Nashville Original · Legacy Queso
Las Palmas
A Nashville family institution since 1990, built from a borrowed $3,000 and still gathering generations around the table.
The Queso Connection
The Ayala and Oñate families arrived in Nashville in 1989 with $3,000 borrowed from friends and family, bought an old Mazda to scout cities across the Southeast, and ultimately transformed a Charlotte Pike building slated for demolition into their first restaurant. Las Palmas opened in 1990, handing out free tacos and sodas until Nashville caught on. More than three decades later, generations still gather around its tables, and the family proudly remembers serving everyone from Little League teams to Dolly Parton.
WHAT TO ORDER
The queso briefing
Cheese Dip
A homemade blend of melted cheeses, green chiles and Las Palmas’ secret spices. The Ayala and Oñate families drove across the Southeast looking for a city to feed before opening their first Nashville restaurant in 1990. Decades later, their tables have held first dates, Little League celebrations, grandchildren, Nashville regulars and even Dolly Parton. One of those tables held me. The week of Mother's Day in 2019, the year my mom died, my divorce became final. I went to the Las Palmas on Hayes Street alone with my laptop, ordered queso and an enchilada, and started searching for the cheapest flight I could find to the nearest beach. Sitting right by myself there over queso, I booked Charleston. I wasn't celebrating everything that had happened. I was celebrating the freedom to decide what happened next.
Queso Fundido
Hot melted white cheese with spicy chorizo, served bubbling and built for scooping.