutely. Next year, you need to have a whole table there. So I, you know, I'm all for it.

39:42And they did at the, at the CMA awards, you know, it's interesting because the CMA is all about, you know, drinking and partying backstage at Nissan Stadium. She was set up there with a whole non-alcoholic tent, like a bar where she was serving non-alcoholic cocktails to all the people backstage at Nissan Stadium because it's not just, you know, it's not just people. It's a lot of people are really into this movement. I was just at a kickoff for high rise in Nashville. You know, they're out of Charleston, but they signed a deal with Sony Music to be the official non-alcoholic option for Sony. That's amazing. So that's something also I wanted to touch on Stephanie that and we got we got three minutes left and you get to do your actual acceptance speech and we'll welcome in Sean Porter. But what we is that an option for people? If you're out there, if you're a bar and you want to do trainings or you want to get up your game and non-alcoholic, is that something that you'll come and set up for and help people with?

40:43Absolutely. How do people get a hold of you? The best way is to shoot me an email. But if you go on our website with the Killjoyclub.com or my Instagram, Killjoy Nash, I'm widely available on the Internet. I'm all over that social media. What is the club? Is there a club associated with it? The Killjoy Club? Is there a club you can join? I mean, you can join our email list. So when we first started, we started by doing pop-ups and we were calling it Killjoy Club and then we kind of dropped the club. So it's just something to confuse people. It's kind of bad marketing. Well, I'm glad I brought that up then. It's not the club. It's just email. Also, this is important to note, Killjoy Club is also a band. Is it really? Is it really? Yeah, and it's people from Insane Sound Poppy and I think 36 Mafia. Woo! Woo!

41:45Be careful. Don't take that. You're going to get like hurt. Yeah, I know. I know. So Stephanie, one of the things we ask people to do as we wrap this up is to give an actual acceptance speech for your Best of Nashville Award. Proof, the zero proof can be fun. Isn't boring. Isn't boring. That's right. Proof isn't boring. I'm sorry, Stephanie. I've butchered this three times. I don't have my notes in front of me. Just off the cuff. The mic is yours, Stephanie. Talk to the city of Nashville. Congratulations. First of all, I just want to say thank you to everyone who has supported this movement. Thank you to the Nashville scene. Thank you to Margaret Lippman, who's been a supporter since day one. Thank you to everyone who's come to the shop, to everyone that's come out to events, to anybody that's pushed outside of their comfort zone to find out what is this all about, you know? That takes bravery, that takes courage, and I'm so grateful for the community in Nashville that we were able to build this and I hope that we can build it much, much bigger in the years to come and that, yeah, next year we'll be at that party, man.

42:55Excellent. We'll look forward to having you there. I don't get to say this to too many guests when they leave, when I say goodbye, but I love you. I think you're amazing and I'm so proud of you, Stephanie. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you. Love you, too. All right. Well, I love Sean. I love... Oh, I got to get my... I love both of you. Well, this is something I've talked about the other day. Maybe I talked about it on the show. Maybe I didn't release the episode. I don't know, but I was talking, somebody was saying something about Sean Porter and I go, I think I have a bromance with this guy. Like, I think that what you're doing out there is so freaking cool in every... Thank you. And I love how authentic you are. You just don't give a fuck. You're just like, let's go. That is true. I do not, and there's something so refreshing about that because I don't have that ability. Like, I think about everything. You're just like, this is me, man. Yep. Here it is. This is what it is, baby.

43:55I'm in sweatpants and a tee right now. Let's rock and roll. I was at a show at Ascend and Daddy's Dogs had just kind of opened up down there. And so I walked down and started talking to Sean. And while we're talking, I noticed that the gas line behind his grill is on fire and dripping molten rubber on the floor. And I'm like, Sean, you want to do something about that? And he just looked at the two young people working like, hey, guys, turn that off, fix that. Come on, we've got dogs to make. Yep. You're literally on fire right now. In an outdoor concert venue. At least we were outdoors, right? Well, we opened Chagos, right? We did this opening. I called you. We were friends and family. And I texted Sean. I said, hey, we've got friends and family. I'd love to have you come by. And he's like, well, I'm in Chicago. And I went, oh, OK. Well, the other time he goes, well, I'm just here. I'm waiting on it. I got a flight tonight. I could probably change my flight to come in earlier. And I was like, well, it's just you can come in any time. It's funny. And seven o'clock, the dude, six o'clock.

44:56I don't know what time it was, but here he comes walking in. I was like, I just got an earlier flight, man. Happy to be here to support you. And it meant so much to me that you came out and you too, Chris, just to come out and because we you know, when you work that hard to open something and people in your community come out to support you, it's just it's everything. And it was just such a nice gesture of you to make it. And then the next night at seven o'clock, we have a woman come in with a box, 20 hot dogs to feed the staff after our second night of friends and families. Like, I'm just going to send you guys a bunch of hot dogs and take care of you. I just one of those things like how does that? That's just amazing. Like, you're just an amazing guy, man. It's just so kind of you. I appreciate it. No. And by the way, I think you guys have the food you guys made me that night. I took home my girlfriend and now it's her favorite Mexican place. We order it on Uber all the time. So and I think it may be my fault that I go see Sean and his girl catches on fire and then I go see you at friends and family.

45:57And it was like disco night because we had an alarm kept going. We had a strobe light flashing over our table because the alarm kept going off. And you know what? As a food writer, I'm fine with that. I know friends and family is a shakeout cruise. Yep. That's what it's for. But when you double the size of the kitchen and you add a lot of equipment, it creates it. And we have a grill and the whole thing. It creates a lot of smoke. And then the the fire we had brand new everything in there and the fire alarm was super sensitive. So they had they came in and they adjusted the sensitivity of the alarm. This is on really sensitive like it's not on fire. This is a kitchen. We've doubled the equipment in here where we've upped the fans on the hoods. We've done all this. But like that's why you learn. That's what you do. You come in there. We haven't had the fire. We had the fire alarm go off six times, like two nights later. And we were like, yeah, no more. No more. We got we got to stop this. And of course, the fire department comes and they're out front and we're like, we're good. Thank you. It's done. Was the fire alarm going off when you were there? Yep. Yep. Yep.

46:57The strobe light. We will like the disco. You know, there are some problems you just have to shovel money at. Yeah. Oh, boy, there's a lot of this. You when you're opening restaurants like it's going out of style. You have so many. Describe the whole empire now. Oh, man, it's it's growing. That's for sure. Getting more gray hairs and gray beards. That's for dang sure. So, yeah, last year we opened up our first kind of out of Nashville spot over in Gatlinburg, partnered with Yeehaw Brewing and Old Smokey Moonshine and up at Ober Gatlinburg up there on the mountain. It's really cool. I love Ober Gatlinburg. Doesn't it look like like a 70s porn set? It totally does. It totally did. They've redone it. They've redone it. You know, like tenfold. And it's awesome. They're putting in zip lines. They're doing another mountain coaster. OK, so it's a different kind of porn movie. Yeah, it's gone to like a 2015, 2020. I know what you guys are talking about. I've never seen anything like that anywhere. Yeah.

47:57And then we've done we've you know, we've added a card out in Knoxville for the weekends. Same thing with Yeehaw and Old Smokey there. You know, expanded into Nissan Stadium last year as well as Jotis when it opened up. And now we're getting ready to do this spot down in Franklin with the factory. Everybody that's going in there is so excited. Yeah, I'm excited, too. It's going to be really good. I just wish, you know, we were able to get going on it. We've been in the permit process for like almost two months down there now. And it's been a pain in the butt. I know what that's like. Yeah, for sure. And same thing with Madison. You know, we we probably announced it a little too soon, but it was like, you know, we just got to do this. And now we're like, we don't really know when it's going to kind of happen and come to fruition. But we're just playing, playing the game. But it's coming. It is. Yeah, it's in process. It's just everything takes way longer than you think it does. And, you know, it's way more expensive and all that kind of stuff than we thought it would be.

48:57And I think we went into it a little naive, you know, the shop of the nations we built out for. I did all the work and built it out for sixty thousand bucks. And this one is going to be way more expensive than that. And I'm not able to do all the work. So and Printers Alley was basically just like throwing up a window and pretty much. Yeah, that one was that one. You know, I think we from this time we signed the lease to the open date was three weeks. So, you know, I like to move quick. I don't I don't like sitting and, you know, waiting on other people to do things. Unfortunately, that's kind of what you have to do in those like new build processes. And and so it's definitely been a learning experience, you know, not getting my hopes up of like, oh, yeah, we'll sign this lease and we'll be open four months later. You know, we got a whole place to build. And, you know, I guess construction just doesn't work like that if you're not doing it yourself. Well, and, you know, the the balls you have to take on the risk with a low unit cost. You know, if you're somebody that's four months delayed, but you're going to end up with a hundred dollar bill average.

50:02Yeah, you know, that's that's not as big a deal as if you're four months delayed and you're selling a twelve dollar hot dog. Yeah, you know, because you've got to work a lot harder to to pay off those downtimes. So totally. And, you know, I think that'll be well, I think it'll be all right. I'm hoping it will. You know, I love that location up in Madison. And I think it's it's going to be good for the company as a whole as we like start expanding and looking outside of Nashville. And if we go the franchise route or even when we're building, you know, new places of our own, if that's the route we go, it kind of gives us something to go off of all. Everything we have now is too unique and too like spider web. You always call it like a web. And so it's not very sellable to a franchisee model. There's a lot more work that has to go into those kind of things than, you know, a lot of franchise owners want to do. And and you can't just tell them you need this many square feet and these 18 pieces of equipment. Exactly. Not yet. One hundred and fifty grand in working capital.

51:05You're more of the hermit crab. Like, here's a space where I can make some hot dogs. Exactly. And so this this one in Madison is definitely going to be the kind of the flagship model. And so, you know, we're spending more time and more energy and more money on it. But I think in the end, I want a good, really solid product that we're going to be able to bring somebody into and be like, hey, this is daddy's dogs like outs. You know, this is what you're going to get if if we go that franchise route or even, you know, bring other builders there. If we go to Kentucky or whatever and say, this is what I want, you know. Well, and I think your sports concession business is another one that could be plug and play wherever you want to grow the brand. For sure. You're just killing it. Thank you. Yeah, we we do pretty well there. Cost of entry is a little high, but like, you know, you got to play the game to make the money. And we've been doing a ton of festivals and stuff. We've been on the NASCAR circuit this year a lot. I think we're going to try to do most of the races next year. I just got back from Vegas last night. We did a big NASCAR event there two weekends ago.

52:10I've known them this past weekend. We did a festival called When We Were Young. And it was like a surreal, nostalgic moment for me because it was most of the bands I toured with, you know, 10 years ago before I started Daddy's All Plain. And so it was like bringing hot dogs into that world was just a big merge of, you know, two lives kind of and ton of fun. And the festival side of things has been a really good learning experience. I'm hoping to kind of, you know, do kind of triple what we did this year in festivals and have. I think that's a great way for us to get the brand name out there outside of Tennessee and outside of kind of the strongholds we have now. Well, that's that's another one of the reasons why you're one of my heroes. I mean, I'm I'm in my second career. I did 25 years in the paper business, selling paper to printers. And then I saw Kendall, Michael Scott. Yeah, I'd like to think I was a gym, but I was probably more of a Dwight. But got out of that business in 2008, which was a fine time to get out of the paper business.

53:12Like I said, I saw Kendall and I thought, hmm, this might not be a retirement business. So got out and started the second career in food, food, drink and travel writing. And it's certainly been rewarding. I mean, I won't say it's as financially rewarding as the peak of, you know, owning a company. But I love seeing that you found a bliss that you wanted to do and had this innate business talent that might not have been known about when you were, you know, people knew you were a great tour manager. But did they know you could run a staff of how many people you got on the payroll now? Oh, not as not enough. Not enough. If you're out there listening and you need a job, come on. No, I think we've got like 30 right now. It fluctuates a lot. Kind of, you know, summertime, we're up to like when we do Bonnaroo, just at Bonnaroo alone, we've got like 65 people out there. And then I've got 35, 40 back in Nashville. A lot of those are gig, gig hires are kind of, you know, temp workers and stuff.

54:16But, you know, when we get open Madison and we get the Franklin spot open, we're hopefully going to kind of be around the 60, 70 range for employees once we kind of get there. So how does chapter two feel? Oh, it feels slower than I want to go. Like I said, I'm, I'm, I'm like, let's go kind of guy. And like, and so this waiting kind of game and is is just difficult, but I'm excited for it. That's for sure. You know, it's kind of there's always that like, can I do this again? You know, like in the back of my mindset and but, you know, I'm confident now. I'm more confident than I was the first time we did it. And, you know, I know that the system's better. We've got better systems and I've got more people around me that I can lean on than we did before. It was me and me and my partner and swinging hammers in there and like, you know, basically in the corner crying at night. Like, are we going to fucking open this thing?

55:17But that's what does that's the character of every that. That's what being an entrepreneur is sometimes. You know, I mean, you don't it's tough sometimes because I we were the same way. We were there every day at Chago's like, I'll paint this. I'm out there pressure washing the front. You know, I had a woman come by and do you know when they're going to open? And I said, yeah, we're going to open. She's like, oh, you work here. And I go, she's like, what? What do you know? So I'm the director of operations like and you're out here pressure washing. And I'm like, that's what we do. I don't have a team of people that does all this stuff. This is you got to get it done. Yeah, I mean, I get that all the time at the shop. And like, I'll walk by somebody and someone like, give me that look. Like, are you are you that guy painted right there? I'm like, yeah. They're like, we didn't think you were a real guy or like we didn't think you'd be here. We thought you were on an island somewhere. I was like, lady, I wish I could afford an island. Oh, when he came into Chagos that night, he was sitting at the bar and he had a hat on that says daddy in the bartender. Her name is Keely. And and she's like, and I said, did you met Sean?

56:18And she said, yeah, we've I go, you know, he is. And she goes, I go, he's daddy of daddy's dogs. And you'd think she like the Brad Pitt walked in. She's like, oh, my God, your dad. Oh, my God. Like she was so excited, man. And it was you get that a lot. I do. And I love it every moment. That's like the you know, when I was touring and doing the band thing, you're behind the scenes a lot. And so you see kind of the lead singers. And now I'm the lead singer of this thing. And so it's nice to like get that. And like, I love when people are like, I love your hot dogs. Or, you know, when we were coming back from Vegas, there's a ton of people on that plane that were like went to the festival. And we're like, holy cow. Like, we didn't know you were out here. And this is awesome. We're going to find you get dogs and all that kind of stuff. And so, you know, brilliant marketing. What this means to me is just enough people haven't seen your your videos. Yeah. Because if you follow his videos, you know who Sean is. You know, Big Daddy McIver Mondays, McIver Mondays.

57:19It's sober October right now for me. So what? I got six days and then it's back back to making some good stuff. Well, I had you drink this. I gave you a fat bottom hop fizz. Yeah. What do you think of that? It's pretty good, man. It's a hoppy water. It's hoppy water. There's there's Sierra Nevada does one with different things. This is local. This is made right there in the nation. And they've created this new hop fizz water, which we're going to work with the giving kitchen on. We're going to have a Nashville restaurant radio hop fizz water. I've got a bunch of it here in the studio. I'm having everybody taste it, see what they think. We're trying to get as many placements as we can because this is going to help restaurant workers. And there's zero calories, zero anything in it. But it's a nice, clean, crisp flavor and it's in a tall boy can. So it's just kind of a nice little if you're doing sober October, this isn't available until November. But you can get it at the tap room right now. They have it on draft if you go to fat bottom. But this will be something that's coming out in November. So I'm just letting everybody taste it.

58:19They can. Yeah, it's delicious. I really like pretty good. Definitely like, you know, it's you guys were talking before with Stephanie. Stephanie. Yeah. And I totally being sober after I was just in Vegas and like, you know, you you're around it 24 seven all day. And so just, you know, being that guy in the corner with like the water bottle. This is like at least you kind of feel like I'm with the crew now. That's my everyday life. Yeah, my life is I drink coffee or like I love going to ascend because they have the liquid death waters. And I can drink a liquid death sparkling water while I'm out there. And I'm like, I feel like I have a tall boy in my hand. You pay nine dollars for a water and you're like, but at the same point, I can enjoy a concert and drink two or three of those. And I throw a lime in there. Oh, yeah. It's delicious. They have a the mango one is really good. I believe Chris has Chris has left his seat. He had to go get a tall boy, a hot fizz can make this part of the vernacular run here.

59:23Have a hot fizz, hot fizz. Can't let my boy Sean drink alone. Right. Well, it's the flavor. Everybody had one taste when he's like, man, that's delicious, man. That's got really good flavor. And if you go to a bar, you could sit at a bar and drink one of those. And it kind of looks like you're drinking a tall boy. And it kind of has that beer flavor, but it's just water. No big issue. A lot of people with the non-alcoholic beers is so I'm drinking a beer. I'm still getting the calories. Yeah, but I'm not getting anything else. It's like drinking decaf coffee or something. It's like I want the caffeine. That's why I drink beer. This is no cat. It's just kind of a nice little. You still have the feeling of drinking a beer. Yeah, I feel like the in a beer. I've had a few. They're not my jam, but they're still heavy. And I'm like, fuck, I'm full. These like I feel like you put these down. I was talking to Josh Buckley, who's the CEO over there. And they just do an amazing job with a lot of the stuff that they do over at Fat Bottom. But and they're going to let the cat of the bag.

01:00:26They're going to be we're going to be partnering with them on a lot of stuff because I love what they're doing. But I think I think they secretly created this so that they don't get drunk at work. Because you think if you go to a meeting with anybody over at Fat Bottom Brewery and you sit down, you're like, let's have a beer. And how many meetings do you have in a day? And if every meeting you got to drink a beer, you're like, I drank a six pack today, just having meetings at work. Well, now they can have one of these and it's here. Cheers. I'm just going to drink this thing. And you kind of get the same feeling of we're drinking our product here together. But I have no alcohol in this now. And everybody that was working there had a glass of this going at the same time. I'm like, I see why you guys are doing this. This cuts back a lot on the the drinking at work kind of situation. So we could talk to you all day long about everything. Let's talk. We might. But you're here today because you are a best of Nashville winner three times. He won three. He was snubbed by the writers this year, by the way.

01:01:28But that's OK, because you can only give so much love. Chris didn't think anything of you. But the readers. Hey, I gave him most inventive beer box slash bong last year, which is a fantastic thing. That is probably the best writers pick I can imagine. That's a great writers pick to do. We're going to get back into that conversation a minute how you guys choose those. But you won best hot dogs. Yep. This is all the readers. The readers are saying best hot dog. You have best late night eats. Late Night King put the ground on it. Late Night King. Now, here's the other king thing that I don't. I'm touched on this last year when you and you on for this sort of a thing. Best place for a romantic meal. How many years in a row? Three. Three years in a row. Best romantic restaurant, best place to have a romantic dinner. Let's talk about that. Because some would say Druzy and Dar or Bourbon Steak, which won best restaurant in both of those.

01:02:28Those are romantic places to take somebody. Yet Daddy's Dogs is the best. Let's talk about that win here because you do a big event. We do. Valentine's Day. We do and it's one of our favorite things to do every year. This year we're like upping it again. I'll tell you the details after this so I can't ruin it for everybody yet. But you're running out all of Geodes Park. Wow, that's pretty impressive. I wish we could go that big. $400,000 damage to the field. Let's get another new field. But it's just fun. There's so much pressure on Valentine's Day, I feel like, for a lot of people. Where are we going to go? I'm going to spend all this money at these five-star restaurants and stuff. So we kind of take that out of it and it's just fun. It's very low-key, but we get our servers in the tuxedo t-shirts. We have a band playing saxophone and keyboards and all that kind of stuff.

01:03:28We put a fire in the middle of our little tented area. We do something way different than what we normally do. We do tableside service. It's a coarsed-out meal. You've got appetizers and salad. You get to pick which dog you want off the menu. Then you get dessert at the end. It comes with a 40 and a champagne bucket and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, the 40 on ice. Classic. It's the champagne of beer. Is it high life? Tell me it's high life. Yeah, of course. That's a 40 of high life. That's beautiful. It's just something that we decided kind of at the end of COVID, when it was kind of wrapping up. Something to kind of come out of that swinging. It's the slowest time for our restaurant. It's outdoors and stuff. So how can we do something that's going to drive more traffic here and awareness, obviously.

01:04:28Then it just kind of compounded. The first year we kind of took a swing at winning best romantic dinner, and we did. Then I was like, well, now we've got to really up the game every year. Did you promote it? Hey, vote for us. Oh, yeah. We definitely promote it and do that. Sort of the other restaurants a lot of times. I think Margot, my buddy, is the chef over there. I think she just gave up because she's like, well, they're just going to keep winning this. And so they stopped advertising for that one. Well, I'll tell you, second place was Bourbon Steak by Michael Mina. And third place was Bastion. I mean, Bastion's I think best restaurant container for sure. Bastion's delicious. I mean, it's such an experience. I don't know how romantic. Maybe they've all got a crush on Josh or Lauren. So, yeah, so that makes it romantic for them. Maybe it's a thing. So one last thing that you don't get enough credit for, but talk about the community you built during COVID, you know, inviting people in the work you did to turn that parking lot into the place where people came together sometimes for the first time or the only time in six months.

01:05:41Yeah, I mean, you know, we were fortunate enough a little bit. Our setup is very COVID friendly. You know, there's no indoor seating. You don't really interact with anyone except through a window. And so that we had on our favor. And as it kind of progressed, you know, music shut down. All this kind of thing shut down. And, you know, those are my people. Like, that's where I cut my teeth and I learned how to kind of market and do these different things. Trial and error with these different bands and stuff. And so, you know, we wanted to be able to do something for them that could keep them afloat during everything. And so, you know, we ended up doing a thing. Any touring member that just showed me a laminate would eat for free until COVID was kind of over. And at least until things started opening back up. So that was one thing we did. And then, you know, it just kept dragging on. And so three, four months without any live music here, it was like, this is Music City.

01:06:43And so what can we do to change that, you know? How can we do it safely and all that kind of stuff? And so, you know, I got to thinking one day. And I think I just watched the Beatles documentary. And I was like at my shop and probably a little stoned and just looked at my, like, storage containers and was like, man, we could put a band up there. That'd be pretty cool. And I just drew on a napkin or whatever, like this little drawing of a guy on a stage over these containers. And I posted it on this tour website that I'm on called Bobnet. And I was like, could anybody do this? And I'm thinking about doing a drive-in kind of series with bands and whatnot. And Elite down off of Cohen Street, Elite Multimedia hit me up and was like, we could do it. Like, our guys are, like, chomping at the bit to do something. Like, you know, here's the price. If you can get there, we'll do this. And it was very low. It was like, OK, you know, he's basically like, this will pay my guys for the couple days.

01:07:46We're donating all the, like, equipment. So we did it. You know, and I talked to Tennessee Contractors Association, which is, like, right down the street from us, rents heavy equipment to get, like, generators and some lights and all that kind of stuff. And they donated those, too, which has been really cool. They've been an awesome neighbor in reality for us. They help us with a ton of stuff. And so then I started calling bands and I was like, hey, you know, no one's playing. Called my friend Cassidy Pope. She was probably one of the first ones I called. And, you know, we called Maddie and Tay. Laney Wilson opened it up for us. So we had some, like, huge names on this. And Laney hadn't, like, quite blown up yet, but you could see that she was going to for sure. Oh, yeah, I mean. You know, some of the old people I had toured with, Chris Allen and Adam Hambrick and Austin Jenks, you know, we just, we had these stars that, like, wanted to do it and they were willing to do it for free. And, you know, we, so then it kind of went out and we, you know, started promoting it.

01:08:50And, you know, most of the news stations in town picked it up. Rolling Stone picked it up, which was crazy. Time Magazine. So we got just a ton of, like, love from all those kind of things from that. And, you know, every night we were packed, like, you know, the night Maddie and Tay played, we were getting just phone call after phone call of, like, can you turn this music down? It's too loud. And we're just like, turn it up, you know? Or there's like, there's people blocking my driveway. And I was like, I can't do anything about that. You're not even supposed to go anywhere anyway. So I'm all down, like, grab a dog and, you know, walk across the street, sit. And so, yeah, it was a lot of fun. And it was something that, like, looking back, like, was, I think it changed our business, honestly. And I think, like, it was kind of the catapult for us as a company that kind of got us out of the nightlife scene only.

01:09:56And, like, you know, before that, mostly we were doing carts on the streets and Printers Alley and all that kind of stuff. And so that was all shut down. And so, like, not a lot of people knew our shop was even there. It was kind of our commissary kitchen. And so that really opened up a lot more eyes and a lot more just, you know, focus into that space than we had kind of done before. Well, I agree. And it was literally and spiritually nourishing at a time when the city needed that. And, you know, it nourished the musicians that wanted to play. And I remember the first time I went to some drive-by concert and just to hear live music for the first time in six months, it makes you tear up. Yeah. You were able to bring that to your fans. You were able to literally feed them, keep them safe. That's the best of forever for me. Thank you, man. Yeah, it was a it was a definite experience. I'll never forget for sure.

01:10:56I remember just standing up on stage like every night, pretty much crying and being like, thank you guys for showing up. Like, you know, getting a little emotional about it now just because, you know, it's a weird time. Like nobody knew what to do. And so it was like being able to do something and kind of with the blessing of the city and with the blessing of all these people around except for those people across the street. Yeah, except for that neighbor Kathy down the way. But, you know, it was it was fulfilling for me in a different kind of way than just like people being like, I love your hot dogs. You know, it was it was very like it was just a moving experience for sure. I love that man. That's why I love this guy. He's not just a big cuddly guy. He's also a local treasure. A hundred percent. I know. A hundred percent. And thank you so much for being here today. Of course. Thank you for having me. You heard us with Stephanie. You get to do the official acceptance speech. Yeah. And we're going to turn that over to you now.

01:11:56And I kind of say whatever you want to say. Best hot dog. You could do three of them if you want. Best hot dog, best late night eats and most romantic dinner. Hey, you know, well, thank you first for the Nashville scene. Want to thank the one and only me for working so hard. He's going Snoop Dogg on us. He's going Snoop Dogg. I love it. I'm gonna let you finish. Oh, OK. Like to thank me for me. Yeah, right. No. And, you know, love this city. I always say this to everybody. Nashville is still the land of opportunity. And you can come here with a dream. You can make it happen. If you work hard enough, you are good to people. You treat them right. They will treat you right and they will love you back. And, you know, if there's haters in your life, use that as the energy to prove them wrong because you will be able to do that in this town. And, you know, thank you again for everybody who voted.

01:12:56And we will see you this. February for Valentine's Day. There it is. Thank you so much, Sean, for joining us here today and for all that you do for the city. Thank you, man. I appreciate that. You're awesome. It means a lot. And we look forward to the scoop on the Valentine's this year so we can make our reservations early. For sure. Is that the thank you edition? Or is it? No, no, that's coming out tomorrow, right? No, we do that around Thanksgiving. Oh, it is? Yeah, I think my deadline is tomorrow. I can't remember. The thank you edition? It's hey, thanks. Oh, we give hey, thanks out for people that deserve to be recognized. Oh, no, I meant the the next issue after the best of. No, that is the best of right there. The one where you guys get where you get to say thanks. You did the ad in there. Yeah, we did a good little ad in there this year, I feel like. I think that one's already come out because this is two weeks ago.

01:13:57OK, yeah, I forget that this was two weeks ago. I know it's crazy. We try and do this like the day it comes out usually, but I was out town. It's my damn fault. Well, we also didn't plan it. I got a lot going on, man. But you know what? That's OK. That's what we do here. All right, Sean, thank you so much for coming by studio, too. I mean, this is I'm going to come in and do this in person. I'm an in-person guy. Zoom ain't my jam. You know, it's not my thing. I love it. All right. We're going to come back here in just a second. We're going to hear a word from our sponsors and we're going to come back with kind of the rest of the intro. I want to learn more about the readers pick the writers picks and kind of some of the different thoughts you had around making this episode. And we're going to finish up this episode here in just a moment. Be right back. Hey, guys, we are supported by Sharpies Bakery and we've been supported by Sharpies Bakery for the last year. And I tell you, I couldn't be more proud of this partnership. Guys, they're a locally owned and operated bakery right here in Nashville for the last 36 years.

01:14:58Yes, they deliver fresh baked bread daily to your restaurant's back door. And man, is it good. You want to know what kind of bread they make? Go check them out at SharpiesBakery.com. That's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S, bakery.com. So they have over 200 types of bread. And if you're wondering, well, hey, look, it's a special recipe that I like to use that, you know, we bake it in our house and it's just, it's a kind of a pain, but we like to do it. They can take your recipe and make that bread for you without any of the hassle, the mess, the labor. They'll just deliver it right to your door every single day. It is freshly baked. They love to give you a tour of their facility. Give Erin Mosso a call. Her number is 615-319-6453. You should do it now. What Chefs Want's story is incredibly unique. The owner, Ron Trenier, met with a bunch of chefs in Louisville back in the early 2000s and asked them one simple question. What do you want?

01:15:58And the chefs, they responded emphatically. We want deliveries on Sunday. We want to be able to split any item that you sell. We want a frictionless experience where we feel like we're being served. And so you know what he did? Something crazy. He did just that. So what Chefs Want is not only a company that's delivering fresh produce, fresh seafood, fresh custom cut meats, specialty items, dairy, gourmet, all of that seven days a week. They also offer 24-7 customer support. You want to call? You want to text? You want to email? You can talk to somebody 24-7. Get your delivery seven days a week. An amazing selection of products. That is what chefs want. So if you ever wonder why do they call it that? That's your reason. Check them out at whatchefswant.com. Hey, this is Jason Ellis with Nashville Super Source. We're so proud to be a sponsor for Nashville Restaurant Radio.

01:17:00We would love the opportunity to discuss your chemical and dish machine program with you. If you have any needs or any questions about your current program, opening a new restaurant or just need a double set of eyes on that, we'd love the opportunity to help you with that. My number is 770-337-1143. We don't do any contracts, no minimums, weekly service to make sure that all your equipment is functioning properly. Make sure you have everything that you need. Again, my name is Jason Ellis, 770-337-1143. All right, welcome back to the best of Nashville episode. I'm joined here with Chris Chamberlain. You seem to be enjoying your Hop Fizz from Fat Bottom Brewery. Unofficially brought to you by Hop Fizz. It is sparkling water with hops and natural flavors, which I am really impressed by. And I'm not just saying that because you handed it to me and said, drink this. Well, you went and got it yourself. I did. I mean, but essentially and directly, I said that I am not afraid of a morning beer.

01:18:02And this is a much better idea than a morning. It really it's it's doing it for me. I like this. It's it's first time I had it. I was nervous because they told he came in here and told me about it. And I was like, that's not that's a great option for me as a non-drinker. Then I went and had it and I was like, OK, I get behind this. This is really delicious. It's kind of interesting that they list Brewers Yeast as one of the ingredients there because it's more than just hops. I mean, if it was just hoppy water, it would taste like bong water, you know. But this tastes like a nice, lightly hopped light beer with no alcohol. So but it's a clear water with no calories. Listen, I'm getting into my pitch here. It's a light beer. It's a light beer. It's a light hoppy fizzy water. It's delicious. Available in November through your distributor. I got to find out who the exact distributor is. I want to say that will make it a lot easier for people to find it. They want to add it to their restaurants. More information coming soon. I'm just letting everybody try it for now and building up a wife loves it.

01:19:04I love it. I've yet to have somebody say, I don't like it. I don't like it. My 10 year old actually did not like it. That's probably a good thing. Dad, can I try that? I'm like, sure. He's like, that's disgusting. I'm like, good. I'm glad you don't like that. Well, it's better than daddy. Can I try an IPA next? He's tried a non-alcoholic IPA one time just to, you know, kids want to try stuff. I'm like, you want to try this? It's non-alcoholic. You can try it. And he didn't like that. That is the most disgusting thing ever. It was like a Becks non-alcoholic or something. And he was like, yeah, that's the worst tasting I've ever had in my life. I'm like, good. You keep that till you're 21. It's kind of like that old King of the Hill episode where Hank tries to keep Bobby from smoking him by making him smoke the whole pack. Bobby, I just wish someone had had the parenting skills to do this for me when I was younger. That's a pretty good impression right there. You're hot boxing it, Bobby.

01:20:04Bobby's like, this is fantastic. This is not working like I thought it would. All right. Well, what a fun episode today. I thought we had some really great conversations here. Some best of Nashville winners. We missed a ton of people. We have, there's so many winners. We will have them on throughout the year. We'll ask them about their best of Nashville wins. Again, if you are operating now, you are a winner to me. Seriously. Well, I was looking over the list. I looked over the list today, probably as intently as I have, and there's a lot of great options in Nashville. A lot of these winners did a really great job. We were talking before our first guest came in about writers picks versus the readers picks. I always like to go through where you feel like the readers got it wrong, where you kind of feel like they missed the mark. Well, again, you know, the readers is to a great degree of popularity contest. And, you know, being popular is a way to win.

01:21:06You know, it's good for your restaurant. It's good for your perception in the community. And so I won't say they absolutely got it wrong because it might have been. I mean, daddy's is as most romantic meal. The people have spoken. Yeah, I'm I got to go with it. I got to try it. But yeah, I mean, they luckily we've got some pretty educated readers at the scene. Sometimes I don't like them letting people know what the best bar in town is because they picked Bar Sovereign and I love Bar Sovereign. I just don't want everybody to know about it. That's a true thing. Second place Chopper Tiki and third place, the Fox Bar and Cocktail Club. All good choices. I think they crushed that one. Best bagel, proper bagel, best bakery, dozen. Yeah, anything Claire does, I'm going to be. Yeah, no, it's good stuff. Now, best barbecue. At least barbecue. Multiple years in a row, they've won that. And second place, Martin's Barbecue Joint. Third place, Honeyfire Barbecue in Bellevue.

01:22:08And in Fifth and Broad now, too. Oh, they opened a Honeyfire in Fifth and Broad? They did. I didn't even know that. Yeah, they are. They're over on the side of the building that's got princes. So they're around the corner from princes. Best beer selection, Vinyl Tap. I mean, it's the whole experience. I don't know if that's the best beer collection or selection, but the whole experience is fantastic. I mean, it's tough to beat what what people like 12 South like Will's doing at 12 South or what people like Austin are doing at Melrose. But again, people's choice. I'm behind it. What about best breakfast? What do you think the best breakfast is in town? I'm not a big breakfast guy. My best breakfast is the one I make usually because I'm working in the morning. You know, that's I got to be close to home for that. But did we did the readers pick Loveless? The readers picked Loveless.

01:23:08Loveless. So they clearly have a lot of time on their hands to make the schlep out there. Or it's just institutional memory. That's a mile and a half from my front door. It's my local place. I can never get in. So it's kind of a tourist trap to me. The Loveless Cafe had the best breakfast 15 years ago. Well, how about the grab and go at the Loveless that's at the gas station? Yeah, the Shell station next door is a great option. Don't tell people. That's one of those things. Like, don't tell people about that, because then that lines. I'm not ragging on the Loveless biscuits. I mean, they're or the chicken. So but yeah, the experience is I don't have time to do an hour trip, you know, back and forth to get that. One that I really was impressed that that national scene readers were willing to make the tough call was Best Sandwich Shop. Because there are some fantastic options out there. I'm I'm very pleased they gave it to LaVon at Fat Belly. His sandwiches are. Yeah. Cravable over the top. Put you to put you to bed.

01:24:09I'm going to know what the top three are on Mitchell and Bills. I mean, Mitchell Deli and Bill Sandwich Shop. But that is that is a tough call. I'm going to go one more. And I love all. I mean, gosh, Mitchell Deli, Bill Sandwich Palace and Fat Belly are amazing, but I got to give it to somebody else. And the winner is East Side Bond Me. It is, you know, I think that those bond me sandwiches, Gracie's Buns, like those are that is the best sandwich I've ever eaten. The fried egg bond me to me is every single thing I want is that crispy bread. They've got the fresh cilantro, the egg, the runny egg, and then the the carrots. It's spicy. It has like the perfect level of spice. The textures, all of it together is like this. And then the there's so every bond me I have is the best. And being creative enough to have specials, you know, where it's Giffords Bologna instead of instead of pate.

01:25:14I mean, that that's a sign that these two lovely people from California get Nashville. They oh, man, do they ever. And what they're doing at the wash, too. But I mean, like that East Side Bond Me, I think no disrespect to the others because it is like one in one a one b one. I mean, there's you can't go wrong any one of those. But there's something special about East Side Bond Me to me that is just magical. And I knew they'd made it when just all the best chefs in town were lining up to want to get their special sandwich on the menu. I mean, that's a sign of acceptance from a palate that I trust a lot more than mine. Yeah, well, they did their their weekly special bond me. And you've got Trevor and Sean Brock and Harant and all these people with Josh Hobbiger. These are all people that want to learn to make their own bond me. It's like, yeah, that's that's legit. It's a thing I got to go with. I do love roast peppers. One of my favorite margaritas in town was surprised to see Taco Mama just because it's such a small little place that's out of the way.

01:26:20But they do their seasonal margaritas. They do a watermelon, they do a blood orange, and they are really invested in the margaritas. And I think that's great for a little taco shop. Oh, man. Provide that. And I think they also finish like second and best service, which was they must they must have a really good following because it's pretty much fast casual. We're going to do one more guest real quick. Is that OK? I can do that to be fast. I know you got to go. We're going to do this one. I'm going to call this person. Oh, she didn't answer. This person is very special and she was very busy this morning and could not come in. We're going to hope we can get her. No, she's not answering. She said, call me. We're going to bring Caroline on because Nikki's one. Let's keep going. We'll keep going until she. All right. So one's where I think the readers didn't come into agreement with me personally.

01:27:25I'm not going to say they missed the mark. I love me some Las Palmas. You know, when I'm looking for the multiple combinations of beans, cheese and meat, I think a number 13 is a number 13 at just about every restaurant. Yep. And I like a number 13 number 12 guy. But I went and picked up from my still a video yesterday. Oh, dude. And I don't see how that can't be number one on anybody's list. It was fantastic. And I'm sitting there in my house going to make tacos for myself and my girlfriend. And like, I'm out of tortillas. I could drive nine minutes to Publix. I could drive 11 minutes to my still a video. Oh, that's a no brainer. Got the side dishes, got the lard flour tortillas that you can see through. That's how beautifully lardy they are. We have a very special guest on the on the call on the phone right now. This is the best of Nashville winner for best holiday pop up St. Nicky's and our co-host here on the show.

01:28:31Caroline Gals and how you doing? Hi, guys. How's it going? I was promised I'd get to see you in person, so I'm wholly disappointed. Well, I appreciate you keeping my seat warm today. That he is. And he's doing a fantastic job, by the way. I always love it when Chris is in studio. I have no doubt. Congratulations on your best of Nashville. And you guys work so hard on St. Nicky's. And it is such a great job. You get to be the guest today. We're literally doing this. I love that. Well, thank you so much. We were so thrilled to be named best Christmas pop up and to be acknowledged for St. Nicky's. And it's perfect timing because St. Nicky's season is just around the corner. We've been furiously planning for the last really for the last few months. But especially in the last month, we've we've been going into hyperdrive planning and planning.

01:29:31And we have a few special surprises this year. Anything you can let us in on? Actually, I can. Maybe this is mild breaking news. But we are, you know, making St. Nicky's even bigger and better this year. And we are going to be hosting in addition to St. Nicky's be kind of regular experience at the restaurant. We will be adding a pop up bar called Tropical Tidings, which is going to have Santa on vacation in Hawaii vibe. It's going to be on our patio. We are heating the patio and this will be kind of its own Christmas experience separate from St. Nicky's. And we'll have a special menu of Tiki drinks, Christmas themed Tiki drinks and tropical vibes in the middle of December. So for people who are just wanting to grab a cocktail or maybe if you have already had dinner at St. Nicky's and you want to keep the party going and have a drink afterwards or just, you know, have another Christmas experience, you can head out to the patio for Tropical Tidings.

01:30:41We're very excited about that. So will that be something that people can make reservations for or is Tropical Tidings a drop in only? It is drop in only. Just like St. Nicky's, everything is going to be first come first serve. We actually this year are also going to be opening an hour earlier. Instead of four, we're going to be opening at three. So people who want to kind of beat the beat the line and beat the rush can make plans to join us on the early side this year. That's great news for us early bird old folks. Yes, and you know, Chris, of course, I mean, just always shoot me a text and we can sneak you in. So I just have to be home in time for Matlock. If you, I'm gonna think about growing my beard out and just kind of hanging out there and be like, this is Santa Claus is here. Okay. Pretend like I'm in Hawaii. That sounds lovely. You're very welcome. You could you could get the bartend if you want. Hey, oh, I like that.

01:31:42Still got your ABC card? Of course I have an ABC card. You kidding me? I think so. So I caught Brandon like wandering around the aquarium section at PetSmart and it turns out he was planning his Feast of Seven Fishes. Oh really? That's not true. Well we'll have to hit you up for some recipes this year. What do you do with a beta? What do you do with a goldfish? Is that what I was going to say? This goldfish is going to be wonderful. So the Feast of the Seven Fishes is something you guys do there at NICU's, right? Well, so yes, the Feast of the Seven Fishes is something that we have done historically, but I'm very sorry to say we will not be doing Feast of the Seven Fishes this year. With kind of adding on the Tropical Tidings Tiki Bar and ramping up the existing St. Nicky's experience to make that even bigger and better.

01:32:44We just really wanted our, it's such a crazy time of year for our team. We wanted everybody to be able to take a little break this year. So we are not doing Feast of the Seven Fishes, I'm sorry to say. But if anybody needs some Feast of the Seven Fishes tips, advice, you want to do your own Feast of the Seven Fishes maybe for a special event. Hit us up and you know, Tony's always available for private chef jigs. So I thought season two of The Bear episode six was Feast of the Seven Fishes. I thought that you're still triggered from that you're not doing it. I hated it so much that I said Seven Fishes is cancelled forever. This is well documented on the show, how much she did not like it. Did you watch The Bear, Chris? I did. And yeah, that was that was a stop every five minutes and take a breath episode watching that. Now, overall, are you, Caroline did not like the, we got to do this, Caroline, real fast. Caroline did not like it. I loved it. Are you team Caroline or team Brandon? I don't think I was too close to it to not like it.

01:33:46I think if you lived it, it could be very triggering. So I loved the storytelling. I loved that I was able to share some of the inside baseball stuff with my girlfriend who hasn't been connected with restaurants in a long time. We still call each other Jeff around the kitchen now. Yes. So you're OK. So he liked it. I liked it. But again, it didn't trigger me. Makes sense. Well, Caroline, we are actually doing active acceptance speeches. So kind of like a Gordon Food Service final thought. But we are announcing your winning of Best Holiday Pop-Up. You get to give an acceptance speech and we'll have music playing in the background for you. If you talk too long, we'll ramp it up on you. But go ahead. I'll keep it brief and I'll just say thank you to the Nashville scene and especially to Ashley Brantley, who wrote the award.

01:34:49She's the queen of the nations. She is the queen of the nations. The perfect title for her. We are so flattered and it feels so great to be acknowledged. We put a lot of hard work and a lot of love into Saint Nicky's and it is our favorite time of year. And we think it's so much fun. So thank you to everyone who's supported it over the years. And if you haven't been, please make plans to come see us this year because I'm just going to go out and say it is the best Christmas pop-up in town. And you got to get over here. So thank you. Beautiful. Thank you. Caroline, it's fun having you as a guest on the show. I know. I know. Well, I'll catch you in person sooner than later. How about tomorrow? Thanks again for filling in for me today. I appreciate it. I'm glad to do it. And let me put a plug out there for another one of my reader's picks. If you're a writer's picks, if you want to do your own Feast of Seven Fishes. Well, Caroline, give us the okay to say it would be fine just to go to spread in Germantown and get seven different 10 fishes and mussels.

01:35:55Oh, yeah, absolutely. And some of Chad's good bread and just smear it and call it a year. I think that sounds great. And here's the thing. As someone who's done seven fishes, not only in the restaurant, but we've done it at home a ton and with family. It is so much work. So if you can just pop the top off a 10 fish and make that six of the seven. That sounds like a great plan to me. Excellent. We'll go see Chad and Alexis over there and tell them we sent you. You need to come back with seven good, seven good tens. Definitely. Caroline, thank you so much for joining us and we will see you very soon. Absolutely. You guys have a good one. Can't wait to hear the episode. All right. Bye bye. See you, Caroline. Caroline Galzin. Can I give my own plug? Absolutely. Can I ask you what I can do on my show? Absolutely. We are we are preparing rapidly for Mary Bowles. You know, we change Mayor Bowl every year.

01:36:55After Black Friday, we reopen as Mary Bowles. Deck the entire house out. It's a whole holiday experience. It's a Brentwood holiday tradition. I'm trying to keep my cynical writer smug look off my face because I'm the one that has to write the roundup of all the holiday pop ups and it's gone from five of them to 50 of them. Well, we've done this every single year for the past 15 years. We were way ahead of the curve. We deck the entire house out, do the whole thing. But we just last year actually designated a Christmas pop up because we weren't on any of those lists. But we know we don't really market to outside of Brentwood. We're really a neighborhood restaurant. So if you want the local kind of where the locals eat during that time and the local business come to do their events and we do lots of events, all the private dining rooms in there. So a lot of Christmas parties, a lot of holiday events. But the house is beautiful. And every Sunday in the month, we do brunch with Santa.

01:37:57We actually have Santa Claus comes to Maribol. The Santa Claus. I don't know if you know he's all over, but he is actually in Brentwood. Going to say you've only got a month to grow that beard out. Well, he's been growing it out. It's there for me. No, but we actually have Santa Claus come in. And so you can sit down and take your picture with Santa on Sundays at Maribol in the month of December. Pretty cool. Excellent. That sounds like a great way to get out of the house and not not do the cooking, but keep your family happy. Well, I think I don't think a lot of people realize what brunch is like at Maribol. I'll give myself another plug. It's a buffet. So there's a prime rib carving station. We have two action stations where we do omelets. There's crepes to order. We do smoked salmon. And then, of course, creme brulee, French toast, which is the all time favorite sausage and bacon and biscuits and gravy. And then we do also fried chicken and collard greens and black eyed peas and hash brown casserole and macaroni and cheese. We do some sort of it. We have a pasta station where you can make your own pasta. We do eggs Benedict station. All of these are action stations that are happening live.

01:38:58You can get eggs Benedict to order with whatever sausage. It's a whole choose your eggs Benedict. That's insane. All of this happens at one time and it's thirty seven ninety nine. All you can eat that we have a whole we do a chocolate fountain with much with marshmallows and strawberries and blackberry cobbler and peach cobbler and creme brulee and pastries and chocolate decadence cake. The whole bar is transformed into a big dessert dream. So you come in and you can have all the primary if you want all the she crab bisque you want all the omelets. We do a Belgian waffles to order pancakes to order. They said crepes to order. All of that stuff is all in one shot. And then we do bottles of champagne for like 20 bucks. So you're saying fast on Saturday. It marbles on Sunday. Yes. But me and it's a little it's a local experience. We don't have all the bachelorette parties and you know, we serve about 500 people on Sundays. It's a busy day over there for brunch. But in the holiday season with Santa there and he's walking around seeing the kids. It's a lot. It's just it's a whole fun. It's very wholesome. I'm feeling I'm feeling a nice warm hug.

01:39:59It is a nice warm hug in the mansion. You get to show up and it's a lot of fun. So there's my plug for my own holiday pop up at St. Nicky's. I mean there there's is fantastic. I mean there's is a full on it's neat. I went last year and I was like, this is really cool. I'll see you there at 301. Yeah, seriously. All right. What do we do? We were talking you were talking about we were talking about snubs. I know it's it's we got to get out of here. So I only had you for X amount of time and now we're over our time limit. Anything we missed anything you want to talk about? No, I just encourage people, you know, this will live online forever. So you'll be able to read the best of whenever you're thinking of where do I want to go to dinner tonight? Where do I want a new bar? I want to check out. We consider this a resource and it's not just the writers picks. You can listen to what the readers say. You'll find you'll find things outside of your neighborhood outside of your comfort zone. And and that's what discovering the whole dining community in Nashville is about. So we like to think of it as a resource and we thank all y'all that took the time to vote that patronize our our winners and give them a congratulations for winning.

01:41:05So thanks for putting this together so we could spotlight a few of them. Well, it's our absolute pleasure. We'll do it again next year and hopefully we'll see some more of you here in the studio. I love your questions. I love your energy. Thank you for being here so much because thank you for all the work you do for all the local restaurants in town and sharing all of your knowledge and building up this community. You are really an amazing guy and I just appreciate everything you do for this industry. Thank you for that. And if I if I go to the buffet at Mary Bulls, you'll probably see a lot more of me the next time just because there will be a lot more of me. Love to have you man anytime. All right. Thank you guys for listening and thank you for voting out there. The readers picks. Thank you all the writers for the scene. Thank you for the scene for having Chris come in here. I don't know if you asked him or not, but thank you for the scene for putting this out. I'll run it by legal. That has to happen sometimes, believe it or not. We hope that you guys are being safe out there. Love you guys. Bye.