Review at a glance: ★★★★☆
Line dancing? It was this or paying £50 for three lamb chops in the new place on top of the Hilton. No thanks. Besides, critics race to review first and I reckon Jay Rayner likes to cut a rug. So my fiancée Twiggy gamely agreed — gamely in the sense she said, “I don’t have a choice, do I?” — and off we scampered, her having readied herself with roper heels, Western denim and gingham, and me having prepared by… not shaving. It can’t really be the thought that counts.
It’s not clear if the owners have been to London before, given Lil’ Nashville is found in Chiswick, never to my knowledge mistaken for the home of honky-tonk. Can many people really be heading into genteel west London for a night of Miller Lites and do-si-dos? Apparently so: a booking to dine does not grant automatic access to the dancing itself, though curiously the website rather obscures this. “You can follow the screen on the bar,” came the apology from our server — they do not stock waitresses here — nodding to a trio doing exactly that. “I’d let you by the stage, but there’s no room.” So it was: over by the amps, a trucker-capped man led a lesson to a room of cut-off shorts and white cowboy boots. Synchronised clapping and Cotton Eye Joe. Why not? Apparently the hardcore, armed with Stetsons, do their own moves to live bands every weekend.
I have been to big ol’ Nashville, the proper one in Tennessee with all the hen-dos and hangovers. Broadway is a kind of Disneyland: bar-fronts done up in frontier style, country pickers tearing strips off their Telecasters, enough neon to deliver a midnight sun tan. Its baby cousin in W4 has taken the style: inside it is a hoarder’s menagerie of branding and bumper stickers and signs for Budweiser and Blue Ribbon. There is an advert for the bar bearing the legend “Tennessee, Montana, Texas, Chiswick”, which may just be the spiritual successor to Del Boy and Rodney’s “New York, Paris, Peckham”. Save a horse, reads another, ride a cowboy.
It’s laid on thick, but so it should be. Lil’ Nashville bills itself as a country bar and kitchen, but is better considered a kind of theme park ride. I certainly did, spying a root beer float on the menu and opting to kick the night off with that. Ice cream to start? Even the server was surprised. “It’s got a taste you can imagine vomiting up later,” said Twiggy. “Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”
It’s not clear if the owners have been to London before, given Lil’ Nashville is found in Chiswick, never to my knowledge mistaken for the home of honky-tonk
It operates more as a bar than a restaurant: huge glasses of wine for about £11 a go, picklebacks at a fiver, their own-branded beer (authentically American; ie, its only flavour is “cold”). But the food is far better than required. Contrary to the menu’s suggestion of starters and mains, everything arrived together, which I mention only as portions here are likewise authentically American, ie, bloody massive. At the end of an alarming amount of pulled meat — why must this be the only hallmark of Southern food? — half a meal remained on the red-lipped enamel trays. It is not food to over-analyse: tater tots buried under both pulled pork and beef brisket, the shredded meat piled like kindling, waterlogged with barbecue sauce. Or crisp battered Nashville chicken tenders, served authentically but baffingly on a slice of cheap white bread, with slices of pickles and a sauce as hot as is wanted. Particularly good fries, too; even better stuffed in with the brisket burger. Much of the menu replicates itself with paltry disguises, but is in essence party food done well. It will fuel a night stomping and turning and pausing only for beers. I left cradling my stomach unsteadily, all that brisket having shifted my centre of gravity.
Lately I’ve been limping like John Wayne, so I’m not likely anytime soon to holler along to Achy Breaky Heart. But I wouldn’t change the place. Lil’ Nashville is a hoot, but perhaps also a refuge: among the good-time hunters and country fans numbered life’s natural misfits, those who might have turned to line dancing after being turned away from something else. Everyone was having a night of it: no posturing, pretence, sneers or side eyes. This lil’ bar welcomes with an offer of fun that no one need feel self-conscious about. It is not cool, but it is for everyone. London needs more of that.
11 Barley Mow Passage, Chiswick, W4 4PH. Meal for two about £100; lilnashville.co.uk
