Tucked away in Brentwood is the Puffy Muffin, a little eatery that appeals to a wide range of patrons.  When we were visiting the clientele ranged from senior citizens to thirty somethings on their lunch break to mothers with young children.  The restaurant is a hybrid between a southern bakery and an English tea room (sans a wide selection of different teas).  It’s the perfect place for a bridal luncheon, baby shower, brunch with the girls or quick bite to eat with your husband (Ed. – Husband: Guys, they do actually have great food……. just make sure you bring your better half with you so you don’t look “out of place”).  As an added bonus, Puffy Muffin is the type of place that knows how to take care of its employees, and that just makes this the type of place we want to support all the more.

While there is not a huge selection of tea, the Puffy Muffin does offer a fruited ginger tea that is delicious.  It is not overly sweet, as many fruit teas are known to be and has a slight ginger taste that is not overwhelming.

Cary always looks for manly things on the menu (I think this is because of the name).  This time he found the English Hot Ham sandwich with french fries and homemade bread and butter pickles.  The hot ham features sliced ham and turkey on an english muffin, which is then slathered with the restaurant’s house made pimento cheese and placed under the broiler until it is a melty, gooey, mess.  The pimento cheese is very smooth, with a slight tanginess from the cheddar.  The sandwich as a whole makes for a great knife & fork sandwich.  The pickles that come on the side are homemade bread and butters, and while a little too sweet for my taste, are some of the better pickles you’ll find in the Nashville area.

As a side, we got fried green tomatoes.  The cornmeal breading was pleasantly crisp and complemented the tartness of the green tomatoes.  About the only down side was that the tomatoes were rather thin, when left less tomato for us to enjoy.

This is the Amaretto Chicken, which is a scoop of chicken salad drizzled with amaretto sauce and topped with almonds.  It is accompanied by a pimento cheese roll, poppy seed bread and  cranberry salad.  Since it was a million degrees outside, I substituted the cranberry salad for the frozen strawberry salad.   The chicken salad contains shredded white meat chicken, celery and mayonnaise.  The almonds are a nice change from the pecans that normally grace chicken salad.   I wish the salad had red grapes.  It was on a bed of pineapple, but I’m a grape person, as far as chicken salad is concerned.  The pimento cheese is very smooth, almost like eating melted cheese with a little kick. The frozen strawberry salad almost has an ice cream consistency with chunks of strawberries.  It is divine!

The puffy muffin also boasts a wide selection of cookies, pies and cakes.  We picked up two chocolate crinkle cookies on the way out.  They didn’t last long enough for me to snap a picture.