Arnold's Country Kitchen

Arnold's Country Kitchen is a Southern restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee. The business received a James Beard American Classics Award in 2009. The restaurant has also been featured on the television series ''Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives''.

The menu has included Southern greens, chess pie, cornbread, black-eyed peas, and country-fried steak. Arnold's patrons have long been considered a diverse cross-section of humanity: day laborers, politicians, the downtown business crowd, music industry titans, and tourists.

Operations

When Arnold's opened in 1982, it initially limited its hours of service to weekday lunch. At certain points it has served breakfast. In 2021, it added limited weekend and dinner hours with an elevated menu and a bar. Arnold's is located at 605 Eighth Avenue in The Gulch, a neighborhood that has been developed extensively since Arnold's opened. Once a barren, industrial train yard, the area is now filled with upscale high rises.

History

After operating a meat and three restaurant called Syvan Park Restaurant, Jack Arnold purchased it from owner Lynn Chandler in 1982 and named it Arnold's. He ran the business with his wife, Rose, and their children. Breakfast service ended after fifteen years when Rose took a nursing job at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Breakfast was re-introduced in 2003 with the help of Kahlil, Rose and Jack's son.

In 2001, Arnold's underwent exterior renovations. Parking spots were painted in its lot and the building's south wall got its iconic paint job: a yellow "Arnold's" on a red cinderblock wall. Kahlil took over operations in approximately 2008 following his father's retirement.

When the building's thirty-year lease ended in 2012, Rose and Kahlil purchased the property for $750,000. Over the next decade, the property value tripled.

Temporary closure

Rose Arnold announced on Facebook that the restaurant would be closing permanently in January 2023, stating that the choice was "100% our decision, on our terms" and that the family believed "the timing is right for us to now step away for some rest and to begin a new journey. The Arnolds began the process of selling the restaurant's valuable real-estate in The Gulch, but the sale fell through. Arnold's re-opened for a wildly popular four-day Thanksgiving pop-up, and again in January 2024 to "temporarily" resume lunch service. After several weeks, the family took the property off the market and planned to keep Arnold's open indefinitely under Kahlil.

In August 2024, owner Kahlil Arnold announced a second location would be opening in North Nashville in early 2025 with sit-down service and reimagined versions of classic menu items, such as sandwich or taco adaptions.

Arnold family

Jack Arnold was born in 1937 and started working in restaurants in his early teens. He attended Vanderbilt University before dropping out for restaurant work. He coped with the difficulties of life with alcohol and waitresses, and his first marriage ended after four children. Jack was known to carry guns, which he shot at the sky to scare away attempted thieves. When he was 36 he met Rose Arrieta, a Colombian-born 16-year-old. Despite her parents' hesitation, they married the following year in 1974 and had five children. Local meat-and-three restauranteur Lynn Chandler, founder of successful businesses such as Elliston Place Soda Shop, hired Arnold to run an Eighth Avenue restaurant called Sylvan Park Restaurant, and Jack Arnold purchased and renamed it in 1982. Jack, who had nine children, typically wore overalls and a bow tie and was known for his large personality and risqué humor.

The Arnold family has remained closely involved in daily operations. Jack and Rose's five kids were often woken up at 4:30am to work in the restaurant. Rose worked as a cashier. She eventually cut back her hours in the mid 1990s to get a nursing degree and work in the Vanderbilt hospital. Rose said Kahlil had worked in the Arnold's kitchen since he learned to walk. "I must have fired him a million times. But he’s so cute I keep hiring him back." Though the did not initially plan to spend his career in the restaurant industry, Kahlil, the family's third son, transferred from Tennessee Tech to Middle Tennessee State so that he could work at the family business while finishing his criminal justice degree. He worked in other Nashville restaurants before returning to run Arnold's in 2005. In 2021, Kahlil’s son Barrett moved back from Chicago to help with the business. He and Barrett created 7Up pancakes, an Arnold's breakfast staple.

Reception

Food & Wine named Arnold's one of the best cafeterias in America and called its meats and local produce "some of the highest-quality cooking ever to grace a cafeteria line". It was featured on Diners, Drive in and Dives, and has been called the most prominent meat and three in operation. When it announced its closure, many eulogized Arnold's including chef and television personality Maneet Chauhan, who first had Arnold's on a Nashville trip in 2010. Notable guests include Dolly Parton, who ordered chicken livers and creamed corn for takeout, and Chet Atkins, who was a regular and once missed a call from the president because he was at Arnold's.

External links

James Beard Foundation video on Arnold's (2009)

See also

* List of ''Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives'' episodes
* List of James Beard America's Classics
* List of Southern restaurants

References

{{Reflist

1982 establishments in Tennessee
Companies based in Nashville, Tennessee
Restaurants in Tennessee
Southern restaurants
Defunct America's Classics winners