Dolly Parton's Nashville Restaurant

Lore & Background

Nashville has always been a city that eats and drinks as much as it sings. The Gulch, a strip of brick-lined streets and converted warehouses south of downtown, became in the 2010s the neighborhood where the city's creative class gathered after a long day of writing sessions, studio time, or radio work. The 9:00 Club arrived in that ecosystem in 2017, and its name—referencing the hour when Nashville's working musicians and writers traditionally hit the bar—immediately positioned it as a place of arrival rather than departure. You do not go to the 9:00 Club to begin your evening; you go because your evening has already been lived and now deserves a plate of food and a stool.

Dolly's personal connection to the kind of cooking served there runs deep. Growing up in Sevier County, Tennessee, in a family of twelve children, meals were communal, generous, and built on whatever the garden and the larder offered. Fried chicken, collard greens, biscuits that could hold their own against a whole side of gravy—these were not restaurant dishes to the Parton household; they were Tuesday. By bringing that vocabulary into a Nashville bar-and-restaurant format, Dolly translated a kitchen-table memory into a public space. The result is a menu that feels less like a curated experience and more like being invited into someone's home who happens to be very, very good at feeding you.

The restaurant also sits within the broader mythology of Dolly's Nashville. She has lived in the city for decades, has written songs on its streets, has performed in its theaters, and has built a life that is inseparable from the place. The 9:00 Club is a small, edible monument to that fact: a reminder that the woman who wrote 'Jolene' and 'I Will Always Love You' also thinks the best compliment she can receive is someone scraping the last bit of gravy off a biscuit and saying, 'You could make me stay for this.'

In Their Own Story

The rain came in sideways off the Cumberland, turning the Gulch into a river of amber streetlight and wet brick. Inside the 9:00 Club, the air was thick with the smell of buttermilk biscuits fresh from the oven and the low, honeyed murmur of a dozen conversations that had long since stopped caring about volume. A waitress with a cardigan over her shoulders set a plate of fried chicken in front of a man in a flannel shirt who had been nursing the same whiskey for two hours and was, by all appearances, writing a song. In the corner, a young woman on a break from the studio across the street sat cross-legged on a booth bench, eating collard greens with the quiet determination of someone who had skipped lunch to hit a deadline. The jukebox in the back was playing something with a pedal steel that made the whole room lean a little to the left. Nobody was in a hurry. Nobody needed to be. The rain kept coming, the biscuits kept stacking, and the city outside kept humming its low, eternal chord.

Reader's Guide

The 9:00 Club is Dolly Parton's Nashville restaurant and bar, which opened its doors in 2017 in the Gulch neighborhood, one of the city's most beloved gathering districts for musicians, writers, and food lovers. The concept is straightforward and deeply personal: a Southern-style eatery where the menu leans into the kind of generous, home-style cooking that defined Dolly's childhood in the Smoky Mountains. Think fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, collard greens, and sides that arrive in quantities that feel like an act of love rather than a portion size.

The personal motivation behind the venture is inseparable from Dolly's relationship with Nashville itself. She has called the city home for decades, has built her career within its orbit, and has always spoken about the community of working songwriters, bar owners, and kitchen staff who form the city's true backbone. The 9:00 Club is her way of saying that this community deserves a room that feels like a living room, where the food is honest, the drinks are cold, and no one is asked to perform for their dinner.

In terms of scale and impact, the restaurant has become a fixture of the Gulch's dining scene, drawing a mix of locals, tourists, and music-industry visitors. It has evolved from a single-location concept into a recognizable brand within Dolly's portfolio of ventures, sitting alongside Dollywood and the Imagination Library as an expression of her belief that generosity—whether in the form of a theme park, a children's book program, or a plate of good food—is the most durable form of legacy. The space has also become a natural gathering point during Nashville's major music events, where the city's creative class congregates between sessions, making the 9:00 Club as much a social institution as a restaurant.

Did You Know?

• The 9:00 Club is named for the hour that traditionally marks the end of a long day in Nashville's music and writing community, when the city's working creatives head out for a drink and a meal.
• The restaurant is situated in the Gulch, a neighborhood that has become central to Nashville's post-studio creative culture and is a short walk from many of the city's most famous recording studios.
• Dolly's involvement in the 9:00 Club places it alongside her other major ventures—Dollywood and the Imagination Library—as part of a broader pattern of building spaces rooted in Southern hospitality and community generos
• The Southern comfort-food menu reflects the kind of home cooking Dolly grew up with in Sevier County, Tennessee, where meals for a large family were communal, abundant, and built on simple, seasonal ingredients.