My Cruze Thru Nashville

Nashville, Tennessee is a destination I would never have put on my list of places to visit but I recently found myself back in the southern American city for a second time and loved it even more than the first. My 27 hour adventure was filled with good food, lush scenery and fabulous company, all while testing out the brand newly designed 2016 Chevrolet Cruze.

My Cruze thru Nashville started with an amazing dinner at a pop up restaurant called Little Octopus. The space where Little Octopus presently resides is a repurposed building that POP Nashville is using as an incubator for dining and event concepts as well as an event space that can be transformed to suit. What a cool way to showcase new restaurants and allow owners to grow and experiment. Each dish was innovative and rich in flavours. The grass fed burger with manchego (my fave) cheese, pequillo aioli, tomato and bibb lettuce was cooked to medium rare perfection. I tried farro (best described as a wheat grain like rice thing) for the first time. Amazing! It’s not very often that I look at a tasting menu and ask “what’s this?” but at Little Octopus, I asked a lot and ate a lot and loved it all. They’re moving into a permanent location this summer thanks to the massive success of their pop up location.

During dinner we were treated to a show of sorts. A group of 4 extremely talented songwriters took turns telling us a story about their career as a songwriter or the events that lead up to them writing a particular song before a huge country music star recorded it. They took us on a journey thru their lives, their music, their careers and Nashville’s country roots, all with captivating stories and  beautiful acoustic music.

The next morning we gathered to learn about the all new design of the 2016 Chevrolet Cruze. The biggest thing that stood out for me is that for 2016, the Cruze is the most connected car in it’s class featuring a phone interface called CarPlay (iOS) that integrates certain commonly used apps with the Chevrolet MyLink system (also available for Android). I have to hand it to GM for being at the forefront of safety and technology integrations for their vehicles. Once I plugged my phone into the MyLink via the USB charging cord, it made the apps un-usable on my phone, forcing me to become truly hands free. Brilliant.

Enough talk, lets’ get driving. I started off in the passenger seat and left the driving to my new friend and travel blogger, Marc Smith. We were given the keys to a Cruze Premier edition with all the bells and whistles, a full tank of gas and a book with directions for our first meeting point.

What happens when you leave 2 avid travellers in Tennessee with an open road?

Adventure!

The first unscheduled stop (that we almost missed) was Talley’s Bar B Que. No website, no twitter account, no address(?), actually, there was no restaurant. It was simply a sign on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and a group of men sitting around a smoke house waiting for the meat to cook. Sounds good to me! They were as curious about us and as we were about the sweet smell coming out of the pit and as southerners will do, they offered us a sample. It was good as far as bar-b-que goes but I suspect that they didn’t want their secrets revealed because when I asked what they put on the meat, one of the guys quickly grabbed a bottle and tucked it behind his back winking at me.

Second unschedule stop: YARD SALE! This one we actually passed and then both Marc and I looked at each other and said, “Yup, let’s go back!” Being about 40 miles (64km) outside of Nashville was unexpectedly amazing. It was green and lush with rolling hills and beautiful homes mixed in with farms and ponds. If we weren’t on a schedule, Marc and definitely I would have loved to #FindNewRoads getting lost out there for hours talking to locals, driving around, finding more yard sales and bar-b-que pits.

Lunch pit stop brought us to a place called Leiper’s Fork and The Country Boy Restaurant. Just like you’d imagine it, there was a lunch counter full of locals eating and visiting and a menu of southern cooking like fried green tomatoes, fried catfish sandwiches and and excellent mac and cheese that went perfectly well with my healthy chicken salad and strawberry milkshake! Of course! The service was best described as “sweet”. Oh that southern hospitality.

My turn behind the wheel and I safely drove us back towards Nashville with a stop to visit local cap maker, Otis James. Otis is the one man band behind this small textile shop that turns out hand made, custom fit caps. Starting his company from 2 bow ties his former boss’ daughter asked him to make as a gift for Father’s Day, he’s made (by hand) countless ties and bow ties as well as scarves and bandanas but has recently decided to focus his talents on caps alone. After spending the first leg of our drive with the very woman who is in charge of what the interior design of the 2016 Cruze looks like at Chevrolet, it was amazing to see the connection between fashion and textiles of the caps and ties and the console and dash of a vehicle. Both works of craftsmanship.

Back to home base, we dropped off the car and as fast as we arrived, we were back to the airport for the long journey home. My Cruze thru Nashville was amazing and so fun if albeit short. The 2016 Chevrolet Cruze is a comfortable, spacious, smart and well designed vehicle that will no doubt hold it’s title as Chevrolet’s most popular car around the globe. I love driving and my friends at GM/Chevrolet know it so, special thanks to the team at GM Canada and GM USA for inviting me on this trip.