As modern Nashville’s cultural and dining scene expands, the decisions can be overwhelming. Where shall we dine? What can we do after dinner? And the kicker: How will we park? With so many opportunities and logistics to consider, planning an evening out is enough to take the leisure out of leisure time. Navigating new Nashville requires hacks and angles — and we recently stumbled onto one worth sharing.

The Modern Love restaurant in the Fairlane Hotel downtown may look familiar. Maybe it’s because the jewel-colored stained glass and rich woods of the midcentury-modern-style hotel lobby served as the backdrop for Nfocus’ 2026 Model Behavior photo shoot. Or maybe the setting rings a bell from a feature in Nfocus’ digital newsletter profiling the 7 Paintings Dinner, an immersive dining event based on iconic works of art history, hosted in the hotel’s fourth-floor restaurant space.

Of course, the grand windows on the corner of Fourth and Union might simply call to mind decades of banking errands. That erstwhile bank lobby is where Modern Love now serves breakfast through dinner in stylish spaces including a lounge, billiards room, bar and restaurant. Use of space continues to evolve in the Fairlane lobby, since Modern Love’s debut in August 2025. While tables previously occupied the lefthand lobby, now a comfortable lounge fills that space, and dining has migrated to the bar, with banquettes, barstool seating and an elevated diner vibe. 

Contemporary Cuisine

Over the course of two dinners, Modern Love’s dishes were original and well executed, with eclectic plates such as warm crab salad, seared tuna with soba and a jammy egg, duck breast adorned with pistachios and shaved truffle, and chicken stuffed with artichoke and salsify and plated like a colorful garden bouquet.

By late summer, the menu — along with the seating — had shifted. The concise dinner roster in the clubby bar included a generous filet plated with roasted carrots coated in crispy quinoa, a disc of roasted leek segments belted in nori — which read like an oversized cross section of a sushi roll — and a pair of velvety yellow carrot and black garlic purées, which added a dramatic black-and-gold finish to the composition.

Note: Modern Love is not a destination for a sweet tooth. During our visits, there was no dessert menu. There’s some talk of adding a sweets roster, but until then, the bar offers a few opportunities to drink dessert.  

Retro-ish Pricing 

Not to say everything is cheap and cheerfully priced — after all, there is a $22 burger in the mix — but prices topped out with the $41 filet, and we found several price tags reminiscent of the good old days. 

Four deviled egg halves topped with housemade pickles, bacon, chili crisp and chives cost $8. Yes, eight. And at $18, the entrée of crisp-fried redfish over a succotash of corn, green peppers, black-eyed peas and andouille ranks among the best dinner value we’ve seen in a long time. At happy hour, the deviled eggs and burger drop down to $5 and $12, respectively. 

Pool Party

On the Fourth Avenue North side of the lobby, the Cube Room off the main lounge has a pool table, television and sofa — a casual hangout for coffee, cocktails before or after a meal, or for passing the time after ordering. A thoughtful server kept an eye on our table and gave us a two-minute advance notice to wrap up our eight-ball before dinner arrived.

Free Parking

Not to bury the lede, but valet parking is free for guests of Modern Love. When we sank our last bank shot, we stepped out onto the sidewalk to retrieve our car, minus the ubiquitous downtown parking fee. The concierge was very helpful in providing a validation code to enter on a phone.

As Modern Love enters its second year, the team continues to fine-tune a formula of food and recreation worthy of attracting a local crowd to a hotel restaurant. This fall, expect menu updates, as well as programming such as live music, Titans game broadcasts, sports on screen after dinner service, and more games to play while hanging out in the Cube Room.