I drove up to Nashville on a Thursday night so that I could spend Friday in the Tennessee State Archives doing research for my masters’ thesis, but the weather was a complete wash-out, with rain that would not stop all the way from Memphis to Nashville.
Tennessee’s capital is in the middle of an unprecedented growth spurt, and its downtown in particular is becoming a city that I hardly recognize anymore. The rain was making things particularly difficult, but I recalled reading about a place that served Detroit-style pizza in Nashville, so I looked it up on my phone, and found it. The little bar was in a neighborhood called the Gulch, and was called Emmy Squared. It proved to be a Nashville branch of a New York City chain, and although I was wet and chilled after running from the parking garage to the bar, the interior was cozy, warm and inviting. The pizza proved to be quite expensive, but very delicious, and worth the cost.
Afterwards, I wanted dessert, and to my surprise, I saw on my phone that Nashville has gotten a location of Cafe Intermezzo, my favorite dessert place in Atlanta. Getting there was difficult to say the least, but after running in the rain, I came to a place with a huge Lavazza Coffee sign, but that turned out to be a completely different place, a late-night eatery called The Diner, which looked inviting. The Nashville location of Intermezzo turned out to be in the next block of Demonbreun Street, and was slightly smaller than its Atlanta counterparts, but it had the same excellent desserts and coffees. Being a huge Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup fan, I chose a chocolate and peanut butter cheesecake, and had a chocolate peanut butter latte as well! It was the perfect follow-up to my dinner. Then, with the rain continuing, I headed back to my Air BnB to call it a night. This is certainly not the Nashville I knew in my younger days!