Factory town?
So I’m still on this kick about defining Nashville.
Karsten and I went to the Roy Acuff Place block party last night (I forgot to take pictures — bad blogger! sorry!), and they were serving Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q sandwiches. Maybe barbecue is one of the defining foods of Nashville.
Also, they had a Las Paletas cart there. Mmm. (Did you know Las Paletas’ web site is wheresthesign.com? Business humor! I love it!)
But talking about it with Karsten over breakfast this morning, he had an interesting observation: this is a factory town. As a music center, you can’t really compare Nashville with L.A., because L.A. is all about performance and we’re more about the making of music. Yet the monuments to the Nashville music industry’s success, such as the Country Music Hall of Fame, are more history-oriented than process-oriented. It’s not like visiting an automobile factory and getting a behind-the-scenes guided tour of the facility and forever after having a changed perspective on cars and how they’re made. As far as I’m aware, nothing in Nashville provides that kind of insight into the music-making process.
Anyway, I’m not sure where I’m going with this line of thinking. But I’m throwing it out there for your comments.
Barbeque just can’t be a defining food of Nashville. Not when one of the most popular barbeque places is a Memphis restaurant (Corky’s).
I nominate the falafel as the defining food of Nashville. Mostly because I love falafel and also because Nashville has one of the largest Middle Eastern populations in the country.
Or, I’d nominate the burrito, just to piss off a few more people that I didn’t piss off with the falafel nomination.
Lesley, it can’t be falafel — the two places in town we regularly go for falafel sandwiches (Mediterranean Cuisine and Kalamatas) are good, but not amazing.
And using your Memphis-BBQ logic, since the best burrito joint in town is styled after California Mexican food, I think we can rule that out, too.
But you definitely get points for originality!
Oh, I really like the Kalamatas version. It also makes me happy that the dolmas/dolmadhes in this town are usually vegetarian (the ones at Anatolia RULE). In Memphis, they all come with ground meat. Ew.
I read the other post and I have to disagree about the Meat-N-Three simply because they may be good, but they’re hard to find. When I lived here in ‘99-00 (pre-veg), I couldn’t find any. Memphis is overrun with soul food joints and MN3s.
I’m all out of nominations. Given the main industries here, I’d nominate something cheesy.
Something cheesy, good point. And perhaps fluffy. Although that’s starting to sound kind of gross.
Duh. I just remembered–it should be the Goo Goo Cluster! That represents Nashville!
Goo Goo Clusters are disgusting.
I hate to tell y’all this but Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q originated in Birmingham. It’s an institution down there.