Music, soul and southern sustenance: Nashville is having an incredibly brilliant moment.
By Melissa Hoyer
There’s a version of Nashville everyone thinks they know. Cowboy hats. Bachelorette sashes. Dolly Parton smiling down from every wall in town. Hot chicken that fights back. Keith Urban sightings. The neon stretch of Broadway blasting country covers into humid Tennessee nights.
That Nashville exists, and yup, it’s an absolute blast.
But stay a little longer, wander a little further, and something shifts. The Nashville locals know it as cooler, richer and considerably more interesting – and it’s that version that’s having its moment right now. With Arkansas (west) and North Carolina (east), one side is Memphis-adjacent and the other has a Smoky Mountains/Asheville vibe.
Thompson Nashville in the Gulch
Like any great adventure, it starts with where you sleep, because in a city this quirky and diverse, the room you retreat to matters more than you’d think. Thompson Nashville, in the buzzing Gulch neighbourhood, was recently named Nashville’s number one hotel by Condé Nast Traveler readers, and it earns the title easily.
Vintage touches sit alongside locally salvaged materials, there’s a rooftop bar worth lingering at, and the whole place feels less like a hotel than the home of someone with excellent taste and no shortage of it.
The Untitled Nashville Hotel – formerly The Bankers Alley Hotel
A short walk away, The Untitled Nashville Hotel – formerly The Bankers Alley Hotel – takes the opposite approach entirely: a former wholesale hardware warehouse turned boutique property that rotates art exhibitions through its spaces like a gallery that also happens to do room service.
Both properties, in their own way, understand something essential about Nashville – that good design and character are not mutually exclusive.
Tennessee whiskey tasting
The first night in my 5-night Nashville odyssey and it was straight to a 5-part Tennessee whiskey tasting in the penthouse of the Thompson, the ideal (!) soft-ish landing after the long haul from Australia which was a 15-hour Qantas flight from Sydney to Dallas – smoother and quicker than it had any right to be – followed by a short 90-minute hop on to Nashville. By the time our whiskey glass/es were sipped, I’m sure the jetlag had stopped arguing with me.
Fortunately, Nashville mornings don’t rush – they speak my language – but when they finally get going, they do it with a power-and-carbs breakfast.
Biscuite Love in the Gulch and other great eateries
Biscuit Love in the Gulch does brunch properly: order the B-Roll, a cinnamon-roll riff built from signature buttermilk biscuit dough rather than the usual yeasted version, topped with pecan sticky bun sauce and cream cheese icing. You’ll thank yourself later.
Downtown, D’Andrews Bakery & Cafe is a James Beard-nominated gem that feels like a Parisian patisserie that took a wrong turn somewhere over the Atlantic and ended up, quite happily, in the American South.
Out in the cool-school ‘hood of East Nashville, Cafe Roze on Porter Road is worth the detour too with a thoughtful and seasonal breakfast.
From our hotel the Gulch, it’s a very short trip to 12 South, where the afternoon slows down of its own as you browse the racks at Imogene + Willie and duck into the independent boutiques lining the street.
Where to find music in Nashville
Then, of course, comes the music, and this is where Nashville does what Nashville does better than anywhere else. The Grand Ole Opry is, obviously, on the list – 2026 marks its 100th anniversary, and the anniversary shows feel less like concerts than front-row seats to history in the making. It’s the world’s longest continuously running radio show, recorded live in front of a packed house every week; the night we were there, Darius Rucker and Australia’s Tommy Emanuelle were both on the bill, which tells you everything about the range this stage still commands a century in.
The Ryman Auditorium also carries its own particular weight. The acoustics, the worn wooden pews, the accumulated legacy of everyone who’s stood on that stage is enough to make even a jaded traveller go quiet.
Some great Nashville live shows
If the timing lines up, don’t skip Dolly Parton’s Threads show: My Songs in Symphony at the Schermerhorn; it’s only in town for a couple of months this year, and it’s worth planning around.
For something rawer and far more intimate, The Bluebird Cafe in Green Hills hosts open mic nights that draw serious, working songwriters into a room that holds barely sixty people. When someone plays, it feels less like a performance and more like the song was written specifically for whoever is listening that night. Oh, and this is where Taylor Swift hit the stage.
A VIP tour through the Gibson Garage was sublime and pulled back the curtain on craft and reverence in equal measure – hundreds of guitars deep, humming with the unmistakable sense that music here is never just background noise.
Museums and music halls
The Country Music Hall of Fame’s Dolly Parton: Journey of a Seeker exhibition is essential viewing, because Dolly, in every meaningful sense, is Nashville. The Taylor Swift Education Center is also worth lingering in before group tours (open to all) depart for the historic RCA Studio B, where Elvis, Dolly and Roy Orbison all once stood in front of a single microphone.
The National Museum of African American Music is a genuine standout among all of it, reframing the entire story of American sound in ways that feel both surprising and long overdue. Some of their immersive activities are brilliant having you can concoct your own soundtracks.
Next door is the Assembly Food Hall – an easy, high-energy pit stop with thirty-odd vendors spread across multiple floors, with live music folded through the culinary chaos.
Where to go for dinner in Nashville
Hattie B’s is the food move if you have tolerance at all for heat with their hot chicken as confronting as advertised.
Then there’s Brown’s Diner, a beloved local institution that looks like it hasn’t changed since the 1970s and, frankly, tastes like it never needed to. It is one of those quintessential places where even the locals seated at the bar looked straight out of central casting.
Meanwhile, evenings drift from Noko in East Nashville, where the Asian-inflected menu is genuinely world-class, to the rooftop glamour of White Limozeen – in all its pink, festive and unapologetically Dolly glory.
Bacco, at the Four Seasons, is the dinner option for when the city needs to feel a little more grown-up for an evening and a perfect choice before hitting up Broadway, with its long, glowing strip of absolutely joyous multi-level honky-tonks.
It turns out that the smallest Nashville moments lingered the longest – that slow drive through East Nashville’s tree-lined streets; a cold beer and boogie at a Broadway bar and wandering backstage at the Opry before dancing to a live Darius Rucker singing Wagon Wheel – that really hit home.
Whether you go for the music, the art, the history, the food or the fashion, Music City does gives something for everyone with a friendly and unmistakably authentic and creative culture that runs through the entire city.
Know before you go:
*Nashville is home tomore than 250 live music venues and more music museums than anywhere else in the world.
*The historic Ryman Auditorium has hosted everyone from Charlie Chaplin and Hank Williams to Jack White and Taylor Swift, while the honky-tonks of Lower Broadway showcase live music seven nights a week with no cover charge.
*Beyond country, expect Americana, rock, hip hop and bluegrass at venues like Ascend Amphitheater, the Station Inn, Rudy’s Jazz Room and Marathon Music Works, alongside the Grammy-winning Nashville Symphony at the Schermerhorn.
*Dubbed the “Athens of the South” back in the 1800s, Nashville backs up the nickname with Centennial Park’s full-size Parthenon replica, complete with a 42-foot statue of Athena – the tallest indoor sculpture in the Western world.
Nashville Music City fast facts:
*Estimated population 2,197,416 (MSA, 2025)
*12 million people live within a 2.5-hour drive
*75% of the U.S. market is within a 2-hour flight
*Nashville International Airport runs over 300 daily departures to 114 non-stop markets.
Melissa Hoyer was a guest of Music City – the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp (NCVC) – and flew to the US with Qantas
