When I travel, half of my excitement about the destination comes from its food. And with a city like Nashville, can you blame me? The first thing I did when I hopped off the plane was follow my nose (or my Yelp account) to find Nashville’s best family style southern food at Monell’s. They have three locations around Nashville, but I visited their original location in Germantown as it was in the downtown vicinity.

The restaurant is inside a large Victorian home which was built in 1905. When you step inside the front room, the host will escort you to a table with enough open seats for your group. The bigger the group, the longer you will most likely have to wait (they don’t take reservations). It was just my husband and I, so we were seated immediately! We were seated at the end of a huge dining table that had approximately 10 seats total. Oh, did I forget to mention that Monell’s is family style dining…

Why Visit Monell’s in Nashville?

NEW FRIENDS  Unless you have a huge group (like 10+ people), you will be seated at a large dining table next to other restaurant guests. Especially as a tourist in a new city, it’s such a fun way to meet locals and travelers alike. The plates of each food item were passed around family style and it was so much fun to eat with new people. Lots of laughter could be heard from each table in the restaurant as everyone got to know each other!

GREAT FOOD  The food choices are determined by the day of the week and time of day (breakfast, lunch, or dinner). Each meal will feature three different meats, and one of them is always their famous skillet-fried chicken. This was some of the best fried chicken I have ever had – apologies to my grandma whose chicken is now second best! The sides were fantastic as well – I was obsessed with some sort of creamed corn deliciousness as well as the roasted potatoes. Since we were there around 11am it was considered breakfast, and there were also yummy sausages, pancakes, and cinnamon rolls. The guy to my left joked about eating ALL of the leftover cinnamon rolls before he left, so you know they had to be good!

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FAST SERVICE & LOW PRICES  Since they are cooking the same entrees for everyone in the restaurant, it’s all ready to go when you sit down. We arrived just after the waitress had finished setting plates of food down on every bare inch of the huge table. Everything was refilled as quickly as it was eaten, and since this is a buffet, it just kept coming! All you can eat, high quality southern food will run you about $15 per person, including drinks. Not a bad deal, in my book!

Being just a few minutes from downtown Nashville, southern food at Monell’s is an excellent choice for any meal of the day! Make sure you grab as many pieces of that fried chicken as you can. I’m still thinking about it days later.

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