Local Love: Nashville Edition

This past weekend Nick and I took a quick trip to Nashville. We wanted to get away from the Kentucky Derby craziness here in Louisville. This was our first visit to the city and we were open to being spontaneous. I’ll include more about what we did in another post, but for now, let’s talk about some of the local restaurants. We managed to find two amazing vegetarian meals at two very cool locations. I want to recreate both of these dishes at home. We also had some found some room for dessert, of course.

The Wild Cow // This was a casual place in East Nashville suggested to us for dinner. I’ve never been to an all-vegetarian restaurant before (in all these years!) and I was almost overwhelmed by the choices. To start, we settled on the vegan queso dip, which also came with a green salsa and was served with blue corn chips. It tasted so much like real cheese! For my entree I ordered the Far Eastland Bowl (the restaurant is on Eastland Avenue.) Garlic kale, carrots, and tofu in a peanut sauce, served over brown rice. Although it was fantastic on its own, I added a little Sriracha and took it to a whole new level. Nick had the Buffalo Beans & Greens, which I got to taste – his was a good choice, too.

The Pied Piper Creamery // With all the exploring we did on Saturday, we had room for dessert. I got a scoop of Ziggy Starcrunch while Nick had Peanut Butter and Chocolate. We went close to closing and so many flavors were sold out!

Biscuit Love // While we were downtown on Sunday morning, we stopped in here for brunch. I’m glad we got there early because when we left there was a line out the door and down the street. It would have been worth the wait. Nick and I both ordered the Vegetarian Grits, with a biscuit on the side. When in the South…. The cheese grits were topped with a tomato sauce, sauteed kale, and scrambled eggs. With no prior experience, I expected the grits to be, well, gritty, but these were super creamy.