Learn additionally: “Fido’s Last Fetch: A Have a look at the Cafe’s Lengthy Legacy.”
Because the clock ticks down on Fido’s deliberate shuttering in 2028, a clean guide stationed within the cafe’s foyer invitations patrons to share recollections of the Nashville stalwart. Its pages are crammed not solely with phrases like “Thanks for the recollections,” but additionally extra particular and private reflections. One entry is from a patron who selected Fido as their final dining-out vacation spot earlier than mind surgical procedure; others embrace a reminiscence of studying the ultimate Harry Potter guide from begin to end within the cafe and a former Taylor Swift worker’s recollections of snagging breakfast there.
For 29 years, the Hillsboro Village spot has given Nashvillians someplace to take a seat and keep
One entry reads, “This constructing took years off my life that I can by no means hope to regain and but nonetheless I come again … like Stockholm Syndrome.” And one other: “Large life moments occur right here for younger adults.” Folks definitely like Fido, however in addition they just like the recollections they made there.
Smyrna native Janvier Christine first got here to Fido as a 13-year previous and seemed ahead to creating it her personal private Central Perk (à la Mates) when she acquired older. Earlier this yr, understanding of Fido, she created her model Woogirling, a web page meant for Nashville ladies to construct neighborhood and assist native companies exterior of downtown.
Christine will host her Woogirling co-working area in Fido’s aspect room till they shut, she says. She additionally notes that Fido is the antithesis of recent espresso retailers like La La Land in 12South, an Instagrammable native outpost of a California-based chain with white minimalist interiors. Christine likes that Fido is completely different, noting that Hillsboro Village is her fundamental hangout — between throwing darts on the Villager Tavern, consuming meals at Dumpling Home and seeing films on the Belcourt.
“Prior to now, it had been this mecca of nightlife for school college students, and it’s positively slowed down up to now few years,” Christine says of Hillsboro Village. “I sort of wished to benefit from that tempo.”
Jessie Weiss met her now-husband for a primary date at Fido in 2005, throughout what was arguably the heyday of the enterprise. He selected the spot as a result of he wished to point out Weiss the place he had been chatting together with her daily for weeks — from Fido’s public laptop. It’s additionally the place they shared their first kiss.
“We had been stepping up the curb throughout from Fido, and he took my hand to assist me up the curb, after which kissed it, and I laughed at him, actually, actually, actually arduous,” Weiss tells the Scene. “That was essentially the most ridiculous gesture ever. However it labored, as a result of then we had been kissing on the again patio.”
Invoice Cornelius describes Fido as “frozen in time.”
“There’s a nostalgia about going there now, as a result of it’s one of many few issues that has not modified, regardless of your complete metropolis rising so considerably because the early 2000s,” Cornelius tells the Scene. “If you wish to know what a espresso store in Nashville was like 20 years in the past, simply stroll in Fido now.”
Fido is the place Cornelius, a filmmaker and former Watkins Faculty scholar, filmed certainly one of his first faculty tasks circa 2003. It was additionally an apparent hotspot for movie college students due to its proximity to the Belcourt.
If saving Fido is on the desk, Brandon Styll — director of operations at Inexperienced Hills Grille and Maribol and president of the Nashville Space Restaurant Alliance — want to leap into motion. He worries that the spot will likely be taken over by a sequence restaurant, one thing the alliance seeks to band towards.
“If I convey all these eating places collectively now, we really do have leverage,” Styll says. “My objective is actually simply to maintain native eating places round longer, as a result of they’re such fixtures locally.”
Styll has private expertise — he closed Chagos Belmont Cantina this yr. He additionally has a private stake in Fido. He estimates that from 2009 to 2012, he ate the cafe’s Eggs McFido and drank a Native Latte (a latte with native honey and cinnamon) round 4 occasions per week.
However Trish Crist has him beat. Crist estimates that she’s been to Fido 1,780 occasions or extra. That’s a conservative estimate based mostly on the 11 years she lived inside strolling distance of the cafe. She estimates she ate 5,500 items of bacon made crispy by beloved longtime chef John Stephenson.
Fido
It’s additionally the place Crist met her now-husband for the primary time in 2014 after chatting on OkCupid. She picked the venue.
“I used to be eager about, ‘Why did I choose Fido?’” Crist says. “I believe it’s as a result of it was my pure, straightforward selection. I felt secure there. I knew the employees. It was a pleasant place. I felt it mirrored me as an individual.”
The 2 met up once more just a few days later and noticed Birdman on the Belcourt. They didn’t need the night time to be over, so that they went to Fido once more.
Fido’s lengthy goodbye offers patrons time to revisit, however Crist doesn’t know that she is going to. In recent times, the meals and repair weren’t the identical as she remembered.
“I believe I’d reasonably be unhappy that my dream place is closing than to find that my dream place isn’t my dream place anymore,” Crist says.
Crist credit former barista Khalil Davis for making Fido homey. Davis says working at Fido from 2003 to 2007 was his favourite job so far. He went on to start out two espresso retailers of his personal (Espresso, Lunch and The Terminal Cafe, the latter of which closed in 2018) and labored a stint at Frothy Monkey in East Nashville. Lately, he works as a private coach and as common supervisor of MRKT in Midtown.
Davis estimates that he made 1000’s of Roll Overs (chocolate, caramel, espresso and milk, topped with whipped cream and chocolate) throughout his tenure. He additionally has Fido to thank for assembly his spouse, who labored throughout the road at Posh.
“When I discovered Fido, I used to be like, ‘That is the cool aspect and the noncorporate espresso home,’” says Davis, who beforehand labored for Starbucks. “That made me wish to open my very own espresso store and be in hospitality and hold that going. Due to Fido, I’m the place I’m.”
