Tag: Emmy Squared

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Dinner, Jazz and Dessert in Nashville

The South Central Chapter meeting of the American Musicological Society was held in March at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, and the trip gave me an opportunity to spend a Friday evening in Nashville, as I was not scheduled to give a presentation until Saturday.

So after checking into my hotel in Murfreesboro, I drove up to Nashville to go to my favorite pizza place, Emmy Squared, which specializes in Detroit style pizza. But as I arrived in The Gulch district where it is located, it began raining, and I had to walk through showers to make my way to the restaurant. The place was crowded, and I had to wait nearly an hour, but the pizza was just as good as I had remembered from my first visit several years ago.

After dinner, I decided to go to Rudy’s Jazz Room, which is the new jazz club in the Nashville area, after the venerable F. Scott’s closed some years ago. I had not heard of the jazz pianist who was playing, but he was quite good, and I enjoyed the entire experience. Rudy’s Jazz Room is in fact a room for listening, and despite the place being crowded indeed, I was able to be seated comfortably and to hear the music. Low lighting and the ambiance of a living room characterized the club.

Afterwards, I wanted to grab a dessert, and fortunately Nashville has a branch of Atlanta’s great Cafe Intermezzo. Although it closes earlier than the original location in Atlanta, I was able to get in and to enjoy a piece of chocolate peanut butter cheesecake and a Viennese coffee. It was a great way to end a fun night in Nashville before driving back to Murfreesboro and to bed.

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A Rainy Night in the New Nashville

    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!