Nashville breakfast has two modes: the long-standing Southern tradition and the modern brunch-restaurant version that has taken over the city in the last decade. They coexist and serve different purposes.
The Traditional Nashville Breakfast
The traditional Nashville breakfast is built on biscuits. Not the soft, fluffy, forgettable kind that come from a can or a chain. Scratch-made biscuits with a flaky exterior and a dense, tender center, served with butter and preserves, or split and covered in sausage gravy, or stuffed with country ham.
Loveless Cafe on Highway 100 in west Nashville has been making the same biscuit recipe since 1951. The recipe has never been published. USA Today called them “Nashville’s second-most-important contribution to American culture.” The biscuits are made fresh throughout the morning service, and the standard order is biscuits with country ham, eggs, and red-eye gravy, which is made from coffee and ham drippings. Loveless serves well over 500,000 guests per year and remains a standard benchmark for what Nashville breakfast can be.
Beyond biscuits, a traditional Nashville breakfast might include: pork chops and eggs, fried green tomatoes, grits (both plain and as the base for shrimp and grits), hashbrown casserole, fried chicken strips alongside eggs, and pancakes at dedicated breakfast diners.
Pancake Pantry
Open since 1961 at 1796 21st Ave S in Hillsboro Village (with a second SoBro location at 220 Molloy St). The Pancake Pantry offers 23 varieties of scratch-made pancakes, including sweet potato, buckwheat, blueberry, and cinnamon roll. Hours are 6am to 3pm daily. The line regularly wraps around the building on weekend mornings, particularly between 9am and 11am. Going before 8am or after 1pm reduces the wait significantly, as does visiting Monday through Thursday. The weekend wait is 30 to 90 minutes depending on the day and time. The cinnamon cream syrup served with the pancakes is the secondary reason people return.
Meat-and-Three Breakfast
Several Nashville meat-and-threes serve breakfast. Elliston Place Soda Shop opens early and serves a full country breakfast including country ham, eggs, and biscuits. Wendell Smith’s on Charlotte Avenue opens at 6am. These are for people who want breakfast from someone who has been cooking it for decades, served on a plate without a filter.
The Modern Nashville Breakfast Scene
Biscuit Love (multiple locations, starting in The Gulch) is the most direct connection between traditional and modern. Founded as a food truck in 2012 and opened as a restaurant in 2015, Biscuit Love makes the Bonut (fried biscuit dough with lemon mascarpone and blueberry compote), the East Nasty (fried chicken thigh, cheddar, sausage gravy on a biscuit), and the Princess (hot chicken biscuit). Lines form early on weekends. Weekday mornings are significantly more manageable.
Stay Golden in The Nations neighborhood (open from 7am) serves specialty coffee alongside crispy yeasted waffles and is considered one of the better early-morning options for people who want good coffee alongside food, rather than food as an afterthought to the coffee.
Milk and Honey at 214 11th Ave S in The Gulch opens at 6am seven days a week, making it one of the few full-service breakfast spots in Nashville that operates on a schedule aligned with how people actually live.
The Bottom Line
A Nashville breakfast at its most characteristic is a biscuit with something hot on or in it, a side of grits, strong coffee, and a glass of sweet tea. The modern version adds avocado, specialty espresso drinks, and a 45-minute wait. Both are real. Which one you want depends on why you are in Nashville.
Sources
- Loveless Cafe, lovelesscafe.com
- The Pancake Pantry, thepancakepantry.com
- Seeing Tennessee, “Is Nashville’s Pancake Pantry Worth the Wait,” seeingtennessee.com
- Notes on Nashville, “Pancake Pantry Alternatives,” notesonnashville.com
- Yelp, The Pancake Pantry listing, yelp.com
- Notes on Nashville, “Meat-and-Three Restaurants,” notesonnashville.com