Margaret Littman

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When Rick and Vicki Bolsom decided to retire and close their 26-year-old West End restaurant Tin Angel, it was bittersweet. Locals were devastated. The Bolsoms have been part of Nashville dining life for a generation. Before Tin Angel they owned the Cakewalk Cafe, where they hired Deb Paquette, who in turn went on to open Etc. and Etch, and changed the way Nashville dined out.

In 2017, Nashville surpassed Memphis (for the first time since 1890) as the biggest city in Tennessee and lately Nashville has been all anyone can talk about. But while Nashville has many charms, Memphis is finally getting its buzz back. And it’s all warranted. While oft-overshadowed, Memphis has a quirky food scene, a rich visual arts tradition, plus famous blues music, civil rights history and, of course, Elvis. This year Memphis celebrates its bicentennial—imagine 200 years of attractions ...

Like most entrepreneurs, Sarah Martin McConnell is determined. It was determination that led her to start Music for Seniors—a nonprofit that helps fight cognitive decline by bringing live music concerts and classes to the elderly—in 2007 while caring for her mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
“My mom was the inspiration for this,” says Martin McConnell, who is a singer-songwriter and as well as a social worker. “I asked if I could bring music and do a sing-along at my mom’s dayc...

Taking a look at programs and organizations that cut waste and redirect food to the hungry
Imagine the entire space of Nissan Stadium filled to the top with uneaten produce. The lettuce you forgot about in the back of your crisper. Those melon-sphere garnishes served with your omelet at brunch last week. Imagine an arena’s worth of that, piled layer upon layer, rotting away every day.
The stats are mind-blowing: Up to 40 percent of all food in the U.S. is thrown away.

There’s a number everyone in Nashville knows. No, not the new area code (that’s 629). No, not the address of the cheapest parking when headed downtown (2 Victory Ave.). Word around the city has it that, on average, 100 people move to town every day.

Whether it’s an exact number or not, it underscores the fast growth that Nashville and the middle Tennessee area it sits in have seen in recent years.

In this year’s ICBA LIVE host city, booming growth is music to community bankers’ ears.

Nashville likes its liquor. There wouldn’t be decades of songs about tears in your beer without the aforementioned beers. But the city’s drinking scene is more than just Broadway. For the latest installment of PUNCH’s “A Night at the Door,” which explores what gatekeepers witness nightly in cities across the country, we started at Tootsies World Famous Orchid Lounge on Broadway, which is indeed world famous.

From going plant-based to spending less and cooking more, here are some helpful tips for sticking to your New Year’s pledges
You made ’em — you might as well keep ’em. We’re talking about New Year’s resolutions, those pledges of optimism you vowed to keep last week. But unless you promised a life of pure asceticism, you probably still want to go out and have a social life. You can make that happen, too.
We’ve taken a look at the most common resolutions and scoured local food and drink options...

Our obits for the eateries that closed this year, and a look at what might be reborn where
A restaurant’s closing isn’t an actual death, of course, yet many of them we mourn. Most of us end up short of candlelight vigils and rending of garments, but we often post loving social media tributes and engage in long discussions about the departed. Some losses are mourned more deeply than others.

“Never been to Mississippi, and I see no reason to ever go,” went the sentiment I saw repeatedly on social media after the U.S. Senate runoff in the state last week. But travel enlarges us. It humanizes those and that which we fear.

Lipscomb and Fisk — both launching hospitality management education programs — plan to find out
It is a bit of an open secret: For all of Nashville’s “It City” culinary-scene chops, local restaurant service is not all that. Yes, restaurant food here is among the country’s best, from the variety of offerings to the quality. But service? Not so much. Servers are usually polite — hey, that’s the Southern way — but they may not know what it actually means to offer quality service.

Each May, about 168,000 locals and tourists stream into Churchill Downs to witness America’s greatest horse race, the Kentucky Derby. While the Derby is a must-do event, it’s also a time of year when hotels book up and attractions close because everyone else wants to see the Derby, too. Visiting the City of Beautiful Churches another time of year means you can take advantage of Louisville’s horse-racing traditions, but still see everything else that makes the city so awesome. Here’s our list of 10 things to do, see, eat and drink in Louisville over a long weekend.

In February 2017, Jocques Clemmons was killed by a police officer after a traffic stop and foot chase in the parking lot of James A. Cayce Homes in East Nashville.

The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department conducted an internal investigation of the incident and the Nashville District Attorney decided not to prosecute the officer responsible for Clemmons' death.

Clemmons was Black; the officer was white.

There’s a reason country music’s megastars (we’re talking the people who sell out stadiums) live in suburban Franklin and Leiper’s Fork, just to the south of Nashville proper. These towns seem like they’re straight out of a movie set, with perfectly manicured landscapes abutting preserved Civil War sites.

While it is kinda crazy postcard pretty, the area’s worth visiting even for those of us who don’t look like we just stumbled out of Instagram.

If Janett Liriano has her way, you won’t be using your FitBit much longer.
Liriano is CEO of Loomia, a New York-based firm at the intersection of tech and fashion. The company creates “intelligent drapeable circuits” that are soft enough to be embedded into textiles and can be safely washed and dried. Instead of wearing a step tracker on your wrist, it could be embedded into your running shoes.
That’s just the beginning of what these circuits can do. Those shoes might not just track your step...

“Ten years ago most people here did not know what this brown paste was,” says Anthony Brahimsha of the chickpea dip that is now nearly ubiquitous on menus in the U.S..
Born to Syrian parents, Brahimsha knew that hummus in the Middle East is much better than that found in American grocery stores. With the help of Mike McCloskey, owner of Select Milk Producers, the sixth largest dairy cooperative in the country, he developed a hummus called Prommus that is higher in protein –– three times that ...