The American south is known for indulgent dining. It's where "fried" is an everyday commodity, a region where fried chicken is as common as water. Favorites like fried green tomatoes, fried catfish, and even fried pickles can be found on restaurant menus and family tables across the state of Tennessee. If you can eat it, you can fry it! Champy's Famous Fried Chicken is known for its fried favorites and is a Tennessee born and bred institution that serves up some of the best southern fare in the states. Learn all about it below, and perhaps plan a visit for yourself!
Champy's Famous Fried Chicken is known for its special, Southern-style fried chicken. It's a locally-owned Tennessee chain that has expanded to seven locations across the states of Alabama and Georgia.
Seth and Crissy Champion, the owners and dreamers behind Champy's, have historically used their family's own recipes to create a decadent dining experience. Each location is also artfully and quirkily designed.
Champy's is best known for its fried chicken - check out that sandwich! - but you can also expect anything from farm-raised catfish to shrimp dishes. You may find tamales on special, sides of fried green tomatoes, and sausage, cheese, and pickle plates.
Come for the chicken, come for the catfish. Come for the friendly family vibes and the low-key atmosphere. Come for a cold glass of beer or an icy cup of soda.
Champy's Famous Fried Chicken made its start in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the sensational popularity of the fried chicken chain has been honestly earned. The menu is both diverse and delicious, and there's truly something for everyone.
Will you be joining in the fun? There's really no place like the ever-original Champy's! Make sure you check out your chosen location's hours by way of their Facebook page.
I love those adventures that take you away from the busy common places, and you find yourself in a new charming little town. That is what you will find with Loudon, and right in the heart of this community is some good ole classic southern cooking in Tennessee. Angie’s Kitchen may be fairly new; however, a trip there will make you feel like you have been there a hundred times. With a warm, welcoming atmosphere and comforting familiar foods, you will feel right at home in this little restaurant.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one perfectly summarizes what to expect when you enter Angie’s Kitchen. The staff knows how to have a good time, and they are there to ensure you do, too. Time and time again, when you ask locals and visitors about this small-town restaurant, they will tell you that the staff is very friendly and welcoming. I would completely agree. One of the biggest draws to Angie’s Kitchen is the people, and equally important is the delicious food.
The staff and owners simply embody the Southern hospitality we all know and love. They often refer to their guests by name and make sure you feel at home while enjoying your meal. Expect to laugh and feel known whenever you stop for a dish at Angie’s Kitchen.
This restaurant is all about delicious comfort food, mostly homemade and perfect for a true Tennessee experience. Seasonal treats like soups on a chilly day will warm you up just as much as the staff's friendly smiles and excellent service.
The portion sizes are very generous, so you won’t leave feeling hungry. Just looking at this juicy Bar-be-qued beauty, I feel like I could sink my teeth in it right now.
The interior is bright and colorful, indicative of the vibe in the dining area. With its pops of yellow and black, it reminds me of sunshine, which is very fitting to the overall experience. Food brings happiness when it is this good, and I can’t help but smile every time the owner greets another customer.
Everyone wants to be known and feel loved and you might not get that everywhere in this world by you are sure to find it at Angie’s Kitchen. Sink your teeth into some true Southern cooking in Tennessee and find your way to the small town of Loudon. If you want to browse the menu and see the latest happening at this restaurant make sure you check out the Angie’s Kitchen Facebook page.
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The whole Loudon area is such a great part of Tennessee to visit, it may be off the beaten path but well worth the trip all by itself. Make your stay a little bit more memorable by staying in this tiny home and spending the next day exploring history at Fort Loudon State Park.
When I recently met a long-time friend in my old hometown of Music City, it was quite the reunion. For this much-needed, in-person check-in after more than four years, we decided on The Butter Milk Ranch, a popular bakery and brunch restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee, along the buzzy 12 South neighborhood thoroughfare.
We both loved the mid-century look of the building and the thoughtful blend of vintage and modern finishes inside that made the atmosphere feel more classic than dated. As we expected, the place was packed for Sunday brunch - as most places in this neighborhood have been for years. The infamous angel-wings mural is a stone's throw away, as are dozens of cute shops, coffee spots, and other restaurants that lure as many or more tourists as locals.
One of those other restaurants is Urban Grub, a casual-yet-upscale dinner destination that opened in 2012. Its ownership group opened The Butter Milk Ranch in 2021, a year after my friend and I last saw one another. She'd moved to another state when a massive tornado outbreak decimated parts of my (and our friends') East Nashville neighborhood on March 3, 2020, and returned to help with cleanup. Needless to say, this meeting was under much better circumstances.
Thankfully, she'd secured an early spot on the waitlist, which is only available during business hours (you can't make reservations). We had a nice spot in the front room with plenty of filtered sunlight coming in through the building's glass front, through which we could see the busy street scene. The warm wood and generous greenery made the space feel cozy, even when full.
As for the meal, we started with breakfast cocktails - a blueberry lavender mimosa for me and a BMR Irish coffee for her - and the most light, flavorful beignets with brown butter, lemon curd, and brown butter "snow." I ordered a seasonal salad with mixed greens, beets, and tomatoes, while she ordered the Avocado Benny with hollandaise - a take on eggs Benedict using a cube croissant foundation. We shared generous side servings of cheesy stone ground grits, fresh fruit, and bacon.
We were pleased with our meal, grateful for the time together, and hugged before parting ways, neither realizing we'd been dining at a place we'd both frequented decades before. We even made small talk about it as we ate, pondering exactly what business had been in the building before and its location in proximity to the building that once housed Katy K's Ranch Dressing. Katy K's was a custom and vintage western clothier shop that was a hipster hotspot from the late '90s until 2015, when it closed due to rising rents.
Owner and designer Katy Kattelman was a noted figure in New York City fashion, music, and art circles of the 1980s, where she launched her fashion brand before moving and reestablishing it in Nashville in the early 1990s. She operated a shop in Midtown before moving to the 12th Ave. South location, where she long predated the slew of trendy shops you see there today.
As for us, it turns out we were sitting there eating scrumptious food, chatting away, while mentally trying to orient our location around the Katy K.'s landmark we both knew well from many years ago... while sitting on the site of it. If that's not indicative of people who lived through Nashville's growth boom and leaving, I do not know what is.
While The Butter Milk Ranch clearly took design cues from the original building, the façade is much larger in scale, with replicated rock wall details. Aside from a large portrait of Dolly, there were few if any other hints of cool, country kitsch that defined the vibe at Katy's - and really, much of all that was cool about Nashville in its early days of growth. Not to say it isn't now, especially to people who are delighted by different things. As for when I arrived in 1998, you just had to be there!
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Despite my nostalgia, I've got nothing against this delightful bakery and brunch restaurant. To the contrary! The service was great, the food fantastic, and the atmosphere lovely - surely even more so to those who do not know or yearn for a Nashville that was.
I will certainly be back, and I might just sneak a Katy's button, a Bettie Page figurine, a kooky belt buckle, and a pair of fuzzy dice onto one of those shelves for posterity.
We'd love to hear about your visit to The Butter Milk Ranch when you go. You can check out the full menus on The Butter Milk Ranch website and keep up with the latest news on The Buttermilk Ranch Facebook page.
If you're looking for a luxurious stay in the heart of downtown, consider the highly-rated JW Marriott Nashville. Located adjacent to Music City Center convention center, it's almost exactly three miles north of The Butter Milk Ranch.
