Tue–Fri 6:30am–2:30pm Sun 11:00am–3:00pm Mon & Sat Closed
Silver Sands Cafe — Just Like Mama Used To Make, Nashville TN
The building, the kitchen, the line

Photo gallery

Silver Sands photographed as it actually is: a working kitchen, a steam table, and a low brick building that has not changed much in seventy years.

The place

937 Locklayer Street

The Silver Sands Soul Food building on Locklayer Street: a low single-storey structure with a checkerboard facade of terracotta brick and grey stone, a white soffit, and large black hand-painted letters reading SILVER SANDS SOUL FOOD
The storefront. The checkerboard masonry and hand-painted block lettering are the building’s signature, and the source of the colours used across this site.
A large aluminium stockpot in the Silver Sands kitchen holding smoked pork, sliced onions, seasoning and a block of butter, ready to be cooked down
A pot going together before service. Smoked meat, onions, seasoning and butter — the foundation of almost everything on the vegetable line.
Steam table pans filled with pinto beans in their liquid, green beans, creamed corn, mashed potatoes and greens on the Silver Sands serving line
The vegetable end of the line: pinto beans, green beans, creamed corn and greens. What is in the pans is what is cooking that day.
Baked macaroni and cheese with a deeply browned crust in a long steam table pan, alongside broccoli and stewed cabbage, with filled white takeout containers waiting on a wooden counter
Baked mac & cheese with the crust still intact, and carry-out boxes filling up. A large share of what leaves this kitchen goes out in a container.
A steam table pan of broccoli in cheese sauce with a serving ladle resting in it
Broccoli & cheese, a Wednesday fixture and one of the most-ordered sides on the board.
The Silver Sands Cafe logo: an oval frame with the words Silver Sands Cafe, Just Like Mama Used To Make, Nashville TN
The cafe’s mark, carrying the motto that has been used for decades: “Just Like Mama Used To Make.”

More photos

Sophia posts from the kitchen most days. For daily specials, holiday announcements and a lot more food photography, follow @silversandscafe on Instagram or our Facebook page.

About the building

Why it looks like this

The facade at 937 Locklayer is laid in alternating squares of terracotta brick and grey cinderblock — a checkerboard pattern that was a common decorative treatment in mid-century commercial construction and is now increasingly rare. The stone base, the white soffit and the gooseneck lamps are all original in character.

The lettering across the front reads SILVER SANDS SOUL FOOD in heavy black block capitals, painted directly onto the wall rather than mounted as a sign. It has been repainted over the years but never redesigned.

Everything about the exterior is a product of the era it was built in, and none of it has been modernised. In a neighbourhood where nearly every surrounding lot has been redeveloped, the building is now one of the few surviving pieces of the streetscape that Blanche Seay would recognise.

Read our history Come and see it

Be in the know

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