TL;DR

Nashville

• Stay
  • Hutton Hotel, 1808 West End Ave, Nashville, TN 37203
    • When I came for Scholars’ Weekend in March 2010, I stayed here. Then it was the nicest hotel around, and while competitors have moved in on the Hutton’s turf, it’s still an incredible comfortable and convenient boutique hotel to stay at.
• Eat/Drink
  • Café 96, Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management, 401 21st Ave S, Nashville, TN 37203
    • The on-campus café for the business school is probably not a place you’re going to check out unless you’re touring the school. And if you are considering the Owen School, then you should definitely stop by. 🙂
  • The San Antonio Taco Company (SATCO), 416 21st Ave S, Nashville, TN 37203
    • The iconic spot for Vanderbilt Business students and alumni is still kicking and provides cheap tacos and beers for a less than discerning crowd. Grab a paper menu form, indicate desired quantity of items, pay, and find a place to sit. Or do the advanced method and designate someone to hold a table while you proceed into the line and do aforementioned ordering.
  • Barista Parlor (Hillsboro Village), 1817 21st Ave S, Nashville, TN 3721
    • Get your coffee and a delicious breakfast burrito. If it’s a blue sky, crisp morning – even better.
  • Tennessee Brew Works, 809 Ewing Ave, Nashville, TN 37203
    • The best burger in Nashville – and that’s not just cause I know Alex Leibow, the executive chef. Seriously. Also get a flight of their tasty beers!
  • The Catbird Seat, 1711 Division St, Nashville, TN 37203
    • The finest restaurant in Nashville, hands down. See the details below for reasons why you should get a reservation (well in advance, I might add).
  • Patterson House, 1711 Division St, Nashville, TN 37203
    • Right below the Catbird Seat is the best bar in all of Nashville – also hands down.
  • Biscuit Love, 2001 Belcourt Ave, Nashville, TN 37212
    • This place used to be exceptional, but I feel the quality is falling. 😦
  • Hattie B’s, Nashville International Airport
    • Though commercialized now, this hot chicken spot is still slinging good food. And you can get a meal to bring on your flight with you, which will take you way less time than waiting at one of their brick and mortar spots.
• See/Do
  • Vanderbilt University, Owen Graduate School of Management, 401 21st Ave S, Nashville, TN 37203
    • Should you be interested in one of the best business school experiences in America, then put Vanderbilt on your list of places to consider. I am biased, but I certainly think it is.

Trip Background

I spent two wonderful years studying at the Vanderbilt University, Owen Graduate School of Management, where I’d get my MBA, learn about myself, and start to figure out what I wanted to do with my career and life. It was also the place from which I started my mad dash across the world, fueled initially by a desire to see some of the places my classmates were from.

By the time I would graduate, I’d have visited Peru, Germany, Turkey, Vietnam, Cambodia, Argentina, and Brazil – and I’d hit up Spain, Andorra, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Italy by the end of the summer following my graduation in 2012.

But for years after graduation, I’d return to Nashville for alumni reunions and to see friends who still lived there. That stopped in 2019 with Cooper’s birth and then the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, so by the time I returned in the fall of 2022 for my ten year reunion, it had been awhile since I’d seen the city. This time, I was there for the reunion, but moreso to see friends who were in town for their ten year reunion.

But the biggest difference on this trip was in how it started. In 2022, we drove as a family down from Chicago to Nashville. This time, I flew into BNA (Nashville International Airport), and just experiencing the changes in the airport revealed how much this town (dare I call it a city now?) had changed. Read on for how it felt different.

Day 1 (November 2, 2023)

I took an early flight from Chicago to Nashville and although I wasn’t going to NashVegas to party, I opted for a morning cocktail. It was whatever the drink of the month at the Admirals Club was – nothing noteworthy – and by the time I landed at BNA (around 9:30-10 AM), I started getting into a celebratory mood.

BNA used to be a tiny airport. So small that you could pull up curbside into a parking spot with a clock above it that would enable you to stay there for 20 minutes. That airport is gone, replaced by a brightly lit, large, and modern version of what once was. There’s art. There’s outposts of Hattie B’s, the famed Nashville hot chicken joint that’s since expanded to Atlanta and Las Vegas.

I went straight to Vanderbilt to see MBA students whom I’d planned to speak with – and in reconnecting with faculty, staff, and former classmates who now worked for the school, I got to see the school following a multi-year reconstruction project and was totally blown away. Gorgeous common spaces and classrooms. An exterior patio good for fall and spring months for students to dine and socialize upon. A rooftop deck to be the envy of many business schools. I’m not going to lie – I found myself very jealous of the building the current students get to experience, compared to the outdated and modest version I spent far too many hours sitting in. I spent a little time sitting in Café 96, the school’s in-house cafe before departing for my hotel.

After my time with the students, I walked over to the nearby Hutton Hotel, which also holds a special place in my heart. When I came to visit the school in March 2010, I stayed here – and it’s a lovely boutique hotel which I actually reserved on AAdvantageHotels.com so I could get the AAdvantage loyalty points and miles. There used to be a restaurant here which offered what was then the best burger in Nashville for a mere $5 (Thursday happy hour) – I was a frequent diner here for that special and the drinks that accompanied that delicious burger. And while the restaurant is different now, the hotel is still quite charming.

By the way, check out the changes to Midtown Nashville since my first visit in March 2010 to November 2023. Just wild!

That night, the school had a gathering for some of their alums who have served or currently serve on the Alumni Board, and I took the time to reconnect with friends (both new and old) over life, career, family, and everything in between.

One of my fellow alums had the devious idea to head over to The San Antonio Taco Company (SATCO), which is across the street from the business school. This is the place where you go to get a little drunk and feast on cheap tacos. It’s not a Michelin-star kind of place…rather it’s the kind of place that makes any Owen graduate nostalgic for a different time in their life when the scale of one’s problems or concerns were relatively juvenile or innocent. You weren’t really a grown up yet – you were studying to get a degree and trying to get a better job and lot in life, and you could still make getting full and drunk on tacos and beers (respectively) the most difficult problem of one’s week. I already knew two of my fellow alumni (Cara and Neema) pretty well, but I didn’t know Eric as well or Jeremy at all – and what I have always loved has been finding new friends in very different lives/places from me, and yet having at the core of our identities the wonderful transformative experience of getting an Owen MBA and living in Nashville.

Day 2 (November 3, 2023)

I kicked my Friday off by having breakfast with Kenzie, a fellow Owen alum, at Barista Parlor (Hillsboro Village). We’d actually never met in person, having connected in 2020 as the Covid crisis raged – but having connected several times virtually, we finally connected live over coffee and breakfast burritos. Barista Parlor is very representative of the kinds of places that have been popping up (and thriving) over the last decade in Nashville. Beautiful interiors, lots of natural light, and a place where you don’t mind dropping $15 for breakfast.

I took a ride over to Tennessee Brew Works for two big reasons – one, to see its chef Alex Leibow, but also to have what I know for certain to be Nashville’s best burger, complemented by a kickass beer menu. I tried Alex’s burger in April 2018 when visiting one of my friend’s in Nashville, long before Alex and I got to know one another – and now whenever I am in town, I stop by to partake in this fine food and drink menu. I encourage you to do the same.

I moved back over to Vanderbilt for the Distinguished Alumni award celebration and ran into a couple current and former students in Brandon and Liza, whom I thoroughly enjoyed seeing. I spent the next couple hours schmoozing with other alums, but it was all building to the primary reason for this trip.

The Catbird Seat is a well-known restaurant in Nashville founded in 2011, when I was a second-year MBA student who couldn’t afford a meal there. I remember saving for several months in the run up to my graduation in May 2012 and getting a coveted reservation a month before I was due to move back to California after graduation. The morning of the dinner, the restaurant contacted me and my two best friends Anna and Sam, to tell us that they’d lost power and would not be able to serve us. They asked if they could reschedule us, but because I was due to leave town soon, none of their open dates would work for me. They instead accommodated us at Merchant’s, a restaurant that thankfully is still there in Nashville and produced some exceptional food. But in all the years since then, I’d never been back to Catbird Seat. Anna and Sam actually went there once and texted me a photo from the restaurant, which made me terribly jealous.

This time, when I got the reservation, I asked my friends if anyone wanted to join me, and my friend Nick was the one to oblige. We hadn’t seen one another in many years and this was a welcome reunion (since he was there for his 10-year MBA reunion).

The meal itself was a series of flashes, both blinding and ones we could see – but the 19 courses made our heads spin (in a great way). Every dish was exceptional. Every cocktail, well made. Every wine pairing, spot on. Now, in the moment, I could not tell you everything we ate because the flavors were so powerful and there were so many of them. Only in retrospect, with the help of my photos, the menu, and the descriptions the staff gave us live (of which I captured most of them on video), was I able to fully process the incredible menu we ate. The following pictures will recreate the journey, both in terms of dishes consumed (and what they were), drinks finished (I don’t have descriptions here), and both Nick and my reactions.

That’s all the food. If you’re still reading to this point, I commend you.

If you are so inclined to watch all of the descriptions the staff gave us about each course, have at it:

For the drinks and incredible attention to detail in the flatware, here’s two sets of pics for you:

And lastly, here is me and Nick at the end:

After our epic meal, we went downstairs…literally. Patterson House is directly below the Catbird Seat and is still the best bar in all of Nashville. It’s a high end place, so don’t expect to do shots here. A reservation will also help you get in. We met three of our classmates for a drink (one of whom is from Japan originally but came from Colombia, where he now lives, to see us!).

Day 3 (November 4, 2023)

My last day in Nashville ended with meeting my friend Tim for breakfast at Biscuit Love. This place used to be exceptional, but I feel the quality is falling. 😦 I had a chicken on a Hong Kong style egg waffle and it was just super disappointing!

I returned to Nashville International Airport where I was pleasantly surprised to find an outpost of Hattie B’s, the Nashville chicken joint which has spread in popularity (they have an outpost in Las Vegas now). Though commercialized now, this hot chicken spot is still slinging good food. And you can get a meal to bring on your flight with you, which will take you way less time than waiting at one of their brick and mortar spots. I would also like to take this moment to point out that Prince’s Hot Chicken is the original place that made Nashville Hot chicken a thing. Someone online described the difference as Hattie B’s making corporate what was invented by Prince’s, and I point this out because in Hot Hot Chicken: A Nashville Love Story, author Rachel Louise Martin speaks about the origins of the now eponymous hot chicken

Too often in history, ideas and concepts from the Black community have been made “popular” or “mainstream” by white individuals, and this is a story you all should know about (and I think it’s a book worth reading).

Final Thoughts

Nashville is special to me because of my connection to Vanderbilt but it’s still a beautiful city. It’s grown up from being the *town* I arrived at in July 2010 and it’s a big kid now. It’s full of music, great food, history, and many things beyond what I did on this trip (the Country Music Hall of Fame, the National Museum of African American Music, The Parthenon, or the Ryman Auditorium are but a few examples).

I think if your plans have not included visiting Nashville, you should rectify that.