No Title 2084
Supplement to “Tennessee Travels”
MORE PLACES TO SLEEP TIGHT AND EAT RIGHT IN TENNESSEE
The Chattanooga Choo Choo/Holiday Inn (www.choochoo.com), a complex comprising accommodations (including stationary train car), restaurants, shops, railroad museum, and authentic New Orleans trolley, celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. Room rates $139.99-$229.99.
Sleep like the King in Apartment #328 at Lauderdale Courts (www.lauderdalecourts.com) in Memphis where Elvis lived from September 1949 to January 1953. The 689-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment, originally part of the Roosevelt-era WPA housing development, is now on the National Register of Historic Places and has been revived to reflect the life and times of young Elvis and his parents Vernon and Gladys in the early 1950s. Rates are $250 per night; $10 per tour.
In Nashville, revel in the recently renovated and resplendent Union Station Hotel (www.unionstationhotelnashville.com), with its imposing Gothic design replete with lofty turrets and towers. Rates start at $135 per night for business travelers when staying several nights.
The new Hutton Hotel (www.huttonhotel.com) offers industry-leading initiatives in sustainability, including energy-conscious lighting and recycling. Rates start at $199 per night.
Follow your nose to Rembrandt’s Coffee Shop, located in Chattanooga’s Bluff View Art District (www.bluffviewartdistrict.com), for homemade breads and pastries washed down with freshly ground coffee, roasted on-site.
In Memphis, head to the basement and the Rendezvous Restaurant (www.hogsfly.com/TheRestaurant.php) for some of what the “Pork Barbecue Capital of the World” is famous for: a slab of succulent ribs.
The charming Loveless Café (www.lovelesscafe.com), a landmark in the South since its doors opened in Nashville in 1951, is famous for its Southern-fried chicken, award-winning country ham, red-eye gravy, and scratch biscuits with homemade preserves.
Place an order at Prince’s Hot Chicken, Bolton’s Hot Chicken and Fish, or 400º—hot chicken “shacks” where you can taste Nashville’s most notable contribution to Southern culinary culture: a delicacy known as hot chicken. It’s spicy hot and delicious and considered a best-kept secret, yet every Fourth of July, the city celebrates this culinary treat during the Hot Chicken Festival (www.nashvillehotchickenfestival.com) that includes both professional and amateur cooking competitions, inflatable “jumpies” for the kids, the Yazoo Brewery beer garden, and legendary Nashville music.
The Old Mill Restaurant (www.old-mill.com) and its cousin, the Pottery House Café and Grill, are mainstays of Pigeon Forge dining. Their baked goods—biscuits, piecrusts, artisan breads, muffins—are made with flour and cornmeal ground at the adjacent Old Mill, built in 1830 and still in operation, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. With a gift shop next door, you can take your food and other memories home with you.
To read the Kentucky Living July 2009 feature that goes along with this supplement, go to Tennessee Travels.
