What Food Is Available on Broadway?

Broadway’s food options span a wider range than the street’s reputation as a drinking destination suggests. Between the classic honky-tonk bar food and the full-service restaurants inside the celebrity megavenues, you can eat reasonably well without leaving the strip.

The Honky-Tonk Standard

The classic Broadway meal is Robert’s Western World’s Recession Special: a fried bologna sandwich, a bag of Lay’s chips, a Moon Pie, and a PBR, all for $6. This is not ironic budget eating; it is a genuine food item that multiple publications and thousands of visitors have identified as a highlight of the Broadway experience. The fried bologna sandwich, served from a flat-top griddle behind the bar, is legitimately good. The $6 price point has been stable for years and functions as an anchor of affordability on an increasingly expensive street.

Tootsie’s serves a menu including BBQ sandwiches and a full kitchen through 1 a.m. Nudie’s Honky Tonk has a full food menu in its 100-year-old building. Legends Corner and The Stage focus on bar food basics.

The Celebrity Bar Menus

The megavenues brought full-service restaurant operations to Broadway that had not existed at this scale before. Jason Aldean’s Kitchen + Rooftop Bar has a kitchen overseen by Executive Chef Tomasz Wosiak, with a menu that includes steaks, pasta, salads, and the much-discussed peach cobbler. The kitchen is shared with Luke Bryan’s 32 Bridge next door, which has a similar menu range. These are not honky-tonk food operations; they are genuine restaurants that happen to be inside bars with live music.

Garth Brooks’ Friends in Low Places focuses on BBQ on its dedicated floor. Acme Feed and Seed at 101 Broadway has a sushi bar on the second floor alongside its more traditional Southern menu, which is an unusual combination but one that gets positive reviews. The ground floor of Fifth + Broadway across from Bridgestone Arena houses Assembly Food Hall, with over 30 food vendors including local and national concepts including a Prince’s Hot Chicken location.

The Practical Guide

If you want cheap, fast, and characterful: Robert’s Recession Special or a burger at The Stage. If you want a real meal at a table with a full menu and server: Jason Aldean’s, Acme Feed and Seed, or Nashville Underground, which has a full menu of Southern dishes and raw bar items on its four floors. If you want something that is not Southern American: Acme’s second-floor sushi bar. If you want to combine Broadway with dinner and avoid the megabars: the Assembly Food Hall at Fifth + Broadway is 300 feet away and has the most diverse food options in the immediate area.

Do not make a reservation for the celebrity bar restaurants expecting a sit-down dinner experience during peak hours on weekends. Walk-in availability at these venues drops to near zero by 7 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Either arrive early for dinner or treat Broadway as a drinking and snacking destination and eat at a restaurant elsewhere in downtown before or after.


Sources

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *