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Walk Eat Nashville
Former Journalist Karen-Lee Ryan started Walk Eat Nashville Food Tours after returning home from a 3 year sabbatical to San Antonio. “I missed Nashville like crazy.” When they returned in 2014, Nashville had grown so much, particularly the culinary scene, that she barely recognized the place. So she launched Walk Eat Nashville. It started with a single tour of East Nashville and has since expanded to include six different itineraries on the East Side, Downtown, SoBro, and Midtown, spread out over five days per week.
“I wanted to focus on the diversity of the scene and our local independent restaurants. I didn’t want to only showcase traditional Southern food. We’re wedded to introducing our guests to the passion of the people in the industry.”
The Tour Guides
For that same reason, she’s also hired a group of guides made up of former journalists and food writers (disclosure: I’m one of them). “I hired journalists because we have all these fun tidbits and useless info rattling around in our heads. I wanted them to have a purpose,” Ryan explains. “Besides, they are great researchers and have incredible recall. I didn’t want our guides to have scripts, just the ability to tell fantastic stories about the city, its history, and our restaurants.”
The Tours
The featured restaurants must have their own stories as well. Ryan was very specific with her choices to include in her tours:
Groups of up to 12 guests meet at central locations like the Country Music Hall of Fame or the lobby of the opulent historic Hermitage Hotel to begin their culinary odyssey on foot. After a brief introduction by the guide, the groups set off to visit five or six local restaurants in the three-hour tours that usually involve about 1½ miles of walking. Not all of the stops are strictly food-related. The trip to the Hermitage includes a stop for photos in their famous downstairs men’s room (if the coast is clear), and the Midtown tour takes guests for a stroll through the beautiful arboretum in the middle of Vanderbilt’s campus.
The unique perspective of discovering a city from the sidewalk makes a difference in Ryan’s eyes. “We often get the 30,000 ft. view of a city in magazines or online profiles, but it’s so much better to get the view from ground level, as opposed to from a bus or on the back of a trailer being dragged by a party tractor.”
The Food
Drinks are served at some stops and serving sizes can vary from small bites to darned near a full meal at some destinations. At each establishment, guests are greeted by someone from the kitchen or a manager who shares the history and culinary philosophy of the restaurant. Some of the items served are truly iconic like a milkshake from Elliston Soda Shop, Nashville’s oldest continually operating restaurant in the same location, or the deviled eggs at Husk. Other samples just give guests a little taste of the restaurant’s flavor, such as the flaky Tennessee Twist from D’Andrew’s Bakery, a delicious deconstructed croissant with Tennessee prosciutto and house-made herbed ricotta cheese.
The Personalities
At The Farm House in SoBro, chef Trey Cioccia and his kitchen staff pride themselves on never serving the same dish twice after more than a hundred Walk Eat Nashville tour groups. Cioccia enjoys addressing the tour groups to share his culinary philosophy about food. “We don’t make a big deal about getting all our food from farms,” he jokes. “Where else is it supposed to come from? A test tube?!” Doug Stevenson is a long-time employee at Midtown Cafe and a great representative of the professional servers of Nashville. He regales Walk Eat Nashville guests with stories of his interactions with various celebrities he has served through the years, ranging from Robert Redford to Neil Armstrong to Pat Conroy. (But he won’t give up the recipe to Midtown’s famous Lemon-Artichoke Soup)!
In the end, Ryan feels it’s about so much more than just the food: “We’re feeding curiosity about Nashville. We want them to understand the culinary scene from behind the scenes.”
Walk Eat Nashville tours aren’t just for tourists, though. Ryan notes, “One of my favorite things is when locals tell me that they learned something on one of my tours. That gives me so much joy! When somebody local does one of our tours, they often want to do them all.”
Discover more about Nashville dining at walkeatnashville.com.
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