The Influencers Guide to The Best of Nashville 2021

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03:09Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to the Influencers Guide to the Best of Nashville 2021 Nashville Scene episode. This is not sponsored by the Nashville Scene. It has a loose affiliation with the Nashville Scene only because they host the best of Nashville. And the idea here is I went to go post my votes because I love voting in this because I love voting for my friends in the best restaurants here in town. And the best podcast in town, which I mean, I think is ours, but I'm biased. So I'm curious to ask people today what their favorite podcast is. I love being turned on a new podcast. So do you know of a really cool local Nashville podcast? Let us know. Let's talk about it here today. Also, Jen Ichikawa here right here with me. Hi. Jen is going to be manning the computer. She's going to be manning all of the comments. So if you're on there, give us a comment.

04:10Let us know that you're here. Say hi. We would love to have you come in our comments. So what we're going to do is we're going to bring on your biggest influencers in the city and they're going to tell us their favorite stuff. So if you don't know who Nashville food fan is, you're going to get to meet Kate Davis today. If you don't know who the Moody Foodie is, we're all going to meet the Moody Foodie. If you don't know who Wicked Tasty is, Nashville House Mom, we've got it. We've got a pretty fun show today. Yeah, it's a good lineup. Yeah. First off, we're going to jump right into the episode with a good friend of ours who is doing a big pop up this week. And I wanted to get his take on this. Nathan Gifford of Gifford's Bacon is right here. There he is. Nathan, what's up, man? What's going on, guys? Thanks for having me. Well, it's an honor. I'm stoked. Yeah, man. So this is exciting. We're talking about the best of Nashville and your favorite things.

05:12And I was just talking to you on the other day about what you've got going on. Why don't we tell our listeners about your sandwich pop up this Saturday? I am super stoked. This is like a project that I've been thinking about for a long time and I am very, very excited to get going. So we are up. This is my new venture. My new baby is called the People's Champ. It's a sandwich pop up. It starts this Saturday. We're going to be slinging one of my favorite sandwiches starting at ten thirty to three thirty at the bacon shop at the bacon compound in East Nashville. So I'm super stoked. It's our it's our first day. So if you want to be a part of the first day of of the People's Champ, this Saturday is your chance to do that. So tell us how this got going. I mean, you're you're one of those people. I love your spontaneity because you're the bacon man.

06:14And then you just like wake up one day and go, hey, I'm going to invite a bunch of people out to the bacon shop. We're going to throw a party. We're going to sell bacon. We're going to make paté and then we're going to bring our friends East Side Bond me out. They're going to make some stuff. We're going to give you free beer. Let's just have a party. And then you do that and it just takes off. And now you say, it's Saturday. I want to do a sandwich pop up. I've got a new thing called the People's Champ. How does this begin? How did you get this idea? Well, I tell you, it actually started 25 years ago. I don't know if your your reader or your listeners or your viewers can see this. Let me see. Yeah. So there is there is a oh, there she is. Yeah, I can't. I don't know the way to do it. I'm going to put you this way and make you a screen really big. Yeah. So there's a sandwich. There's a there's a devil girl eating a sandwich and there's Dukes mayonnaise.

07:15That's actually it's actually another it's Dukes mayonnaise, tomato lettuce. Like like Dukes mayonnaise, the hat. So one could say that this this project started 25 years ago with my love of sandwiches so much that I got one tattooed on me. So you can almost make the assumption that I'm kind of from the future. And I'm traveling today. You're welcome. And so I just but in all seriousness, I mean, it's it's I, you know, who doesn't love a good sandwich? And so with the you know, with bacon, I love making bacon. And obviously, it's a dream job. And I can't believe all the great things that are happening to me because of the bacon company. When you make bacon, you strive to do the same. You want the conditions and the product to be the same every day.

08:16Right. That's what you're really shooting for. So you're you're really just trying the consistency of making bacon day after day. So we we kind of we entertain ourselves by making different sandwiches at the shop all the time or making, you know, lunch for ourselves all the time. And it's kind of born out of that. Just, you know, I think that people would like these sandwiches and we're going to give it a whirl. So the people's champ was born and Saturday, this Saturday, we're going to give it a whirl. Yeah, that's it. So it does seem spontaneous. However, the sandwiches have been on my mind for a very long time. Well, Nathan, ten thirty to three thirty. Is that what time you said ten thirty to three thirty or until we sell out? Oh, here's the other thing. I'm making it just start this thing together in the parking lot of the of the bacon shop.

09:18We're going to make 50 sandwiches and then I'm calling it a day because I frankly don't want to work that hard. Our buddy Rick Carr says, where did you get your start? Where did you know? I started in my garage, Rick. But then very shortly afterwards, after we got going, I went into Nick's barbecue. They were kind enough to allow me to make bacon at their USDA facility. And so Rick Carr and Rick Moore really were instrumental in the beginning chapters of Giffords bacon. Yeah. Well, so, Nathan, thank you so much for showing up today. Thank you so much for showing up. Today's show is called The Influencers Guide to the Best of Nashville. I'm going to put you on the spot right now because you got a lot of friends out there. I want to know what your favorites are. I'm just going to jump in.

10:18We got a bunch of categories. I'm going to ask you a few questions. You can answer them truthfully or politically. We prefer truthfully. Yeah, I'm not very versed in politics. So I probably will probably just be honest. Yeah. All right. Barbecue. Barbecue. Best barbecue in Nashville. Who are you voting for? Well, I'll start by saying this. Nashville is home to my favorite chefs in the world. It is my favorite city in the world. I think everybody does a really great job. Do you smell the political statement here? It is, man. I think everybody knows. It's a big city, but it's a small community. And we're all just kind of looking out for each other. You know what I'm most excited about, though? Your bacon or your sandwich pop-up? I'm most excited about this bacon company and the sandwich company. I am excited about all the pop-ups that happen around town.

11:21And there is one that I haven't admittedly haven't tried yet, but I really am very excited to try. It's at the Patterson House. It's a pop-up called Kisser. We went. How was it? Was it good? It was awesome. It was very cool. Japanese barbecue. Yeah, it's one that I want to try that every Sunday I try to get to and then I have to, something pops up. Unintended. Yeah. Very nice. I'm going to make it soon. And my boy down the street, I got to represent East Nashville with Bill at Shotgun Willie's. Coming from Texas to Nashville, I'm very sort of play favorites to Texas barbecue. And Bill over at Shotgun Willie's does a great job. But also, you know, I mean, so there you go. I love their barbecue. All right. So best barbecue at Shotgun Willie's.

12:21What about best brunch? Can you throw your name in for best brunch? You know, that's a tough one because, you know, I love brunch. I don't like working brunch. I used to work brunch. I was a chef and I worked. I worked 174 brunches in a row without a day off. Where did you do that? At various restaurants throughout my life. Which one would you say is the best? You know, I'm a particular fan of, that's tough. See, I'm going to get in trouble. I know. It's okay. I like the Marsh House's brunch a lot. That's a good one. Yeah, that's a good one. All right. So we're going to pick the Marsh House. If you haven't been to the Marsh House, you need to check it out. Best hamburger. That's the one I got in trouble for.

13:23So, okay. When Giffers Bacon was taking off, you know, I would be on social media and I would, before the bacon company, I could literally say anything and nobody cared, right? I don't know if people care that much right now, but the day I found out words mean something on social media is when I was at a pop-up and I was eating a hamburger, and honestly I can't remember the name of the pop-up because it was so long ago, but I was like, this is the best hamburger I ever ate. And so I went directly to social media and said, this is the best hamburger I ever ate and if you don't come here, every other hamburger is terrible compared to this hamburger. And then I had 75 people text me immediately and say, hey man, carry your bacon on a hamburger. What are you doing? And so I immediately took that down so that I don't mind giving out recommendations, but the hamburgers still is a little bit painful.

14:25So when I hear the best hamburger, they're all good. Listen, I'll tell you what, and you can tell me which restaurant that is. I love a good smash burger, like a flat top smash it. Like I don't like you babies. Dude, I got to tell you, I went to Hugh Babies two days ago and I'm supposed to stay off the cheeseburgers a little bit, but I snuck in there real quick and had a cheeseburger with those little stringy french fries and it was so good. And you know what, I'll say Hugh Babies because they don't even carry my bacon. So there, there's that. You can't say nothing. Because they don't even carry my bacon. Nathan, I've got to say, Dan Burkhardt who will be on the show in just a little bit said Kisser will be at the East Nashville Farmers Market next Tuesday. So if you can't make it to the Patterson House, Kisser will be at the East Nashville Farmers Market next Tuesday. Good to know. I will probably be there.

15:27There you go. And if you're watching right now, we would love to hear your comments. So as we go through these, as we're asking what the best these are, if you have your favorites, feel free to jump in the comments. Jenny Chicala is right here. She is on the comments. She's going to be messaging you back, putting them up on the screen. We want to give you the shout outs. We're trying to inform the general public, anybody who hasn't been able to go eat all these places, where the best in Nashville is right now. Alright, Nathan Gifford, I'm going to put you on the hot seat. I got five places. You're going to know three of them. I am? Best chef. I should never have came on here, man. I'd get a dip in the bacon sales for sure. Best chef, huh? Best chef. So give me three chefs. You don't have to give me the best chef. Give me three chefs who you think are amazing that could be potentially a best chef candidate. Okay, that's better. So immediately I got them.

16:28I got Chris Calder from Beginner's Luck pop-up. He was a new South chef, and then he left there to start his own business, which is phenomenal. They carry my bacon, but I'm telling you, even if they didn't carry my bacon, I would be like, dude, you should go eat there, because I'm not that guy anyway, man, right? I'm not going to be like, you should eat there, and they're like, coincidentally, all these places carry my bacon. Half of them don't. They should, but whatever. Beginner's Luck is pretty sweet. Chris Calder, great chef. You know what I like about him? He's young, but he's got it together, and he's like early 20s still, and he just feels seasoned. He feels like he's going to be a great... He's going to set it on fire. He's going to come on the show. I just messaged him the other day. He's going to come on the show. Probably going to be on our first episode of The Roundup, which hopefully will be coming at you real soon. I'll start promoting that next week if we can get it on there next week.

17:28We're really excited about Beginner's Luck, too. Three chefs. I'm going to say this next, Jeff, and people are going to be like, of course that's what you said, but not for the reasons, probably, that people are going to think. You know what I'm going to say? I'm guessing. Go ahead. Okay, so Sean Brock. Okay. Now, obviously, right? Obviously. But I'm not saying Sean Brock because I need to be associated with Sean Brock. You know what, man? You know what? I've gotten to know Sean a little bit more. Sorry, my bad. I'm a professional. I've gotten to know Sean a little bit more over the past year, and I've got to tell you, man, he's just a nice guy. He's a nice guy. He's really talented. And people, sometimes when they get on Netflix and they get this and they get that, and you get that, and then you go hang out with them, and you're like, you're not that good. You just got a good whatever. He's legit that good.

18:29He's legit that good. And he's legit a nice guy. And he deserves everything good that happens to him. So put me down. I'm a fan. I'm a fan of him as a person. I think you're going to hear a lot more of that when our next guest, Nashville Food Fan, comes on. I saw her post about the Continent was one of the best meals she's ever had. I know we're going to get into that. We have two more minutes with you, Nathan, and then we're going to jump in with Miss Kate Davis. Who's your third chef? Well, I mean, I don't know, man. I always give Brian Weaver a shout out because you know why I like Brian Weaver? It's because he could be in the weeds at 6 o'clock on a Friday night, and that dude doesn't get above a whisper, and he always will take time to come talk to you for a second. He's so polite. It's a toss-up between him and Baxter at the Catbird Seat because Baxter has the same attitude. Baxter's the same guy. Like, they're just so calm.

19:29And I'm like, dude, why aren't you freaking out? And they're like, you know, like, super him and Baxter. Brian Weaver and Baxter, let me tell you, could possibly be one of the calmest conversations that ever happened. I said that about Josh Habegger before because he's probably my vote. Josh Habegger. So the end. Yeah, so they're cut off. They're cut from the same plot, probably. They're very controlled and very calm, and that's pretty cool because I'm not so much. All right. So last question. Best restaurant. You can give a top three again if you like, but. Best restaurant. Let me think here for a second. I don't know. That's tough because they're all really good in their own ways, but. There are bad restaurants, listen. I'm not trying to be an asshole, but.

20:29There are bad restaurants. I don't know, man. People give it their best shot. You know, I would say. Shakey's Pizza. Dude, Shakey's Pizza. Shakey's Pizza. Shakey's Pizza, Western Sizzling. Ryan's Steakhouse. I wish there was a Western Sizzling here so bad. Maybe there is and I don't know about it. I don't know. We'll let you off the hot seat because we're going to go ahead and jump in with Miss Kate Davis. Nashville food fan is waiting in the wings. She's going to jump on at 420. Nathan Gifford is doing a sandwich pop-up this Saturday. This Saturday. At the Bacon Barn. You should go. At the Bacon Barn. It's never been called a Bacon Barn before. The Soutland Tiffle, Gifford's Bacon, Straightway Avenue in East Nashville, 1030 to 330. Come hang out with me. Peace. People's Champ. Adios.

21:29See you buddy. Alright, Nathan Gifford. Thank you for joining the show. Hey, look, there we are again. There we are. Thank you for watching. If you're watching out there, say give us some heads up. Let us know you're there. What's up, Corey Coleman? So excited to see you. Jennifer Fuller, Matthew. We've got all kinds of amazing people watching. We'd love to hear you jump in. We'd like to hear your take. And now we're going to bring in one of our favorites. You all know her. You love her. Nashville food fan, Miss Kate Davis. How you doing? I'm good. How are you guys? Thanks for having me on. Thanks for being here. So I know you are like such a busy, busy person. You're moving around. If you guys don't know Kate Davis, she did a full episode with us on Nashville Restaurant Radio. Maybe a little while back. I don't know exactly how long ago it was, but we had so much fun talking. We did. I could have, I mean, we could have talked for hours and hours and it was very much, I think, in the midst of the heat of pandemic year one, which I feel like we're on pandemic year eight right now.

22:37But the fact that we had that much to talk about in the food and drink realm when I had not been out and about in a very long time, it really did make me miss the days of sort of being out and about willy nilly without having to think so much about it. So I look forward to those times again. I know you've just recently, is it recently you've started a new job? Yes, I am now the chief, in addition to being a very part-time Instagrammer, I am a full-time in the non-profit world now. I'm working for the YWCA of Nashville and Middle Tennessee, which has nothing to do with the YMCA, which a lot of people think. We've been in Nashville for over 100 years and we are a major provider of domestic violence services as well as a number of other programs like Dress for Success here in Nashville and Girls Inc. And it's an exciting new part of my career.

23:37That's awesome, I love that. Yeah, I feel really good about going to work there every day. I love that. And I love hearing Nathan Gifford set me up for some very friendly territory. Naming one of my best of Nashville picks, which of course you already guessed. So yeah, I'm feeling like I'm in a safe space to share my favorites without judgment. Yes. So I saw you put on your Instagram not long ago that you had dinner at the Continental and you said this is the best meal I've ever had in my life. And I was like wow. It was the most fun I've ever had. Certainly the most fun at fine dining, but it might have just been the most entertained I've ever been by food. And I, my expectations could not have been higher. I mean, Sean, you know, Sean is my favorite chef in town. He's also a very, very close friend, which it's not fair to say that he's my favorite chef without saying how close of a friend he is because it's true. It's, it's, I couldn't be more loyal to him as a person, but I also don't blow smoke.

24:49I mean, my favorite restaurant in town is City House. He knows that. Everybody knows that. I get made fun of for it on Instagram all the time because you know, my favorite meal at City House is probably the meal I measure all others up to. And I'm very unabashed about that. But Sean, what he's doing with food is just so, so wholly different than having your favorite comfort meal. I mean, it's like going to the theater and a restaurant and going on vacation. It's like getting on a plane and traveling somewhere because I've never experienced anything like it. And that's from the presentation to the flavors to the story of how this chicken is like the most famous chicken that was ever bred in France and you can never have a chicken. It's like every bite that you have there, you just can't get anywhere else. And then, of course, to have Sean be the one sort of serving it to you and telling this story is really just, to me, a very priceless experience that I can't believe we're lucky enough to have in Nashville. And then you add what Nathan was talking about.

25:55Like Sean is just, he's just such a good guy and this kind of success couldn't be happening to a nicer person and also couldn't be happening unless he was this nice of a person. The team that he's building is because of the person that he is and the sort of like above and beyond benefits that he gives to his staff and the culture that he's creating there, which is so in the face of sort of stereotypical chef culture. And I just think that you can taste that in the food, truly. You can feel it in the restaurant, you can taste it in the food. It's something different happening there. And Audrey, which will open as soon as I'm sure it possibly can, will be no different. I mean, that's it's like all of, even Joyland, you know, you can feel sort of there's something different happening in the burgers over there. So yeah, for that reason alone, my first answer is definitely that Sean would be my favorite chef. I will say Trevor Moran can get an honorable mention because I think Locust is very, very special and I think all of his spaces have been very, very special. So I'm not Sean Brock or Bust for me. I mean, I definitely have a lot of favorite chefs in town, but yeah, that's...

27:15So I imagine you'd say best chef Sean Brock, best new restaurant, I'm sure you would say Continental, which probably it's like when two powerhouse movies come out at the same time. Yes, but I would tie it with Locust. Yeah, I want to say Locust, but like one of them's got to win. I'm going to say best chef Sean, best new restaurant Locust, only because Continental is such a special experience. I'm probably going to get to go there once a year if I'm lucky. And I could, I mean, Locust has so few items on the menu and yet I still could go there all the time and not get sick of it. So that's hard to do. And it's just a much more accessible price point that I feel comfortable saying like everybody should try Locust. Everybody should be, I mean, that should be even if it's your special occasion splurge or if it's your sort of weeknight non-budget buster, it's both of those would be, I think, necessary hit list. Well, I think you've convinced me, not our two year, me and my husband's two year wedding anniversary is on Wednesday and we were trying to decide where to go and I feel like she just made the decision for us. Yeah, you got to do it.

28:23Yeah. And the bar, you know, for those of you who want to go to the Continental before you have the ability to get a reservation, the bar serves the menu a la carte and Sean is doing some crazy burger, prime rib burger that starts at like nine p.m. and you have to get a special ticket when you get there or something. I have a two year old, so I'm not out. I was going to say I have two eight month olds. I'm fully asleep by now. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not out and eating burgers at nine p.m., but this burger makes me really wish I was. Well, but that's good to know because a lot of people who are listening right now don't have small children and want to go do stuff like that. That's why we're doing this. We want to inform the people of all the really cool insider stuff. And I feel like an outsider with that kind of thing. I mean, there are so many new bars and restaurants that I have not been to simply because they're like too cool for me now. But the nine p.m. burger at the Continental is like the cool thing that I want to be cool enough for right now. So that's my goal. Sometime in the next month, I'm going to try to be cool enough for that.

29:25Well, that's fantastic. So we have best chef, best new restaurant, best restaurant overall, you're going to say City House? I'm going to City House. I mean, I've spent every birthday there for the past eight years. It's my death row meal probably, like a bandit cocktail, a belly ham pizza and whatever like Tennessee Waltz cake if it's that time of year. I mean, that I don't even have to really think about it very hard. Plus like some sort of salad, you know, whatever vegetable they have on offer. But yeah, that's City House is my tried and true. All right. So we talked briefly earlier about just some of the other categories that are on the list. I've checked it twice. So this could be easier. I don't have to go down and ask you all the different things. You want me to name off the ones that I know I have good answers to? Yeah, let's do it. OK, so best bagel. I'm going proper. I'm a Brooklyn girl. I appreciate both the branding and the reliability of like a great pumpernickel with veggie cream cheese.

30:29So I'm going proper bagel for the bagels. Although I've heard that there are some really good new bagels in town. I'm just so loyal to proper. I haven't tried them yet. So maybe I will branch out sometime soon. Bakery, I'm going baked on eighth. They are making my daughter's birthday cake. They were my first phone call when planning her birthday party. So I feel like that's pretty indicative of my love for baked on eighth. Burger, I'm going Martin's brisket burger. I don't understand why more people are not like singing the praises and spreading the good word about the Martin's brisket burger. But when you go to Martin's and order that burger, they will tell you behind the register, you know what you're doing. They're like, strength recognizes strength when you order that burger. When we did our interview, you told me that you love Martin's and you love that brisket burger. And I think I interviewed Pat Martin maybe a couple of weeks after that.

31:29But I was at the store on Elliston and I was like, I'm going to get the brisket burger. And that exact scenario happened. She's like, oh, yeah, that's a good choice. And then I ate it and I was like, then I was able to confirm that was a damn good choice. It's a very good burger. Maybe an unsung category, but I would like everyone to know about Juniper Green. They are my favorite caterers. I have used them and I ate their Thanksgiving dinner last year and it was chef's kiss. Very, very good. And also Sip and Bite, which is a sort of smaller private chef catering business I think everyone needs to know about. And Juniper Green, that's Molly Martin, right? That's right. She's amazing. Big fan. That's right. She's been on the show. Yep, great. Ice cream, I want to make sure everyone knows about Locolani Alabanza and saturated ice cream, which is CBD ice cream. She is very, very talented and her flavors, I mean, I can't even begin to try and like honeycomb, marigold, like very unique flavors with fabulous branding and visuals.

32:39And you should check out her Instagram. It's really highly enticing. And then this may be somewhat controversial. Best pizza. I'm going, my friend Stephen Anthony, the new pizza pop-up, Pizza Lolo. I don't know about this. I don't either. Very, very, very good. I mean, thin-crossed brick like the oven. He and Sean did a pop-up together last weekend or the weekend before at the Tomato Arts Festival on the Joyland Patio and he's done a couple of others. He has like five different flavors. One is this like pesto garlic cream. It's very good. And he is new to the scene and for sure a pizza guy to watch. We are going to have to get him on the show and learn his entire story. And then my other pizza honorable mention would be the St. Vito focaccia. I'm just going to say, have you had St. Vito? I went and had some of their pizza at the, if you can even call it pizza, it's almost like another category of its own. Yeah, it is.

33:43I had it on, you know, Sunday night at their Hawthorne pop-up and the pizza that we never would have ordered was they had some, it was almost like French onion soup meets focaccia pizza and it was a mistake apparently. He was going to put the onions in some other dish and then he used them for this pizza. It was otherworldly and I DMed him and I was like, if you do not make that mistake pizza again, people are going to revolt because I've now told everybody it's the best bite of carbohydrates I've had in the past decade. It really was. I mean the whole table was silent. You could have heard a cricket because everyone was like don't talk to me, I'm eating this pizza. Don't even look at me. I am making sweet, sweet love to this pizza. Like it was just so good. I had to use serious favors. Two weekends ago, my wife's 40th birthday, we were supposed to go to St. Martin and we had to cancel the trip last minute. Her father was sick so we didn't go. I called Michael Hanna at like three o'clock and I was like, dude, I need a table for four at six and he was like yeah!

34:51He got me in and I was just like I don't like to do this. Please man me. I mean I'm not even on camera right now. Somewhere else and I texted him and I was like, oh my dinner's bad. And he was like, oh well that sucks but let me tell you where I'm at. Yeah, I mean I'm not even on camera right now. I don't like to do the whole want to be known for being national food fans so people think they need to give me reservations. I am very, very low key. I rarely ask and I emailed the St. Vito guy a couple months ago and I was like, listen, I have a toddler but I need to try this pizza. He was like, I'll put a seat aside for you. I will not make you wait in line and I wanted that pizza that badly. I was like, I'm just going to call in the favor. I could try to not do that as much as I possibly can. I got to throw a hail Mary tonight. I did it recently at another restaurant that I should mention because to me it could be a contender for Best New Restaurant which is Once Upon a Time in France.

35:51I'm dying to go there. They don't need reservations. It's a bit of a hike. They don't have great parking. It's worth it. It is very, very, very good and very authentic. It's like, you know, everybody speaking French on the staff and love that. Another restaurant where you don't quite feel like you're in Nashville. Really good. Okay, I think I have like four more categories that I made notes for. Donut, I'm going Connie and Johnny. Okay. I don't know. Have you had Connie and Johnny yet? I've heard about it. Isn't that the, they had an oob donut, didn't they? Yes, they did. Yes, I think all that. I think they just ended. They had it with their like mango sticky rice and Thai. So I get them, I tend to go to Tempo to pick up my Connie and Johnny on the weekends because the Tempo breakfast tacos are so good and they have like a horchata, iced horchata that is really good. But Connie and Johnny donuts are now in like ten different places on the weekends where they only used to be in two.

36:57And they are very, very worth it. I am a crazy loyalist when it comes to donuts. I'm very loyal too. I'm so disappointed when I go to somewhere new and the donut isn't great. This donut is so great. I mean you just, I promise. Oh, I wrote it down. I'm definitely going to go now. But like, I love Fox's donut then. Okay, I love Fox's too. But I don't think you need to be, they're so different. Like I don't go to Connie and Johnny to get a fritter because even though they do great fritters, the fritters at Fox's are, I think, the fritters to be. They are. And the thing is we don't eat them. You may put old fashioned also. It's just, it's so classic. It's so basic. But it is so damn good. I don't live for an old fashioned donut. I don't want the cake, I don't like it. I mean I've never met a donut I didn't like but let me tell you, Connie and Johnny and Fox's are different enough that you can love both of them. I promise. Deal. I'm going hot dog, I'm going Joyland corn dog.

37:59Although daddy's dogs are very good too. And the best fries, what did you say? I said everyone's political. Like no one wants anyone to feel bad or left out. I know, it's just that we're blessed. We have an embarrassing one. We have so many. But it's also such the Nashville spirit. I feel like to be like, look I love this. But I also love these other ones. That's right. Okay. So I could have said a lot of different french fries. But I'm going to say that my favorite fries are the burger up truffle sweet potato fries. Those are really good. They used to just have truffle fries and sweet potato fries and now they have truffle sweet potato fries. And I think that those with their honey mustard aioli is a really great combo. And my last category would be best dessert. I definitely am going city house. Anything Rebecca Turchin is making. Like I mean, truly I have never had a dessert there that I did not sort of want to write home about. So can I ask you have you eaten at Yolan yet? I have not partly because they do not have any outdoor seating.

38:59And I was I was only doing indoor seating for like a minute and a half before now not feeling comfortable doing it again. So they did not they did not find their way on my schedule during that like one and a half month period where I allowed myself to eat indoors. I will tell you that the experience you had at the Continental I feel like when I ate at Yolan was similar to that where I was just completely blown away by every single course. It was like every single course was like a miniature masterpiece that was like an artist came to the table and set this down and the flavor everything was there but then all of the everything about it was like a story behind it and it was just so well crafted. I will say the photos on their Instagram account are not that doesn't surprise me. I mean the photos the food looks truly you know spectacular. Tony and Kathy have done a really really good job over there for people coming in from Chicago. You gotta go check them out.

39:59Okay they're on my list. Let's get my daughter vaccinated and then I can feel more comfortable being out and about. Everybody out there needs to get vaccinated. If you have the ability to get vaccinated. I will go ahead and say it. I'm not going to be political. You need to get vaccinated. I'd be very happy if that is the only thing people take away from my segment on the show today is like you know get vaccinated for yourself and for the fact that if you got in a car accident today you'd have a hard time finding an ICU bed. You know I mean there are a lot of reasons to get vaccinated and wanting to go out to eat is really on the low end of the totem pole but I guess you know pretty high on our list of reasons for this show but yeah yeah I mean that's the only thing keeping me from a lot of places these days. Well Kate thank you so much for joining us today. I really I learned a lot. That was a lot of fun. I love your answers. That was really good. Hopefully people out there listening to this learned a lot too. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you. Absolutely.

41:07I'll come on anytime. Thank you so much. Yeah we'd love that. We can help you in your other venture or whatever we can do also. Thank you. Thank you. You guys are the best. Bye Kate. Bye. All right let's we've got a couple people commenting over here. What do we got on the comment section Jen? Okay so this is you have to go back a little bit but this is when Julio said I actually know how many. He's talking about how many salami's can fit into somebody's mouth. So I did snicker when I saw that and I did not I did not make a joke. So Corey Coleman who's our director of operations for all the corner pubs in Esquina Cantina is on. Julio Hernandez has joined the conversation who's one of the absolute best in town. Maiz de la Vida himself is here listening. What's up Julio? What's up Corey? And apparently Nathan Gifford missed out on Brandon Frone's birthday party. Yes. And there's a lot of conversation. So if you're listening to this jump in the comments. We'd love to hear what you have to say. Well we still don't know how many salami's. They haven't disclosed that yet. Can we please disclose that Julio? Is it salumi's or salami's? Oh salumi's you're right. Okay. What is a salumi?

42:21I don't know. I can Google quickly. Salumi's. Yeah. Help us out guys. We're going to jump in now with our next guest. Our other, our next influencer here in town who I've never actually got to meet. The Moody Foodie. Thanks for having me. Very exciting to be here. So the Moody Foodie who are you? What is your real name? Josh. I just you know I like being kind of incognito and you know just hadn't put that out there much but you know here we are so. You are live on Nashville Restaurant Radio with the Moody Foodie Josh. Hi Josh. How are you doing today man? Pretty good yeah. Not too bad. Now you also have a child who does this who's also an Instagram influencer. Moody Foodie Junior. Junior yeah she definitely is more but she's a six year old and so I like bringing her with me you know when we go out and eat she has a kind of a thumbs up thumbs down you know and a sideways kind of rating scale and so.

43:29Great system. Everyone knows that. Good or bad. So we always have fun. I like bringing her out with me and you know taking her to some different places and it's something fun. We kind of do together. So how often do you go out to eat? It's been weird because you know now things are picking up a lot more and it was real you know kind of quiet there for a while. You know a few times a month you know it depends. Sometimes it's real crazy and there's like three or four stuff in a week and then other times it's kind of quiet like that but you know it can ebb and flow. Alright well I've picked out like 20 categories of things that I kind of feel were the bigger ones that people might care about and I'm going to go run down some of these. Tell us what your favorites are. If you don't know the answer you don't have a favorite just be like I don't know man we'll go to the next one right? Alright I got a few I own in case we miss a few. I'd love to throw some in there too. Well let's start off with what you have. Let's just do that.

44:31I mean we can probably do the whole segment that way. Tell us what you've got already prepared and I also want to say what's up the brand in front of there. My boys now join the whole of the show. This is fantastic in the comments. Go ahead Josh. Let's say Best Bakery I love Brightside Bakery I think that's amazing and that kind of helped me through the pandemic there because they did you know some roll up you know carry out there in your car and so that was really good. I love their pastries and everything they do over there and I know they just you know got kind of you know knocked in there the other day but I think they're great and some of them are broken I think smashed there you know I didn't hear about that. But they do amazing stuff. I love everything they do over there they're great. Best Hot Chicken which is very you know I like Slow Burn. I think they're really good.

45:33Slow Burn Hot Chicken. They do a hot chicken donut. They have a hot chicken burrito. Hot chicken donut? Did you say hot chicken donut? You just take a hot chicken and put it inside a glazed donut and you know that's good. That is kind of with the sweet and the heat but they do some really good stuff. I like their hot chicken for sure. Ben Burkhardt, Wicked Tastes has bright side and fire. Absolutely. Best Farmer's Market vendor I love and my daughter loves a fat belly pretzel. Yes. And then like the evolution of what he's done and you know all the new stuff he you know the Bobcas and all the other stuff he has is really good. I love everything you know he's doing with all his stuff there. And this could be in multiple categories but wherever you want to put it best you know best restaurant best chef wherever.

46:33Taylor I love. I think Taylor is really good. Doesn't get enough. I think recognition as well but they're getting ready to move to a new spot also. Coming up here but I think Taylor is awesome. All right. Love for Vivek Surti. Yeah. Let's see best burger I hadn't been mentioned yet. I thought I'd throw one out there. Tennessee Brew Works has a five beer burger. That's why we do this. Yeah I haven't had that one. I've been there. That's a very good burger. Five beer burger. So I definitely check that out. Recommend that. That is a very good burger. Cool. Okay. Also love Yolan. One thing I would throw in there on top of that is their cheese cave. That's their cheese cave. Oh yeah it's amazing. What is it? They have a big glass like right in the kitchen it's this huge like glass kind of room where they're aging all of this cheese. They have the other Parmesan and all these different and it's these gigantic wheels of cheese. I'm picturing like you can eat the walls like the walls of cheese.

47:39No. But you can see you can see into the walls. It's not like a cheese cave like where you're there with like a whole cave that they like just go in and dig out cheese. Yeah. It's like a jewelry case with cheese. Okay. Yeah. She's looking at a whole Jen's literally thinking there's a cheese like a piece of cheese the size of a semi. Like in Wanda when you lick the wallpaper it tastes like snosberries like it's that. Who ever heard of a snosberry? Good call. Sorry. Okay. Let's see I love whatever date night whatever Margot. I love Margot. We always love going there for special occasions and meals always like Margot's. Best date night Margot. Alright. And let's see. Last one I got I'm really excited about haven't checked it out yet but Calacas Mexico.

48:39It is over on Koreans. They just recently but real nice high end kind of Mexican. Oh. So I'm real excited about checking them out. I think it's a nice addition to kind of to some of the you know some of the ethnic you know areas that you know we might be missing but I'm excited about checking them out. Have you tried have you been to any of the pop ups have you been have you gone to like Alabrije or done anything that Julio's done from like Mayas de la Vida? Not yet. I want to check them out. I just you know hard to get out sometimes. I totally understand that. They're doing some really really amazing stuff. Do you ever get out and go do you have a best bar best dive bar best cocktail anything along those lines? I don't know if I have anything off hand. You know I like checking out some different places. What about best brunch? Best brunch where I really want to I need to check out Arnold's everything what he's doing with After Dark and the 7up pancakes. They with the hot chicken on the weekends.

49:49I want to get over there and check that brunch out. Okay. Definitely. You said best hot chicken was slow burn was it right slow burn? Mm hmm. Do you have best pizza? Let's see. I mean you know Emmy Squared's really good. I like their pizza. You know I know there's a lot of pizza out there. You know that that's that's pretty hard to go wrong with pizza. Yeah I love for like a chain type place. I think I like Jets. I think Jets pizza is is solid for like a chain place. I keep thinking of that scene in the office where he's like ready to get some New York authentic pizza and he goes to Sbarro's. Oh yeah yeah no. Authentic Sbarro's. How about best taco? The best taco? Ooh best taco um I have to say memos is great.

50:53I like memos. There you go memos in Mount Juliet. They're great people. I like you know they're they're fun and and I like you know what they're kind of doing out there. Katie and Memo Murillo. Cool. Are amazing people. I know yeah you know them had them on before. You know they're great people and I always like going out there and you know visiting with them. Would you put them in would you lob them in for best Mexican? Yeah let's throw them in there and give them a run at that. Yeah. Okay. You know the counties outside of you know Nashville. Alright so best chef are you going to go Vivek? Um or are you going to put them in there and throw some you know add some spice to that category. Okay. Best new restaurant. As of October 2020. Uh. Let's say the food hall I think is a pretty cool place. I like going over there.

51:57Assembly food hall at 5th and Broadway. Yeah they got you know I think that that also some of the best views you know like 60 vines up on the roof there and yeah by Broadway and Ryman I think that's a real cool kind of spot. Gotcha. Alright. Um. That's really the do you have a favorite like caterer or liquor store, vegetarian anything along those lines? Um let's see I also really like Sippin Bites. She's really cool and does amazing stuff. Um. As well. Let's see anything else to really throw out there. Um. Who's your favorite what's your do you have a favorite podcast here in Nashville? Um. It's a tie with Nashville Restaurant Radio. And a couple buddies of mine Dad's Drinking Bourbon. Dad's Drinking Bourbon.

52:57Listen I want to hope that everybody's favorite is Nashville Restaurant Radio. But I'm also a realist and I recognize there's a lot of there's like three million podcasts out there. This one is that one. So I'm also listen I'm a fan of turning people on to new stuff. I'm not selfish by any means. I'm a total homer. I voted for Nashville Restaurant Radio. I'm going to say I voted for myself when I actually went and did the voting. Um and if you would like to vote that best podcast is under media and politics. It's not under the food and drinks. If you go to the food and drink and start clicking everything you're like hey there's no podcast because it's under media and politics. So if you're going to vote for a favorite podcast and it is Nashville Restaurant Radio I would be honored to have that vote. There is my my little pledge but dad's drinking bourbon. Now in dad's drinking bourbon do they is it just dads do they get sloshed and start like later in the show. Um no they just do tastings reviews. They have big guests on um and they're they're just two dads and they just drink bourbon you know and then talk about it. All right.

54:03I could get into that. But they're very cool. John and Zeke. That's a great great show. Yeah. Cool. I have to incorporate a dad's drinking bourbon in Nashville Restaurant Radio because that's kind of restauranty. Sure. But I'm a dad I don't drink bourbon anymore but I can certainly talk about it. I'm neither a dad nor do I drink bourbon but I will drink tequila and I am a mom so I'm like you know. You could be a guest host. There you go. Let's start up a mom's drinking bourbon. There you go. There you go. Mom juice is what they call it. That's what they call it. It's a whole culture out there. Yeah there's tumblers. All right. So what. Moody foody. Thank you so much for coming on. Tell us. Is there any way you can promote what you do on Instagram? Do you have a like a basis for how you post where you go? Tell us about your how long I just like use it as a creative kind of outlet. It's just something fun. You know I like getting out just not just to the new hot places that are opening but getting out to some other you know places and checking out you know places like the gambling stick or you know just other places that might be a little more whatever maybe off the radar or not as you know prominent in the you know the foodie cycle of things and throwing some other stuff out there and checking out some just new you know fun places and just have fun with it. You know I enjoy eating and going out to places and you know having fun and so that's just you know something I do is kind of an outlet for all that stuff.

55:35Awesome. We were wondering about your Instagram handle like the moody foodie where that came from. Is that like do you get moody when you're hungry? Are you I'm pretty moody generally? So we were just wondering. My wife would say just in general and it just you know I work in marketing and it just kind of sounded like a good fun name and you know kind of worked our brand off and then you know join had my daughter join me in with it. That's cute. How many followers do you have? Twelve thousand. Wow. That's a good side creative. Yeah man. So yeah it's fun you know I like you know the creative outlet with it and you know coming up with fun captions and puns and all that so that's you know that's real fun and then it's transitioned more to now you know sharing that with my daughter now as we go out places you know she'll want me to throw out. She looks like Boombas and so we love going out to like Boombas for the pizza but then you know the playground and you know having fun over there so it's just something you know we enjoy now to do together and doing that. What part of town do you live in? Hendersonville actually. Nice.

56:47I don't know where that is. I'm so big. It's north of town. Okay. And it's like Old Hickory Lake up there like. I've been here like a bit we're at his house. I've been here like 10 times and I was like hey what's your address? Directions are super not my strong suit. And I feel like I have like a Rand McNally in my brain from living here so long. I'd be like hey you take 65's. Yeah you tell me like street names and I'm always like why is he doing that? The GPS will tell you to turn here. Yeah. Thank you Josh aka the moody foodie. If you're out there listening to this go follow him right now and you will get to see all of the cool culinary adventures that he goes on with his daughter. Man I appreciate you so much for coming on the show today. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Yep. Alright. Okay guys so what do we got on the chat? The chat over here has really kind of calmed down a little bit. Where are we at guys? Who's out there?

57:55Let's talk about some of your favorites while we wait for our next guest. I did look up salumi and it is like a salami. Okay. Let's see. It says salumi's are cured meat products made predominantly from pork. So how many salumi's can? They said they're going to save it for talking shift. Oh I love that. I love that. I think we have who's next? Is it Wicked Tasty coming on next? Dan Burkhard? Are you next man? I think it is and I think he's going to jump on here in just a second. Yes. Wicked Tasty. Yes. Well I switched to the Moody Foodie in Nashville. I noticed. I caught up. So we've got Dan Burkhard Wicked Tasty coming up next and then we are going to talk with Nashville House Mom. Yes. Molly Gray. Molly Elizabeth Gray is going to be coming on. She is the Nashville House Mom. I'm so excited about talking to her.

59:01I think she's going to be able to give you some good inside information on where you should go, what you should do because that's what she does. Did you know that? I didn't. Actually that's a new account for me and I'm excited about it because now I do all mom things. So I love it. Yes. So that's going to be a ton of fun. If you are out there please feel free to jump in and talk. Jen, we're going to give our picks. Okay. I accidentally started. After Nashville House Mom. So if you're watching, hang out because we're going to get there eventually. I'm drinking a coffee. This is a what is this? What did you get me? Vanilla cream cold brew. Yeah. So okay. The only reason I bought that is because there's a picture on the Starbucks menu of something. And I was like wow, that looks delicious. And so I ordered the words next to the picture. Oh. That's not the it doesn't look like that though.

01:00:01Oh no, but it's very tasty. Yeah. It's fine. But it doesn't, it wasn't as pretty and I was a little bummed about it. So yes this is Starbucks in my hand. But where what's your favorite coffee shop? I live in Franklin. So I go to the coffee house in Franklin a lot. It's I don't know. It's so small. It was not small, but it's a huge house. They've turned it I love it. I love going there. Well, I like the Good Cup which is in Grassland. It's right down the street in Hillsboro. It's in France. Grassland is right down the street. And the Good Cup is a great little coffee shop. It's busy. They've got local people bring in their little baked goods on the weekends. It's really good. And I've recently found ANSI Blue. Yeah, you got me really hyped on them and I really wanted to go. I'm a big fan of ANSI Blue and what's going on over there. They've got some pretty cool stuff happening. They do a drag brunch. I love drag queens.

01:01:01That's like seasonal. They did one for like Pride Month and now it's like every two weeks they're doing it and it gets sold out. Of course it does. Drag queens are the best. I just want to go and see what they keep seeing on the socials. It looks fun as hell and they start off as like a CBD brand. Cool. Did you know this? They were like they were doing like CBD and then the pandemic hit and they had to close because they weren't serving like an essential business. So then they started serving food and coffee to become an essential business so they could stay open and it's just like taken off. We love a pivot. Yeah. Hmm. So we're waiting on Dan Burkhart. Dan where you at man? I did look at Coloccus. It looks really good. Tell me about it. I mean look at how beautiful it is. It looks like that must be house made tortillas. So Coloccus is going to be coming in.

01:02:01Julio, what do you know about Julio if you're still there. Tell me about Coloccus. Are you selling them your tortillas? It looks really good. It does look really good. Alright. We are five o'clock. So what is, speaking of Mexican Jen, we'll just go down. We have like our top few that we're going to do here. Do you have a favorite Mexican in town? Person or friend? Mexican restaurant. So we love Pueblo Real. Yes. We go there quite a bit. Pueblo Real in Franklin, downtown Franklin. And that's from the same guys that own Tito's. Yes. Alright y'all as we wait for Dan Burkhart to jump on we're going to take just a moment to hear a word from our sponsor Neat Mixology. Neat Mixology is Jordan Williams Passion Project and he's a long time veteran of the Nashville culinary scene. And what they do is they kind of come in and they'll do your inventory for you. They'll do an analysis of your inventory based upon your P&L and your variance reports.

01:03:13They will then create an algorithm that does your bar ordering for you. They will create cocktail menus for you and consult around your bar. This is an amazing, amazing idea. And let me tell you, it works. I know this because I work with them personally. They come in every Monday morning and do the inventory. It's done when I get there. They have a sheet that tells me everything that they saw that was different that's missing, that's not missing. They're just really on top of it. Here's the best thing. The first 55 customers that they bring on, it's only $500 a month. Yes. $500 a month. You get that locked in for an entire year at $500 a month. That's your inventory, that's your drink menus, cost it out, they'll teach your bartenders how to make it, and they'll do your bar ordering. So if you're a small restaurant and you're struggling to hire a talented bar manager and you need to spend your time educating your team, this is your chance.

01:04:13Give Jordan a call, 615-973-4511 or check him out at Neat Mixology on Instagram and Facebook. One other company that I really want to tell you about today is Sharpier's Bakery. Aaron Mosso is the daughter of the original owner and they're celebrating 35 years as a local bakery here in Nashville, delivering fresh baked breads six days a week to your restaurant. While the best of Nashville show is happening right now, Sharpier's Bakery is a shoe in bet for best bakery if you're placing a vote. Now this is mostly that they serve chefs in restaurants, but they are a damn good bakery and I think they deserve your vote. But if you're also a restaurant and you want to you want them to provide you with fresh baked breads, they have over 130 different breads that they bake. They can also take your recipe and bake it and batch and deliver it to you every day. How much time would that save you in your kitchen and time and energy? Give them a call. Her number is 615-356-0872 or visit Sharpier's Bakery dot com. That's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S dot com.

01:05:25They're on Instagram at Sharpier's Bakery and they are locally owned and operated for 35 years. If you're baking bread, if it's causing you too much time, energy and heartache, you need to give her a call. Aaron Mosso at Sharpier's Bakery. There he is. What's up, Dan? Hey, I'm so sorry. I totally missed your message on Instagram earlier that you had sent over a link to join this. I was like in the Facebook stream trying to figure out where the join thing is because that's how they do it on Instagram, so sorry about that. No, you're fine. Somebody told, Michelle said, I don't think Dan knows how to join. That's my fiance. Yeah. We got you on here. So, Dan Burkhardt aka Wicked Tasty. I have that hat and it's awesome. I love it. Tell our listeners you've been on the show. We've done a full show with you, but tell our listeners who you are and kind of a little about your story, then we'll get into your favorites. Yeah, what's up, guys?

01:06:25My name is Dan Burkhardt and I co-run the Wicked Tasty page with my fiance, Michelle, who clearly is more adept at technology than I am. Michelle, we can jump on too. We'd love to have you. She's actually out walking the dog right now having a beer over at Gumbo Bros listening to this. They're having a dog potty over there for Nashville Dog Day. She's there right now, but yeah. We run the Wicked Tasty page here in town. Nice. Well, welcome again to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Let's jump right in, man. Do you have some favorites that you already have already planned? Did you already look over this? Are you prepared with your list of favorites or do you want me to start asking you questions? Let's do dealer's choice, but there is one that I want to mention. It's the only one I had considered that I needed to make sure I needed to get brought up. Best Bagels, H&S Bagels, up in Midtown, legitimately the best bagels in Nashville by far. And we love the other bagels in Nashville. Don't get me wrong.

01:07:37There's a lot of really good bagel shops in town. They are beyond everything else. We don't have this famous like that recently. So we're from the Northeast originally and they are legit New York, New Jersey style bagels. You eat that bagel and you feel like you're back in a bodega up in New York or New Jersey and it's unbelievable. Okay, so I heard this thing on a different podcast, Armchair Expert, and they were talking about New York bagels versus LA bagels and whatever and how LA bagels aren't LA bagels. Anyway, they were like, oh, New York bagels are so good because of the water. And then they went into this whole thing and apparently like scientists have done studies about this to like see right? It's a whole thing. H&S treats the water that they use with the same process that New York City treats the water in New York. So they filter this with the same filter. This is why I would never go live.

01:08:37I don't know. If there's dead hookers in the water and they make good bagels, then I'm all for it. Listen, we love dead hookers. We'll keep them safe. Anyway. But yeah, no, it's wild. It's such an interesting who would have thought the water would be like their thing over the spices, you know. It is a thing. All right. So what's the difference between a bagel and a bialy? I've never even heard of a bialy. I haven't either. I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Oh, never mind. Okay, so best bagel is, tell me again who was it? H&S. H&S bagels. They're up in Midtown. They opened up I want to say like earlier this summer. They haven't been in business that long, but like since we found them, it's been like life changing. As someone from the Northeast. The two that I hear the most about are Mr. Aaron's Goods and Nicky's Bagel Shop. The new Nicky's Bagels and Mr. Aaron's Aaron Dissler over at Mr. Aaron's Goods. Everybody talks about those. So it's good to hear some other bagel places to turn people onto. There are tons of great bagels around town. Both of those are great bagels.

01:09:49I'll throw a bagel shop in there. Proper bagel. Like there's a lot of Big Ben's bagels. There's a lot of really good bagels in town. But I don't think a lot of people have the same Northeast bias that we have. So like it literally tastes like home at H&S. So that's why we're kind of biased towards them. Have you been to Shepard's Deli yet? Because I'm also, well I'm from Florida, but my family's from the Northeast. So I grew up there. Have you been to Shepard's Deli yet? I'm like dying to go. Yeah. I've been to Shepard's a few times. I actually haven't had the bagels there. I've had their hot pastrami sandwich twice. Incredible. Just literally just meat on rye bread. It's insane. It's insane. That's a great sandwich. That's like very, very top of my list because I just don't, we don't have a lot of that out here. So yeah. All right. Well, let's go down. Let's go down the list here. Best bar. Now bar, there's best bar, best diet bar, and best cocktail. Where do you want to go with that? So our go-to spot for a cocktail, anything on the fancier side is always going to be Patterson House. Fantastic. And I know you had Nathan from Gifford's Bacon on earlier and he was mentioning BBQ over there and we got to do that a couple weeks ago and that was a phenomenal meal. Their burger is really good. We also got their pork rice. Both of those were amazing.

01:11:05But Patterson House I think is our favorite bar. Dive bar. And I don't know that I would consider Bar Sovereign a dive bar per se. But it's definitely like a little more low key localish over there in Sobro. That's definitely one of our favorite spots to go get like a really nice cocktail for a fantastic price from really cool people. So those would be my two. My two to go to. Let's get controversial. Best BBQ in town. Alright, well we live around the corner from Peg Lake Forker and like I would eat there every day if I could. And it's the place I think we brought every single guest that's ever visited us, Peg Lake Forker. But I will say, two places that don't get a lot of love because they're a little further from downtown outside of the tourist districts are Honeyfire over in Bellevue. Shane is awesome. His BBQ is fantastic. He actually cooks and competes with Carrie from Peg Lake Forker on their Memphis in a BBQ team. So Shane knows how to get it done. And then another place is down in Franklin, which Jenna heard you mentioning you live down there.

01:12:09Hogwood BBQ. Have you been there? Yeah, I have. When I was pregnant I wanted it all the time. We literally don't drive for hardly anything because where we live in the Gulf we can walk to like most parts of town, like even German town. We will get in the car and drive for Hogwood or Honeyfire any day of the week. And Michelle wanted you to know that Guapo and her are at the Marsh House actually. They're not, they're at the market. Okay, they're all They're doing a Patio party, yeah. Alright, best brunch. We don't really do brunch. We just do bagels. I'm serious. Alright, so I'll say this. We went to brunch because we had a friend from New York come visit and that's a big thing up there. So he wanted to do brunch. We did Henrietta Red and it was phenomenal. So I guess they can have our vote because that was one of the best brunches we've had and also one of the only brunches we've had. This is the thing that the Bachelorettes need to listen to. I'm going to promote this in other cities to know what the best in Nashville is. So if you're listening this and you're in New York or you're coming to Nashville, you want to wait in line outside of the Biscuit Love for three hours, you can do that. But Henrietta Red from a guy who lives here is a damn good brunch.

01:13:25We live above Biscuit Love and we see that line. It's crazy. My husband used to work there. People say it's worth it. He would get in at 4am to start cooking everything and he almost developed Carpal Tunnel at one point from the egg station. Now we're going to keep the train moving here because we got a lot to cover. This one's going to be a highly contested best burger. So Josh, the moody foodie actually stole my answer. I was going to go with Tennessee Brew Works because that burger is bomb also. Super Instagram photogenic as well. Like literally probably the best burger pick I've ever gotten was a Bear Burger. But since Josh took that, I'm going to go with Best Burger Joint. So like any burger on the menu would be Stock & Barrel here in the Gulch. We really like that. They're a little under the radar but they have a huge burger menu.

01:14:25Their Hurt Locker Burger is my go-to burger. Okay. Alright. No Gabbies yet. Nobody has mentioned 210 Jack for anything and I think this is the longest we've been on air without somebody mentioning 210 Jack. Yeah. How about Best Fusion Fusion? We really like Sunda here in the Gulch. It's really good. I'll go right next to where you live too. I'm sorry. You're probably picking up a theme here. We don't make it outside of our neighborhood very often. We don't get in our car, dude. We love the Marsh House. We have everything we can walk to. Alright. So let's start guessing. Best liquor store. What's the liquor store in the Gulch? It's Ernie Paquette's store. What's it called? Are you thinking of Frugal's? What's that? Are you thinking of Frugal's? No. I like 12th and Pine.

01:15:2512th and Pine? That's it. Yeah. We like 12th and Pine a lot. Shane there. Shane is the man. He usually is working behind the register. He knows our dog very well. Our dog likes to pull us in there because Shane will always give Guapo a treat whenever we stop by. So that's where we go and buy our whiskey. Okay. So let's continue on with informing people from out of state when they come to town. Let's not make mistakes. What is the best hot chicken in Nashville? So this I'm sure is super contested. We're actually a split in our household. We love both Prince's. That's Michelle's pick probably. And Hattie B's. We haven't been able to have Prince's in like a while because they used to have their food truck over at 6th and Peabody but it's been gone all summer. I don't know what's going on. I thought they had like some mechanical issues and they were driving it out to go get fixed but they haven't brought it back and actually Daddy's dog set up where they used to be. So I'm hoping that they bring Prince's back to 6th and Peabody because that was nice to be able to walk over there and just grab some hot chicken. Do you own a car?

01:16:31We do. We do own a car. We actually downsized to one car when we moved down here because we could walk everywhere. We have two grocery stores, three grocery stores within three blocks of here. The gulch is wild. It did not look like that when I moved out here. We got a pet store here. We got literally everything we need. All right. Best Mexican. Let's pass on this one because I'm probably just going to give you another gulch spot. Best pizza. All right. Not in the gulch. Five points and that kind of goes back to the New York theme like we love that's legit New York style pizza down here. Five points is amazing. Have you had the opportunity to try Pizza Lolo? Yeah. We actually just went last week. They popped up over at Harding House which we drove to in the nations and we've actually been going to a lot of pop ups over at Harding House. So we do have a car and we do drive over there. But Pizza Lolo was really good. That was really good pizza.

01:17:31St. Vito's. St. Vito's haven't done that one yet. Okay. It's crazy. It's a big focaccia loaf that he makes pizza out of. I've heard of that. Yeah. St. Vito's focaccia. That sounds amazing. It is amazing. Are they a pop up or do they have their own space? It is a pop up. They're at Hathorn right now. All right. We've got to put that on the list. We've been in this huge pop up kick where we've just been trying to go check out all these different spots and places that people are popping up. So we're actually going over to Never Never tonight to check out Soy Cubano. Oh yeah. I've been wanting to do that really. And that's going to be at The Wash. Yeah. They're opening up a permanent spot over there. Yeah. All right. So best taco. At least BBQ has really good tacos and obviously it's not Mexican but they have really good tacos. I like that. That's a good answer. I think that your brain wants to go towards a Mexican restaurant because it's typically a Mexican thing but like. I would say I mean our. Oh that's not my turn yet. I need you.

01:18:39Sorry. We have good tacos. We do have good tacos. I wasn't going to say us. I was going to say. Oh. I was going to say Soy Bistro. Oh your taco is Soy Bistro. Yes. They are good. Okay. Best coffee shop. I love Frothy Monkey. Frothy Monkey checks all the boxes. They got great coffee. Great food. Great space to go work. You got a laptop. You're in town for business and you need a spot to post up for a few hours. Frothy Monkey. Every time. Frothy Monkey. All right. Now we're getting into the major categories. Yep. If this was the Oscars we've gone through Best in Film Editing. We've done Costume Design. Cinematography. Let's get into the big categories. Okay. Let's do it. Best happy hour. Best happy hour to like get drunk at is probably San Anejo only because their margaritas are incredibly strong and they're half off for the pitchers. So it's like 22 bucks for their pitcher which is like four margaritas and like one pitcher between two people is usually good. Two pitchers and you're thankfully just walked there.

01:19:51He has a strategy. There was so much math in that. There's a plan involved. Do not let the waitress convince you to have a third pitcher because that's where shit really goes downhill. I can promise you you will not wake up feeling good the next morning. Yes. Best new bar. Do you have like a list of places that have opened up that are new like I feel like I like can't imagine. Anywhere national. Yeah. I chose autos because we have those over on Charlotte really was the I don't drink. So it's like the only bar that like I know of that's opened recently and that is awesome. I get is that the coolest little spot. It's in an old mechanics garage that they turn in and it's called OTTOS but like I feel like autos like a video. Thank you for the explanation.

01:20:51We haven't we haven't been over to autos but I've been following them on Instagram they're not like school. Oh goodness. I'm having too much fun over here Dan. All right now here's the really big categories best chef. Michelle and I were actually talking about this before I went on and like who I was going to choose. So we love Manit Shohan from everything she does in the Food Network and she's just genuinely like a really awesome person too. But then Michelle reminded me how kick ass Matt Bowles is over at 404 Kitchen and we have very similar whiskey palates were part of the whiskey club over there and every bottle he picks I love and obviously on a food and culinary side he's incredibly talented there too. So I think you know chef Matt Bowles over at 404 Kitchen has my vote for that category. Very nice but you I I didn't see a pick coming from the gulch. Matt Bowles he is an amazing chef and he's an equally amazing dude.

01:21:51Love him in front of the show. And the final the biggest one here is best restaurant. We tried we gave him best Asian fusion Jess. We're working on it. Jessica Benefield the executive chef and owner at 210 Jack is curious why her name wasn't brought up. Jessica if you opened a restaurant in the gulch what's your favorite? Yep. Yeah it's location location location here. Have you been to 210 Jack? No that's literally on been on Michelle and I's list for like basically since day one since we moved down here that was like one of like the early places that we had come across on Instagram and everything just looks amazing. But over it sometimes it's tough to get over to East Nashville and like it just always seems to slip our mind but like I we are going to make a commitment right here on this show to to get over there by the end of October.

01:22:51We me and Jen it's so funny because all the interviews that we do we ask people like who where do you like to eat what's your favorite place and like every single person says 210 Jack is our favorite and I'm like is Jess paying people? Like every single like it's uncanny. Like everybody says 210 Jack is my favorite. So we were doing a video with the team over at Stock and Barrel for our menu platform and we were like doing like a feature the bartender type thing and we're interviewing Lacey the bartender over there and we asked her that was a question what's your favorite national restaurant she said 210 Jack. Yeah. It's a thing. That's why that's why she goes. This is amazing we're like three people in 210 Jack hasn't even been mentioned yet. Yeah I mean and I obviously didn't expect her to join but yeah no it is crazy I mean it's the top of everyone's mind all the time. Yes and she's also one of the most amazing people in the world her and her husband Trey who helped me co-host the very first episode of Talk and Shift which will be this Sunday night from 9 to 11 p.m.

01:24:03I'm going to do some cross promotion here you like that. Okay so do we best chef best restaurant what did you say her best restaurant? Did you say I don't think we got there. Oh your best chef Matt Bolles and then she jumped in. What is your best restaurant? Alright I'm looking through my Instagram feed right now and I'm going to try to find one that isn't located here in the gulch. No you can just say your favorite. It's okay we're just going to make sure. So before we moved to Nashville and I like the joke with Michelle that we moved to the gulch because of Cane Prime. I had gone to Cane Prime a few times with some buddies and I took Michelle there for a nice dinner when we had visited so like we had visited Nashville a bunch before we moved and like that's like you know beginning to end one of the best meals that we've had is Cane Prime and continues to be all the time like that's kind of our go-to spot to celebrate anything or to blow off steam and have a you know treat ourselves to something nice so when we ended up looking at apartments in Nashville Michelle lured me into the gulch because we were actually looking in Germantown she lured me into the gulch with hey this is right by Cane Prime and then we ended up moving to the gulch in.

01:25:13Like my friends that live in Brooklyn do not leave Brooklyn. So I it's cultural we'll just say. I mean the gulch is the gulch because of all the amazing things that it offers I mean it's an attraction people go there because you literally have all the stuff he just now described. When I lived in Hillsborough Village like I loved Jackson's and I loved Fido and I loved Sam's Sports Bar and I loved you know Bosco. I would just go to all those places all the time because like hell I can walk right there it was amazing. So I'm totally with you we're just talking shit. Love all those picks. Those are fantastic picks. I think Cane Prime you know Cane Prime is one of those that kind of loses out on a lot of these things because there's so many new amazing restaurants. Look at Yolan and the Continental and all these amazing restaurants. 210 Jack and Butcher and B and Peninsula and Pelican and Pig. I mean there's so many just amazing restaurants. City House.

01:26:13Rolf, yeah there's a bunch of really amazing restaurants and Cane Prime doesn't really get the love because it's just been really good for so long and I like celebrating restaurants that have stood the test of time. I mean Husk is in that same category you don't hear it all that often because it's such a staple. The standing power is huge. So I like that you picked them. That's a good pick man. Yeah I'll actually give you a couple categories really quick. I know I'm past my time slot here. I just want to mention so Best Fries was one of the categories I think. The Old Bay Waffle Block Fries over at Mother's Ruin. Life changing. Never have. 100%. I almost went there last weekend though. Literally well like if I'm in the area, if I'm in Germantown for whatever reason I will stop off there and just pick up in order to go because it's that good. Best Bar Tender too. Also want to throw out I know we talked about Best Bar but he used to actually work at the Patterson House.

01:27:17His name is Alex and apparently we were there just a couple weeks ago. Apparently he moved over to Rolf and Daughters. So we haven't, Alex don't know your last name but you've always served us there. You always seem to remember the cocktails off the menu that we order which is pretty awesome. So we're going to come check you out over at Rolf and Daughters soon. Rolf and Daughters I went on what night did I go? I went last week. Anyway the spaghetti is unassuming right? Oh my god it's unreal. Like it's the thing I was like oh it's spaghetti it won't be no it was it was unreal. Get the spaghetti. Real homemade spaghetti is really good. Yeah but it's like olive oil and like it wasn't like I don't know I was just like they have so many beautiful options and I was like oh I've had spaghetti I'll be fine. And they sent it out which was so nice of them. Yeah it was that was special it was so good. Alright well what else you got Dan? I think that's all I got for you. Dude thank you so much for coming on and taking time today. This is so much fun and Jess Banfield says Alex is the best knows exactly who you're talking about.

01:28:23Alex no last name is amazing. But if you're Alex go love go see him and let him know that he was talked about. Yeah he's super nice and just also an incredibly talented bartender. Any cocktail you want any cocktail you need you can make it for you. Well I asked for his Instagram handle so if she has it we'll put it up here so everyone can go follow Alex. And we're bringing back the Music City round up so we're going to be talking about all of these things on a regular basis. We're going to have to bring Alex on to talk about like what is happening in the cocktail world right now because I don't know like I don't I'm not out drinking like people like the guy like Alex I want to get him on and learn what we should be ordering what we should not be ordering bartender etiquette type stuff like don't order a Miami Vice wherever you guys. Are we still doing for net shots? Our bartender still doing shots for net? I don't know. I started I set boundaries I said no to that a few years ago and I was like I'm good but I don't know if that's the thing. So we have a really bad vodka? No no no for net it's like an aperitif.

01:29:29Oh okay. So we used to have in our fantasy football league whoever finished last like dead last the next we always get to pick whatever kind of keg of beer they wanted for the draft for the next year and whoever lost the league had to drink a pint of the nastiest liquor that we could come up with right so 16 ounces the nastiest liquor in every year it was for net because it's just so bad and then it became like a thing that people start drinking it like on purpose and we had this whole joke like people are drinking this shit like it's horrible. It's not my favorite. Dan we thank you so much for joining us. Yeah this was fun. Thank you for letting us make fun of the gulch a little bit. Yeah no that's fine. Honestly if you're promoting this to every other like city in the country like every fucking weekend sorry bleep button there's a million bachelorette parties here so you know you just give them all these pics and they'll have fun. Alright thank you so much we'll talk to you soon. Yep nice to meet you guys.

01:30:33Bye guys. I want to say thank you to Michelle also for jumping in there with her comments throughout. Michelle who also runs Wicked Tasty. Follow them. Go find Wicked Tasty. He also has a podcast by the way. Yeah Wicked Tasty has a podcast so if you are so inclined to vote for your favorite podcast if that's what it is that would be a good second place vote next to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Alright Molly Gray is the Nashville Mom. Nashville House Mom. Yeah. And she is gonna jump in she's gonna join us right now. Hey guys. Hey Molly. Hi. How are you? Fantastic how are you? I'm great can't complain. Can't complain. Have you been listening along? I have been yes I just wanted to kind of get an idea so I don't have to repeat our you know bore everybody with my repeated answers. Wait is this, hold on this is gonna sound silly. Did I meet you at Tennessee Women's Connect? Probably.

01:31:37I think I met you there and it was at Woodwood 55 South? Yes I went to that one yeah I mean that was a couple months ago. Well it's national so small world it all kind of always connects comes back around. Yes absolutely. And within like what a month and a half just came back around. Well I also wasn't doing this then so yeah hi to both of us again. Hey well it works out it's nice to see you. Yeah you too. So Molly I'm excited to meet you hi I'm Brandon. Oh yeah sorry. This is actually your podcast sorry. It's ours now I'm excited that you're here. Thank you. She makes the show ten times better anyway the people that tune in to listen to her. Molly tell us about what you do at Nashville House Mom like in just kind of give us like the 90 second elevator speech. Yeah so elevator pitch right now I am a lifestyle manager and producer. I started Nashville House Mom which is a hospitality driven concierge and private chef service specializing in organizing projects management such as home projects moving random things you don't really have time to do and as well as event planning.

01:32:47I started it because I travel and I like to see the best of where I'm going and you sit down with the first bartender and you ask them hey what's good and they list nothing that you put on your list that you spent months researching. So I started Nashville House Mom as a play on the fraternity and sorority house mom. Okay. Yeah and so COVID happened and it started turning into more personalized service for locals but I am ultimately if someone can't get into a restaurant or kind of has they're in a pickle and they don't know where to go people do come after that and kind of see what's going on in Nashville. And those bachelor parties keep me busy too so that's always great. I'm sure. So you're absolutely one of the best people for this show. Yeah. You really know. I went to culinary school but I always found by the time I got into my internships I liked friend house. You can't keep this quiet so I don't think they want me in the kitchen for that long. I love it. Okay so do you have any best ofs that are off the top of your head that you want to just throw out there?

01:33:53Yeah I made a list. Let's go. Let's go with your list. Tell us what you got. This is so exciting. Okay awesome. Well I'm excited too because I like to talk about food so put me on it. Here we go. Alright so something I was shocked by too. 210 Jack is always like your I lived above it for two years so I ate there once to twice a week so it's one of those I kind of forget to tell people about too because that was my like Monday night dinner because they're not open on Sundays when you want them. Those crab noodles. Jessica knows what she's doing. But best overall no one mentioned urban grub. That's true. Urban grub. Clutch like you have Will Schultz's beverage program the beverage director is doing insane things. They're constantly rotating new ideas. Him as well as the chef. Chef Will Lovell. And then you have their pastry chef. Alyssa I forgot her last name. I'm sorry Alyssa. But she's just I mean I don't know how she does it and keeps it going. It's always fresh, great ingredients, local products and it's a national restaurant.

01:34:53Yes. And the brunch program is insane too. So are you picking them for best brunch? I'm picking them as best restaurant. So you're picking them. That is your best restaurant pick. Yeah that is my solid. It's across the board. The service is great. The food is always hands on. You can go there from picking a $14 item to spinning as much as you want. Like you're going to Yolande if you want. But you're being conservative for your guests. But it's just overall it's not a bad time. Like your charcuterie program that they do in-house is one of a kind too. And then from natural. Pardon me? Their outdoor area too is like And their midnight too. Their late night menu is the best in town as well. So I'm very biased but all my friends were like hey everyone grab you talk all the time like there's a reason. It's just always spot on. Inconsistent. And you just know you're going to have a good time. And then a bunch of bartenders sit around the bar at the end of the night so you always are going to have a good time.

01:35:53Yeah. I just want to say Jess Benefield just chimed in on the comments and said hi Molly we miss having you all the time. Aw that's so sweet. Well I have to definitely come back. I'm just down the street. There's no excuse. I'm just not there every week like I used to. I feel like I paid them more than I paid an E.S. at one point. You did mention Mr. Aaron's Goods. I love them. They are so good. I also do private chef services. If I have enough time heads up I'm always there. That is who I get delivered all my products. I'm a big believer as someone from Nashville to try to keep it in the family and within the community. And so that is definitely one of my biggest coaches is he's great. And then anything family owned you have a little bit more of a personal touch with. Oh yeah. And then with family owned you've got the meet and greet Arnold's which we talked about a little bit. And they have that after dark and a brunch scene going. But that family's great. Let's see Continental. Great.

01:36:57Sean's like I mean he's insane not from Nashville but he's talented. He's very generous with the community which is always wonderful. And then you have Jonathan Howard there doing their beverages. And I believe he was with strategic too. So he is I mean one him and Will Schultz are the best in town creating bar programs. And then Yowan best service knowledgeable and best I don't know Italian food for sure. Well I know that Cathy Montuano will appreciate that because she heads the service and wine program there. And with her husband Tony. But this Jonathan Howard and Will Schultz these are people that I got to get on the show because I like talking to beverage managers because we talked to so many chefs restaurant owners. I want to get more into the beverage program and I'm glad you're bringing up their names because the beverage programs are so important in places and the chef gets all the love. And we love the chefs. But like these guys put in a ton of work time and energy and they're crafting these cocktails very similar to dishes. So for sure I mean the amount of time and execution and balancing the profile of flavors. I mean it's a chef's job it's just a pastry chef has a different job than the head chef. It's all a different chemistry of how your brain works.

01:38:11And I think you mentioned before having bartenders on to kind of say the do's and don'ts and kind of you'll get that. And beverage directors were your old bartenders that slowly usually they're more behind the scenes so you don't even know who's really behind your drinks. Yeah. You know they're in and out and you might see the ghost shadow of them as they're leaving. And but yeah I know what Will and Jonathan are doing. You know they're the guys on the scene that are really just bringing it up on every level. For sure. I love it. He's going. Bastion. We've mentioned Bastion a few times. Well it's actually my pick and I wasn't allowed to give it yet but it's my favorite. I love it so much. It's your best bar. It's my best bar. Yeah. I can give a list of just everything like you know Kaepernick's great. Patterson's great. But Bastion is sexy. It's intimate. And that price point I mean you are spinning around I think I believe 100 right now ahead for just the seating for dinner. But I mean you're getting that catbird experience. It's sexier because you're not in a bright kitchen. And you're just it's more approachable a little bit.

01:39:13And I just have a phenomenal time every time I go. And you feel great. Like it's a great date. You feel intimate. You know it's secluded. It's dark. I will say Yolan's a little bright. So for a date night you're kind of like OK well I'm definitely a chef's tasting. But Bastion you're like cozy and intimate. It's really nice. Yeah. I love Bastion. And I love that you can go to the big bar and just like have a few cocktails and some nachos and play games. Like I love Bastion so much. Yeah. I love in the record spinning the little crinkle pop that you hear like in the rotation the back is always really nice. Yeah. And then you know another date night which has the best Asian is Oku. I love Oku. That I I fangirl for Oku. I love it. My husband's Japanese. And that place has blown us away. Like we've brought. We love it so much. That's my like you know that's my impression. If someone knows like you know birthday dinner like we're taking that's probably. Yeah. The new Asian Sundae. And they have one of the best chefs Mike from Sundae.

01:40:15I mean he's the nicest guy you'll ever meet with the best laugh in the world. But that Sundae's brunch programs too. Like if you're not trying to do that traditional loveless cafe heavy breakfast. They're a really fun brunch. You know that's different. So loveless is my pick because I live one mile from the loveless. Well loveless we say takes a year off your life but it's worth it. Getting there at 7 0 5 after they open you can just walk in and sit right down. Yeah it's great. Our family the men of the house would go there with their coffee and then they come back into the family. Yes. I think the people room also. Trying to think cater hot iron fire events. You have Edgar who's on that. He was another Nashville local guy. He went to Lee Hillsboro. He also is a he's been a chef in town for many years for decades. But that they'll bring a whole smoke pit to Edgar who? Edgar Pennington.

01:41:15Yes. Yeah. He was the original chef at Irving Grubb when they first opened. I used to work at Sperry's and he used to be a chef at Sperry's too. So he was the opening chef at Cool Springs. Yeah. And I used to manage Cool Springs Sperry's. Which is one of the best happy hours in town. Half off our employees. You can't go wrong with those things. We just had Sam Kaz on last week. We were talking a lot about. Yeah. They're wonderful. I love him and Bob and Al. I did my internship for a culinary school at the Sam's and Sperry's. They're very kind. They're really good people. Very cool. What else is on my list? Coffee Americano. No one talked about that. That one's really fun in Wedgwood, Houston. Never been. Small. It's cute. It's right next to Bastion. Obviously a good neighborhood. And then wine store Woodlands.

01:42:15Woodland is beautiful. Wine list. Lou. You've got Loft and Daughters. That organic wine's always fun. And then I bar Billiards. And Lucky's. I've not been to those. But I don't bar very often. You know this is why. Because we're like old people. Okay. Oh I am. You're not. Yeah. I'm like hold on. Well you're a mom. I'm not going to say how many years younger than you. You're kidding right now. I'm going to get hit here in just a moment. At the point of the show where that left arm is just going to come across. I am a lefty so. Wow. Sorry Molly. Said world. You are a mom. I think that's where you lost it. I know. You're like oh I just like You're like eight months old. I'm not like I'm new at this. I'm a cool mom. It's okay. I literally have the I'm a cool mom shirt if that has improved my coolness. I don't know. All right.

01:43:15All right. Do you have a best barbecue pick. That's hard. I don't I feel like I'm a naturally more wits because I'm from here. But I really enjoy Martin's barbecue. Okay. Yeah. I really enjoy their bar. They have great sides. They do. I remember going to the like original one in Nolensville like a long time ago. Trying to sell them produce and just like well I guess I'll eat here. I was like This is good. And there was nothing. Nolensville was farms then like it's grown up a lot. It's crazy what Nolensville has done. It's a whole city now. You can tell me what's there and I might know the area but I don't know where it is on a map. South Side of Franklin. Oh. Then I've probably been. See I think of Nolensville as the zoo because I was It's Nolensville Road. Yeah. We were like oh Nolensville. I'm like the zoo. And I got in trouble. I actually catered a party and I just like did one of those. And then it was like deep deep Franklin.

01:44:15I was like oh no this is not what I think of Nolensville. No. Totally different area. About 45 minute difference. Yes. Much different area. Much different area like yeah. Night and day. I love Matt Stansel just posted here on a comment saying honey fire barbecue. Have you been to Bellevue? Have you been to honey fire? No but I love Matt. If you ever need your knife sharp you have to go to Matt. There you go. If there was a best knife sharpener he would. For sure. Matt's the winner. Thanks for listening Matt. Right. Dylan Young says the Americano has awesome tapas. They do and they actually have a black and tan iced kind of coffee situation that's really fun. And then Americano and pine would play with liquor too in their coffee drinks. So that's always kind of fun late night wise. I don't know how late Americano is open though. Okay. What about best hot chicken? So I make a joke out of this because I'm like Princess because you have to be O.G.

01:45:17But Hattie B's marketing team like hands off like hats off to you guys. Like your marketing team is fantastic. I heard somewhere Princess started it and Hattie B's perfected it and I am of that mindset. Yeah. I actually put that in my notes when I send out the big national spiel. I'm like Princess is the original. Hattie B's has better marketing. You pick your pick. Yeah. I like well I don't. Princess is a little too hot for me too. I don't know. It's just better for me but also we live we go to Bishop's a lot which is the B in Hattie B. Yeah. In Bishop's I like their barbecue stuff. Bishop's is great. Yeah I like more of their barbecue and I'm biased. I don't really enjoy hot chicken. I like Publix fried chicken. Girl I love Publix. Yeah every time they know me like I go in there and I get like individual pieces every time I grocery shop. Yeah my husband has me do that too. It's so good. It's so good. All right moving right along. Best pizza. Desados is good. All right very good. You know now they have them in the food hall too which is really cool that fifth and broad they actually instead of getting McDonald's and the traditional guys they really try getting as local as possible.

01:46:35So you have Desanos in there. You have the doughnut slurry. You have you have Princess. Princess is actually in the food hall right up below 60 Vines and 60 Vines has a great wine menu. Cool. It's very similar to the Barcelona structure where you can get fights in smaller pours. So you can I think I think it's like 2.5, 5 ounce and an 8 ounce pour at 60 Vines. So that's kind of fun that you can kind of play around with their menu. Yeah. I think we need to have Molly back on and do like a full show with her. Yeah definitely. I think we need to learn all about what you're doing and like how it works and like all your recommendations for the city. We need to like pretend like we're coming to Nashville. I feel like we'd have to be cooler first though because we haven't been to a lot of the places she's named. That's what I'm saying. I'm just getting show ideas. I have a whole list down all these people she's talking to. I'm like how do I not know these people? What is going on here? This is beautiful. You know you just don't talk and be like hey who's actually doing this idea concept? You know?

01:47:35Like old Lori in 308 that Lex is doing. She's the idea behind it and she's behind Bingo. And so you grab this one person Will Schultz. They're also doing at Urban Grub buttermilk ranch. So you'll see the same kind of people get behind a project. Edgar. Edgar's doing insane things. He helped Arnold's with their bar. He also is a huge part of Urban Grub still to this day. And he's part of buttermilk ranch. So it's really special. And tenfold brewing. Yeah that's huge. And then you have Will Lovell who's the chef at Urban Grub. He went and trained and worked at Roffin Daughters. So there's a huge huge connection between Nashville's very incestual or synergistic. Whatever you want to put it as. Okay so what are we missing here so far? Did you give us a best chef? I can't say that. I'll private chat you guys when maybe we'll go get wine and we'll talk about that. I have a list of them. So I just feel like if I start talking I don't want to make anyone feel like they're at the top or bottom. I think they're all wonderful.

01:48:39R.J.'s doing some really cool stuff at State Seamen. I did actually Matt and I went to this tasting with R.J. and Chef R.J. give it. It's a beautiful dead bar. My dog's named after Jerry Garcia. So I'm Bill Obias but he's doing some cool things. I like a carrot gelato graham cracker. It was weird and it was fun. I love their steak night. They do all kinds of really cool stuff over there. Yeah they did some I mean I had like a parmesan gelato with like caviar. I don't know. It was like I didn't even know when I was eating it was great. Love it. Yeah. Okay. Best new restaurant? Hmm. That one's hard. I'm like who's new right now? I just feel like I just put this down. I think Yolande is a little farther the continental. Continental I think right now for what so Yolande and Continental what they're doing for the Nashville scene is just insane. I mean that is you're getting New York LA Dubai type of knowledge almost like almost there but you're getting that service in Nashville which is just incredible.

01:49:43Before you know what it was not Mayor District it was Watermark was like the only top restaurant like 15 years ago and now Oh man. It was just like Taste and Watermark those were like your big big guys and then now it's Audrey's gonna open up which that's gonna be freaking huge and you know and then there's a huge development that's gonna happen in the Gulch here soon. So always turning around but Yolande I think is one of my favorite new ones. Well I know Jeremy Barlow is gonna love that taste reference. Yeah well Senko and have you seen that on 12 South the insert chef sign? Yeah no that's him. Yeah that's like he's you'll see him like you'll walk down 12 and he'll be outside eating like pasta out of a saute pan. It's just I love it. He's the best he knows it's ice cream too he's doing the whole thing like he's your size and ice cream. Yeah. Yeah. It's um he's the dude that I've known gosh I think I met him in 2005.

01:50:47I used to sell him produce at Taste and we had a great relationship back then but I love the guy he's awesome back when Taste was a that was a neat little place. It's now a is it Jake Christopher's? Yeah. I'm sad to hear that. I get a little sad I'm glad it's like people are doing well there but it's like you know in Granite Market left there's just like those little touches that you're like it was so different and so cool and new for Nashville and like it really started the Nashville food scene. Well I it did and he was doing he did he was the first green restaurant. Yeah. But like Hillsboro Village is one of those places to me that just makes me sad because I love the villager and I love Jackson and I love Bosco's and Sam's and yeah I used to live all through no yeah it's not in Pangea if you're a woman I mean Pangea was my favorite. I wrote a whole post about how heartbroken I was when that closed. Every time I go by it I'm like I feel like my heart sinks a little bit I'm like their signs not even there you know how they had the wall art we're the first one that had wall art in Nashville. They were yeah that's a true story. They're the first like mural.

01:52:01Alright so No Best Chef Best New Restaurant What about Best Happy Hour would you not say Best Happy Hour? Well I said Sperry's because they do have martinis North Italia it's I mean it's corporate but you can't eat their bottle and board I think it's around $25 for a giant charcuterie board and a bottle of wine. Oh wow for real. But Best Bars we didn't do that one I don't think. Pearl Diver is fun I mean it is super fun. It's so Jamie's brilliant Corey's great. And then Attaboy I mean they're another it's a New York bar but there are I think only two in the United States. Attaboy you've got Camille and Riley there who are some of the best bartenders in town. Camille I think was at Folk she was at Patterson beforehand. I mean they're insane. Attaboy you walk up and you say what you're just feeling and they'll just make crap to come up to you. I'm from Michael McCollum's also a bartender there he's super talented.

01:53:01I mean you have to be talented to be there. That is a whole another level of I mean that's like chef level but mixology for sure. I feel like I've learned a lot here today. Yeah you took a lot of notes. Yeah my notes are insane for today's episode like I'm just like all into it. Molly it has been awesome talking with you. Thanks for having me on here. It was nice to see you again. Yeah it's nice to see you. I have to see another Women's Connect. For anyone in Nashville and women that are just trying to meet people or get business out there it's really nice. It's very nice women. It's not competitive. Yeah it is very women supporting women which is like he'll all die on. Well we just hosted one at Maribol. We hosted one yeah and we're going to host we want to host another one after we do our bar relaunch and stuff like that so we're going to host again. Yeah we'll have to have you come in when we do our relaunch. We're opening a speakeasy inside of Maribol probably mid October.

01:54:01I'll be there. I'm letting a little bit of the cat out of the bag. It's late in the show. Nobody's listening anymore. But that's going to be happening. We're pretty excited about all the cool stuff that we've got going on in our little restaurant. There's a lot happening. We'll definitely have to direct people there because the only real bar in Williamson County that I really rave about is Cork and Cow. That's my pick for best bar. That's my favorite. Yeah I love them. Great. Alright. It's time for us to do our picks. Molly thank you so much for joining us today and we will definitely be in touch. Oh for sure. Well I'm excited to see you guys in the future. You guys have a good one. You too. Bye girl. Thank you so much. Alright here we are. We are at the moment now. Okay. If you guys are there thank you all for hanging out and listening. We're doing a full two hour show today. This is lots of fun. I think I've learned a lot today. I definitely have. This has been a lot of fun.

01:55:01I think that the thing I'm going to tell you is that I'm going to be just as political as everybody else when it comes to these answers. Okay I don't think I am because here's the thing. We know everybody's great. Like we don't talk about bad restaurants. I mean we talk about them like over text. We don't like publicly talk about them. When I tell you I had a bad meal like you know I had a bad meal. Oh yeah. But I'm saying like on the show we would never do that. So like we know all the places we talked about today are incredible. We know that. The people we talked about today are incredible. But these are just the ones that make you feel warm and fuzzy and that's okay. It's okay to have a couple. I mean you only married one person. I only married one person. You can have a favorite. That's right. I do have lots of favorites. So we're just going to give our best. We're going to give the best picture, best director, best actor, best actress right? Okay. I still think costume is important but yes. Nobody cares about the costume. Okay. I disagree. Okay. Guys you have comments out here. If you're watching the Oscars are you hanging out when the best costume designer walks up and gives their speech? Are you hanging going oh my gosh. I can't believe that she sewed ruffles onto that. Okay listen. Anyone that watched Peaky Blinders or Downton Abbey or Bridgerton like the costumes are vital.

01:56:15They're amazing. I'm with you. I just don't want to watch them win the award. I want to see the best actor. I want to see the best actress. I want to see the leading actress in the best whatever the actress in a supporting role. Okay. It's like I eat the edge of the brownie and you're just eating the center. It's fine. We only got 10 minutes. Alright. Go ahead. Tell us the best. Alright Jess. Jess you're saying 100%. Who are you agreeing with Jess? Are you agreeing with me that let's just get oh damn. She says costumes all the way. It's so important. Okay. Okay. Cinematography. I mean I listen I think there's value in everything but personally I care about the costumes more than the cinematography. But Brian or Kinji would totally ignore me. Definitely not you. Jess says she's siding definitely not with me. We should have open comments all the time. This is It's like we could do interviews with open comments. Yeah I like it.

01:57:17I love doing live shows and if you like live shows we're going to do another live show on Sunday. Well I guess I'm going to be you'll probably be on date night. Yeah. Sunday night from 7 to 8 o'clock we're talking about Anthony Bourdain and Brandon's book club and then from 9 to 11 it's just like the end of the show. We're talking shift. And it's just a lot of fun and we just kind of BS around. So let's start with best new restaurant. Best new restaurant for you Jen. Well I haven't been to any of the cool places they were saying that they're all new to me right because in 2020 I didn't go anywhere. Yeah. And now I have eight month old. So like I thought Oku was new and somebody's like we've been here two years. I'm like wow. So I'm out for that. I'm excited to go. I'm most excited to go to the Continental. Okay. I'm with that. Okay. Are you going to say them too? Yeah I think I'm most excited to go to the Continental and then I think I'm most excited if you're to say best new restaurant trend is pop ups. Yeah. I think that all of the different pop ups like El Abrije to me when Edgar opens his own restaurant it's going to be one of the best restaurants in the city.

01:58:29The stuff he's doing is so damn good and then he's doing it at Bastion on Sundays and Mondays. Yeah. But El Abrije I think is going to be the best restaurant like in the city when it opens up. He is just a solid solid dude. Best new bar. I had autos down because I love the owners and I love that place. You're not really going out to new bars. No I don't do anything new. Best chef. Okay. So I do want to I am a little not trying to be political I just am a little torn between I love all three of them as people and I think they're all so talented. So Josh Habager, Trevor Moran and Jake Howell from Peninsula. Yeah this is a really tough one. It's just a really tough one because I'm going to say somebody who I think is an amazing chef. There are so many amazing chefs but this guy I choose him because of what he does not only in the kitchen but for what he does for his staff.

01:59:37How he runs a business and what he does for his community. And that's Howell Holden Bage. Okay. From Lachlan Table and nobody's mentioned Lachlan Table today. I love Lachlan Table. But Lachlan Table I think is one of the best restaurants in this entire city and what they do with their community hour. What they've continued to do through their entire the whole pandemic. Yeah. Kara and Hal are just the most amazing people all around. And so it's hard to say about Chef because like I said Josh all these guys they're amazing. Brian Baxter Brian Lee Weaver, Mark McCormick, Tandy Wilson you've just got everybody. Philip Cratchit. Everybody out there. There's some amazing people. Jessica Benefield. I mean I'll lump her into that. I love you Jess. But yeah I'm going to go Hal because he's just like one of the most amazing people I've ever known. Best restaurant. I mean it's for me it's Oku.

02:00:37I love Oku. That was the first place I'd been to in a long time that I was like wow this is special and it's different and top to bottom it was great. Like service food. We drink mocktails. All of it was just incredible. That is probably the most excited you've been after eating calling me saying. Yeah I literally interrupted date night and I was like look at all these. Yeah she's like texting me in the middle of her date night going you have got to check. On my husband's phone because mine was dead. Definitely something that is Jess Benefield just jumped in and said Nashville is so full of amazing chefs but she says Trevor Moran is the best. He's so great. Doesn't think any Nashville chef would disagree. Best new restaurant. I think you could put Locust in there. I mean that was a tough one. Locust is incredible yeah. So I'm going to say my best restaurant. Gosh it's so tough. I mean you can't pick one. You really can't pick one because there's so many unique things that people do but the one restaurant that I've eaten at that I left and I was completely floored by every single course. Well there's two.

02:01:47And I would put them in a tie. I'm going to type my answer in here and you can't look. It's Yolan. No it wasn't going to be. I thought you were going to say The Optimist. No. The Optimist is no. The Optimist is good. I really enjoyed The Optimist. It was excellent. It was a great meal. Chef Ryder over there did a really good job. But Yolan I walked out of the restaurant and I felt like I'm like where we're still in Nashville. I thought that I left our city and I was in Chicago and I had an amazing dinner and then I left and I was in Nashville. I was like how do we get to Nashville so fast. It was really one of those dining experiences that blew my mind. That attention to detail and the amount of time and energy and creativity it took to make those meals and to do the things that they did was as somebody who operates restaurants I appreciate every single thing that went into that which is like Kate was saying Nashville Food Fan was saying what they did at the Continental.

02:02:49She was blown away. What they did was beyond what is it. When people exceed your expectations not only like just they exceed your expectations but then when you leave and you're in awe of the creativity that somebody thought to do those things. It inspired me. It inspired me when I left that dinner. That to me is something that is hard to do. It's creating new expectations. Now anytime you go somewhere really great it's like who could yell on? That's a really special thing. I feel the same way about Bastion though. When I eat at Bastion leaving Bastion it's a close one to me. It's right there neck and neck. I feel like what Josh is doing is second to almost nobody. He's amazing. Trevor probably too. I was lucky to work for both of them. The way they treat staff is special. In this city it is more common for chefs to be good people.

02:03:51That's incredible. They are really special with it. I'm allergic to shellfish and fish. For both of those restaurants that's kind of a hurdle. Neither of them ever make me feel like a nuisance or like I'm in the way. They always go out of their way to take care of me. I just think that's really kind. I think that's it for our picks. Those are the big ones. Do you want to do best bagel or best pizza or best burger? My best bar is Cork and Cow. That's my home base. I'm going to say if you haven't had the brunch at Maribol it's amazing. I do my own Homer pick. I should do mine too. Asoy Bistro is by far my best restaurant. Yes, there you go. The brunch at Maribol is a big buffet. It's amazing. It's a whole experience in the home. We love it. So everybody thank you for joining us. My kids have come in to join the podcast at this point. We are so excited that you joined us in the show.

02:04:53Thank you so much you guys. This was really fun. I haven't gotten to do a live show yet. I don't know. Thanks. Here we go. Now we know how to do it. We're going to do more of them and we will see you this coming Sunday night for Brandon's Book Club at seven o'clock and then we're talking shift with Alex Wincoast and Michael Hannah at nine. Let everyone know when the votes are in by. When do they need to be in? September the 7th by 12 o'clock midnight I believe is when you have to have your votes in. And we obviously would love for you to vote for us for best podcast. I'm not going to do too much promotion on it. If you would be honored. We've hopefully given you 19 other categories for you to pick. You have to pick 20. Thank you Nashville Scene for doing this. We love that they do the best in Nashville every year. We of course won one last year. A writer's pick. Chris Chamberlain gave us best inside restaurant podcast. Insiders restaurant podcast which I was really honored by and super humbled by. And we thank you all for listening. Thank you all of our guests for joining us today. This was a lot of fun. I always end every show and say we hope that you guys are being safe out there.

02:05:55Wear a mask and please go get vaccinated. Love you guys. Love you. Bye. Bye.