Darnell Hayes

Born and raised in East Nashville before it became the thing everyone writes about. My family has been in this city for four generations and I grew up eating hot chicken at Prince's — the original, not the franchise — and going to honky tonks on Lower Broadway when they were bars, not venues. Nashville's food story is meat-and-three diners, hot chicken, and the barbecue joints that have been smoking since before I was born. I take people to the places that fed this city before it became famous.