• 1. Where to Stay
• 2. Where to Eat
• 3. What to Do
• 4. Insider’s Tip
• 5. An Oddball Day

(Photo: Courtesy of Loveless Motel & Café)

The fried-chicken baskets at the Loveless Motel & Cafe in Bellevue are a southern breakfast treasure. A typical morning meal includes slabs of country-cured ham and bacon, buttery biscuits, and homemade preserves. Post-feast, duck into the gift shop, where you can grab a whole ham as a souvenir.

Housed in a former brick gas station in the Five Points section of East Nashville, demure and pretty Margot Café offers Italian and French country-inspired fare. Chef-owner Margot McCormack opened the more casual Marché Artisan Foods last November; the European-style café and bakery turns out fresh pastries, house-cured salumi, and delicious, rib-sticking takeout dinners.

Nashville native Julia Helton’s Family Wash—located in a former Laundromat in East Nashville—is the kind of casual neighborhood place that makes you jealous of the regulars. Go in for a ploughman’s plate of seasonal cheeses followed by the shepherd’s pie or Guinness-braised lamb shank with white beans.

Published on Feb 28, 2007 as a web exclusive.