Dino’s Bar

Nashville, Tennessee

The love affair between diners, dive bars and a great hamburger is a long and storied tale embodied perfectly by East Nashville dive bar Dino’s Bar, home to a burger great enough to attract Anthony Bourdain for a bite (he approved). Open since the 1970s, the basic brick building features a dive bar sign in the mold of a soda-endorsed diner marquee seen on thousands of similar establishments throughout the United States. The Nashville dive bar’s exterior is as classic as it gets, red brick, simple windows and a faded red awning pairing with a diner-standard sign.

Inside, a short bar offers ringside seating for the grill in back, home to a simple menu made up of diner classics that revolve around the aforementioned burger (though many reviews site the bar’s hot chicken as a sleeper hit). Permanent stools underscore the diner DNA here, more a dive bar that surrounds a diner than vice versa. Self-proclaimed as the oldest dive bar in Nashville, the site was sold in 2015 to longtime patron Alex Wendkos who lovingly restored elements of the interior including the electrical system, grill, refrigerator and fryer among other related updates. The vibe has been preserved, thankfully, the rough edges smoothed out only slightly. The divey pedigree can still be seen in classic dive bar scrawling on the cinder block bathroom walls.

The Basics

Classification:
Diner Dive

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Further Reading