Country duo Dan + Shay consider themselves experts when it comes to hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurants in Nashville. If they’re downtown, the guys love to go to Las Palmas. While making their debut album, Where It All Began, the duo’s Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney spent a ton of time at a little place called Nacho’s in the Music City suburb of Bellevue.
Dan tells ABC Radio, “When we were writing most of our album out at [our producer] Danny Orton‘s house, we went to this place.”
Shay chimes in, “I thought you were gonna say we wrote most of it at Nacho’s, which is probably true.”
Since they were just getting started on their country career, Dan and Shay didn’t have much money to buy tacos and burritos. They found a way to make it work.
Says Dan, “We would just get, like, a huge basket of chips. I had, like, 20 baskets of chips.”
After 30 minutes of eating chips, the waiters would start to wonder if Dan and Shay were ever going to order. That’s when the guys would order a small bowl of the tortilla soup.
Shay says with a laugh, “That’s like 89 cents. It’s the dream.”
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