The Queso Connection

Federales sits a stone's throw from the places I called home for years in the Gulch, which makes eating here feel different for me. This place is ALIVE. The roof opens to the Nashville sky. Music spills through the room. People crowd around tables with tacos and queso. There are margaritas, brunches, celebrations and that ridiculous ice-shot bell ringing above all of it. It's loud and colorful and unserious in exactly the right ways. And just across the way is a balcony connected to one of the hardest nights of my life, a night when I almost didn't stay. Federales wasn't there yet. It arrived years later, and I think that's part of why I love seeing it there now. Something so exuberantly alive exists within sight of a place I once associated with barely surviving. I can sit on this side of the view now with a bowl of queso blanco crowded with roasted corn, poblanos, jalapeños and red bell pepper and watch an entirely different night unfold. People are laughing. Somebody is ringing that damn bell. Dinner is being ordered. Nashville has changed. I have changed. There is something profound to me about surviving long enough to watch new things rise in places you thought would always belong to an old version of your story. The skyline didn't stop at my hardest night. Neither did I. And now there's queso over here. xo.