8 hours Ago By [email protected] (Danny Bonvissuto)
Date Night is a multipart road map for everyone who wants a nice evening out, but has no time to plan it. It’s for people who want to do more than just go to one restaurant and call it a night. It’s for overwhelmed parents who don’t get out often; for friends who visit the same three restaurants because they’re too afraid to try someplace new; and for busy folks who keep forgetting all the places they’ve driven past, heard about, seen on social and said, “Let’s remember that place next time we go out.
” Out-of-state friends: We’re coming to Nashville for the weekend! Me: Yes! Friends: Let’s have dinner Friday night! Me: 100 percent in. Friends: You pick the place! Me: [Paralyzed with overwhelm] These friends are well-traveled people who cook and entertain, and the only parts of town they’d see on their short visit were the Gaylord Opryland Resort and downtown. I not only wanted to show them where real Nashvillians eat, but also tried to shoehorn everything I love about this city — its foods, flavors and people — into one restaurant.
I made multiple lists and reservations and settled on a spot I’d never tried, which failed predictably under the weight of my expectations. The next night they wanted to walk around Lower Broad, so I suggested we meet at Assembly Food Hall, where they happily waited in line too long for Prince’s Hot Chicken. They arrived at the table with two trays of fried fowl, plus a T-shirt and trucker hat.
We had deep discussions about the merits of shoestring versus wedge fries and what does and does not make an acceptable ranch dressing while they took photos of each other biting into atomic red sliders. We topped it off with a vodka snow cone and a flight of raw cookie dough, which were both disgusting. They loved it all.
I had balanced out my loss with a win but couldn’t shake my original question: Where could I take visitors to eat if I wanted to show them my Nashville? Where do I feel most at home? What restaurant do I feel so strongly about I’d picket and protest should any corporation try to knock it down and build more condos and coffee shops? San Antonio Taco Company This time last year, my family celebrated my twin niece and nephew’s 21st birthday on the SATCO patio: I stuck a candle in a Styrofoam bowl of queso and lit it, and they made their wishes. Meanwhile, at the table next to us, four people were looking at an order sheet — a clear sign they were first-timers. I took it upon myself to be their personal SATCO concierge.
You don’t sit down with an order sheet at SATCO — you get in line, grab a pencil, write your first name and circle “for here” or “to go.” Make your selections: food on the front, drinks on the back. All tacos are soft unless it says “crispy.
” Circle the toppings you want, otherwise it’ll just be chicken in a tortilla. Hand the order sheet to the cashier when it’s your turn, then get your drink and cross the black-and-white-tiled floor for napkins, utensils and plastic souffle cups of pico and salsa. Wait patiently for the gentlemen making your food behind the line to call your name.
When that happens, grab a tray and put all the food on it. If you order different kinds of tacos, they will be wrapped in foil and indistinguishable from each other, so you’ll have to open each one to figure it out. As it has always been, so shall it ever be.
It thrilled me to usher those people, who were visiting from London, though the process, because it’s been a long time since my first time. Every version of Danny I’ve been for the past quarter-century has walked up the wooden steps from the sidewalk along 21st Avenue to the sounds of Skynyrd and ambulance sirens. I’ve heard “Slow Ride” by Foghat there so many times that, when I hear it in other places, I immediately crave queso.
San Antonio Taco Company I started eating at SATCO with co-workers from my first real job (which was working the front desk of the very alternative-weekly newspaper you’re reading). Dom and I went there on one of our first dates with a deck of Uno cards. I plopped my baby boy down between the metal Corona and Pacifico tables in his carrier, and he napped in the shade of the big tree that covers the entire patio.
SATCO was the only Nashville food I craved for the 14 years I lived out of state, and the first place I’d go when I came back to visit — one time straight from the airport. The Food & Drink Issue 2025: Nashville Classics From fish and chips to banana splits, here are 48 exemplary takes on classic menu items I’ve changed; the food never has. My order is three bean-and-cheese tacos with guacamole, one order of queso and chips, and a small ranch dressing (into which I dip the tacos).
Sometimes I’ll share my queso — which is orange-ish and both thick and thin in the way only processed cheese food can be — sometimes I get my own. Sometimes I add a mixture of pico and salsa; sometimes doing so makes it too cold and watery. Dom has toyed with his order over the years and is currently in his “half-order of wings (wet) and two bean-and-cheese taco” era.
Our teen requests a dozen flour tortillas, which are made fresh on a conveyor belt contraption (surely there’s a more technical name for this) behind the line, any time we visit. I heat leftovers in the microwave at home and fling them to him like a Frisbee. Because I started eating there when I was young and single, SATCO always feels like escape and freedom to me.
When I feel heavy with the weight of responsibility, I find a red plastic chair in a sunny spot and watch people walk the wooden runway that separates the right and left sides of the patio — students, medical professionals with their ID cards flapping in the breeze, families, tourists and, on our most recent visit, a guy in a white bunny suit and cowboy boots. Opened in 1984, SATCO is one of a very few old and beloved Nashville restaurants that’s still standing. It’s not over-branded or heavily merched up.
As of this writing, their last social media post was on Facebook a year ago. There are no specials or happy hours. Nothing costs more than it’s worth.
It’s never tried to be anything other than basic, solid and consistent, which is ironically what makes it stand out. Sarabhas Creamery It’d be easy enough to make a left at the bottom of SATCO’s steps and walk 10 paces to Ben & Jerry’s, but the combination of longtime-local tacos and chain ice cream has always felt off to me. I thought our only other option in the area — which is strangely a bit of a dessert desert for being so close to a college campus — was to walk into Hillsboro Village for a Crumbl cookie.
But I dug a little deeper and turned up something I hadn’t seen before. So we turned right, walked past the Panera (formerly Burger King) and Starbucks to the two-story building anchored by Subway (formerly Kinko’s), where there’s an Indian creamery and coffee shop on the top floor. Sugar Shock: Ice Cream Dreams At Sarabhas Creamery, Gursharan Singh and Manpreet Gill offer unbeatable Indian-style ice cream Opened in 2022 , Sarabhas offers flavors I’ve seen before (chocolate, peanut butter and chocolate, butterscotch, strawberry, mango) and those I hadn’t — kesar (saffron), chai spice, Indian coffee, cardamom raisin, rose tutti frutti.
Everything is made in house. We got a lemon chai and a flight of ice cream — $19.99 for 9 scoops — and spent the next 10 minutes deciphering what was what, like a game of Name That Cream .
Students came and went, getting a quick cone to go or hanging out with friends and playing Shut the Box . The decor initially struck me as odd: How on earth do a vignette of albums, fake ivy plants and signs including “good vibes only” in neon, a massive red metal “Music City” and two pieces of wall art about harvest and fresh fall pumpkins go together? But the longer I sat there, the more I appreciated that, like SATCO, Sarabhas isn’t polished, perfect or trendy. Perhaps that’s the key to being timeless.
Maybe a decade or two from now, one of the students there that night — possibly the guy in the Buc-ee’s pajama bottoms — will bring his family to Sarabhas. Maybe he hyped it too much and bored them a bit with stories from his college days, but they’ll indulge him. Then they’ll all eat the same mango waffle cones, but his will taste better and satisfy him in a way they wouldn’t understand.
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