The Valleyist Papers
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS WRITTEN IN FAVOUR OF THE IMPROVEMENT OF STEPHENS VALLEY
Author – William Ray
Edition 4. Issue 9.
Until the day that a truly SV-based restaurant opens in our SV Downtown, the Loveless Cafe will be considered our local restaurant. It isn’t a handy walk, and we sure must share it with scores of other patrons, but it is close and actually pretty cool. How it came to be the much-loved place it is today is quite a story. It is a good story and worth relating to everyone in SV.
In 1951, it was just a house on the rural outskirts of Nashville. The Natchez Trace ended far to our south, around Columbia back then. TN 100 was just a narrow country road, and SV was still just a working farm. Sill, Lon and Annie Loveless decided to start serving fried chicken and biscuits from their home on Highway 100 and it became the Loveless Motel & Cafe as they added some rooms and dining space.
Around 1959, they sold the business to Cordell and Stella Maynard and then in 1973 they sold it to Charles and Donna McCabe, passing along the original recipes with the transaction. When Charles passed away in 1982, their son, George McCabe, who had grown up on the Loveless campus, became a full partner with his mother. One of the first things they did was to end the hotel operations in 1985 and turn the rooms into storage space and overflow dining.
In 2003, something really important to the Loveless Cafe that we know today happened. A local group, headed by Tom Morales bought the property and unleashed a series of new ideas to implement there, while continuing to honor the old recipes, and many of the employees who made the old Loveless a success, they began to transform Loveless Cafe into a full-blown destination.
It is worthwhile to also talk some about Tom Morales. He created TomKats Hospitality from nothing but a brief background in cooking on a grill. You really owe it to yourself to listen to the recent story about Tom on WPLN’s This Is Nashville program. You can do that here https://youtu.be/UchvoRf85sI?si=ZkWdvlX7fz-LRBNV
Tom and his team not only saved the Loveless Cafe. In Feb–June 2004, he closed the cafe for the first time in 50+ years and hired Seab Tuck (Tuck-Hinton Architects). They kept the roadside look while adding a modern back-of-house (new kitchen and bathrooms), improved parking, and expanded dining—essentially “resurrecting” the institution without losing its soul. He created what we see there today, but his team also operates other local restaurants of note, like Southern Steak and Oyster, Acme Feed and Seed, Saffire (in the Factory at Franklin) and others. Beyond just creating restaurants, he had been a big part of making Nashville the foodie paradise we all enjoy today. His story is a major element of today’s Nashville.
In 2014, after Tom Morales had executed his vision for the cafe, he sold it to Charles A. “Chuck” Elcan and his wife, Trisha Frist. To say that these owners are successful businesspeople would be a vast understatement of fact. Chuck has been at the helm of several very big healthcare companies, and Trish is the niece of former Senator Bill Frist, they live just up the road in Belle Meade, and, presumably, often dine with us at the cafe.
So, Loveless Cafe grew from a roadside kitchen (1951) into a full-blown Nashville landmark. Tom Morales’ 2003–2004 intervention—preserving the facade, modernizing the guts, adding shops, and launching the Loveless Barn era—repositioned it from a fading classic to a revitalized, media-visible destination that could carry its biscuit-and-ham legacy into the 21st century.
What might be next for Loveless Cafe, and what part could SV play in the future? Destination restaurants tend to grow the economy around them smartly. Look down the road at Leiper's Fork to see how many shops can be supported around a restaurant waiting list. Also look up the road in far western Kentucky at the phenomenon of Patti’s. https://www.pattis1880s.com/ to see another example of what the Loveless Cafe’s future might hold. Is there a way to create a symbiotic relationship between Loveless Cafe and our coming SV Downtown? Would something as simple as a couple of shuttle buses pull SV and Loveless Cafe together? Intriguing, eh?
Here is the customary listing of upcoming musical events in our region:
August 28 McKinley James - Cheekwood Thursday Night Out
August 30 Crosby, Stills & Nash Tribute Band (Laurel Canyon Band) - Williamson County Performing Arts Center
September 6 Brothers Doobie - Williamson County Performing Arts Center
September 8 Eric Clapton - Bridgestone Arena
September 12 James Taylor - FirstBank Amphitheater
September 15 Coral Reefers Band / Doobie Brothers - FirstBank Amphitheater
September 20 SV Fall Festival
September 26 Jeff Coffin & Bill Evans - Franklin Theater
September 27/28 Pilgrimage Music & Cultural Festival - Harlinsdale Farm, Franklin
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