A few weeks ago, the Iconic Loveless Cafe invited a few Nashville food bloggers for a tour and family style dinner. This meant down home country cooking including fried chicken, pulled pork, green beans, hash brown casserole, creamed corn, biscuits and, of course, pie. The pie choices included chocolate fudge, chocolate chess, key lime, coconut cream and more.
Nashville has a booming restaurant scene with new places opening every day, but it was such a treat to enjoy a meal at a place with such history as the Loveless Cafe is over 60 years old, founded in 1951 by Anne and Loni Loveless.
They only served fried chicken at picnic tables, often to travelers who stopped along the way as it’s close to Natchez Trace. The Loveless has gone through several ownerships, and in the early 2000’s was purchased by loyal Nashville locals and renovated.
The Moonshine Mixes at the Loveless Cafe
We started with a cocktail, the Countrypolitan, made with their moonshine mixers. These are perfect for a summer party.
Hams and Jams Country Market
We had a tour of the Loveless Cafe Hams & Jams Country Market, which showcases all their specialty food products, also available online.
The Loveless Cafe is known for their biscuits and incredible fruit preserves. The preserves are so intense in flavor, they are good to cook or bake with as they are made only with fruit and sugar. The peach is a favorite of mine as it almost has a liquor taste, and is wonderful in a grilled cheese. Their top seller is the blackberry preserves which I used for my blackberry cupcakes.
The biscuit recipe is a well guarded secret and can be traced all the way back to Anne Loveless. A biscuit mix is available, and of course, I always have you covered when it comes to biscuits if you need a good recipe.
Breakfast is served all day until 5:00 pm at the Loveless Cafe, and is legendary offering country ham, biscuits, and red eye gravy, made from the drippings of the country ham.
Shopping goes on all day long, every day, from 8:30 to 9:00 pm (opening earlier at 8 on weekends). Stop in and see all the gift items, and make sure you take home some country bacon.
The Loveless Barn has Many Saying I Do
The Loveless Cafe has a beautiful barn for weddings and events, and a separate catering menu. We sampled a few appetizers. You can choose a country menu or go for more modern options.
We got to try jerk chicken bites and pimento cheese balls. We especially liked the use of flowers in the presentation. I Imagine they could work with a brides colors.
Family Style Dining
I had two favorites dishes of the night…the pork pork with hoecakes, and the creamed corn, shown in the photo above. A hoecake is an unleavened corn cake, made with corn meal, water and salt, fried like a pancake. The pork was melt in your mouth tender.
I loved the corn so much because, while it’s creamed corn, there is no cream. This is my inspired recipe. It’s simply, corn, salt and pepper. (You can add butter if you like, but on my second try, I realized it’s not necessary).
Easy Corn Recipe: Loveless Cafe’s Inspired Creamed Corn Using Just Corn, No Cream
You simply can’t visit Nashville without a stop at Loveless Cafe and the Hams & Jams Country Store. In case you can’t get there, you can buy the preserves at the airport, and all the good stuff on line. One of my favorite cookbooks is the Loveless Cafe Dessert Book, where I’ve made the raspberry pie that I call the Scarlet O’Hara Raspberry Pie.
- 2 bags or 6 cups of frozen or fresh corn
- ½ cup water
- salt
- pepper
- Cook corn with water in saucepan according to directions or until warmed through.
- Season to taste with salt and pepper.
- Puree ¼ to ⅓ of the corn and add to corn.
- Taste for seasoning. Warm prior to serving.
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