Eatin' Nashville Style in Milwaukee

Nobody wants to hear about your trip to Nashville. By now, we, all of us, the bartender and whomever you walked in with, plainly, even if they’ve never been there, get it. You went, you drove, it wasn’t that far, even, the Airbnb was affordable, everything was clean, more than one person called you “honey.” There was Dixie charm, but not too loud and brass band-y or ghostly or crime-ridden like New Orleans, not too hot like Austin, too gritty like Memphis, too big like Atlanta, too confusingly multicultural like Miami, too Mississippi or Arkansas like, Mississippi or Arkansas. There was a sense of downhome—but no need to step out of a mostly sterile, safe blue bubble. There wasn’t even really a need to leave downtown.

It's the city everyone is moving to, talking about, raving up, listicleing on, gentrifying at unprecedented levels, prompting the likes of the vibe on Todd Snider’s pissed off, get-off-my-lawn and out-of-my-East Nashville Eastside Bulldog album. Still, he’s just another in a sea of songwriters. And on your trip you got some cowboy boots, or looked at some, had a crazy bachelorette party, or ran into a bunch, realized you like country music, for a few days anyways and if you have enough to drink. You went to that place they went to in “Master of None,” you went honky tonkin’, whatever that means. You ate at Husk, tried a meat-and-three a local knowingly recommended, and had hot chicken and, yes, we wouldn’t believe how hot it was.

All of these stories have been told, all of the places are so well known even people that haven’t been there know Prince’s, know the lore of the city’s most famous dish—the mean-spirited, cayenne-piqued fried bird purportedly invented as gastrointestinal revenge on a stepping-out husband.

But here's one, just one more Tennessee tale, evoking the uselessness of Tums, exhibiting the true, unbridled potency of Nashville’s dangerous foodscape.

Somebody I know—the kind of person to make reservations at Husk weeks ahead, to plan the trip to make sure he could see Vince Gill at his weekly Monday night gig, a spicy food fanatic of the sort to research and know exactly what he was going to order, at Prince’s, and then at Bolton’s, to be so excited to first bask and baste in not-too-far away southern soul charm—walked out of his hotel for late, last night drinks on day number three of gluttonous malfeasance, and unexpectedly, suddenly, with great force and aggressive mess, defecated in his pants. By all accounts this was not a slip, but what Larry David might call a “go home stain.”

Disgusting, yes. But doesn’t it also indicate something else?

Maybe a selfless, sacrificial dedication to devouring a culture, a place. An act of taking one for the team—the tribe of curious, gastrointestinal foragers. Doesn’t it maybe get at the hardcore distance runner belief that if you don’t pass out when you cross the line, you could have gone harder? Maybe it speaks to the intensity of the devil hidden in the belly of Nashville’s obvious charms, of staring said devil down. Or is it indicative of worthy visceral toils, the hardwon lessons of a journey, physical pain mixing with adrenaline-pumping pleasure of adventure? Isn’t there something spiritual here, too? Like out of Castaneda. Like taking peyote, and needing to purge, in a movement toward truth. Is this forever-unnamed person a slob, a filthy miscreant unfit for society? Or something of a caloric hero? The Sisyphus of pants-shitting.

“Nashville-style” being KFC-level ubiquitous by now, it shouldn’t be hard to find out. So we set out to trace Milwaukee’s tributes to an overwrought, yes, overdone, certainly, but still most distinct, singularly experiential meal.

Editor's Note: The Foxfire Food Truck varies it's location weekly. See the Foxfire website for an up-to-date listing of locations.