Funny Library Coffee Shop

A library that wants you to talk

Funny Library is the coffee shop inside Virgin Hotels Nashville, and it takes the library idea and inverts it. Shelves of books and games line the room, but the house instruction is to chortle, chat, call or converse as much as you like, so the quiet is optional. What that buys is a workspace with the comfort of a lounge: complimentary Wi-Fi, plenty of surfaces, drinks that keep arriving, and food that can be a snack or a full plate. The result is a room that serves hotel guests and Nashville locals in the same hour without treating either as an interruption. It runs as a Midtown room where a laptop session, a casual meeting and a slow coffee all look equally normal.

Breakfast that turns into lunch

The kitchen works a la carte across breakfast, lunch, sides, sweets and seasonal specials rather than pushing one format. Mornings run from pastries and grab-and-go items to The Proper Breakfast for a fuller plate and a seared Cali burrito for a heavier start. Lunch is where the list opens up: Caesar salad and crisp Midtown greens on the lighter side; the chicken katsu sandwich, the Uncommon Club and the Commons Club Burger for something substantial; a grilled chicken Caesar wrap and a Nashville Hot Chicken Wrap for food you can eat one-handed while the other hand is still typing. Sides and sweets fill the gaps, and there are bottled drinks and things to carry out for anyone who needs the visit to take four minutes rather than forty.

Drinks go well past the espresso machine

Coffee is the base, but the drinks list keeps going. J'Enwey tea and Natalie's Cold Pressed Juice sit alongside it, and beer, wine and bottled cocktails mean the room does not have to wind down when the afternoon does. The seasonal drinks are where the counter has its fun: Tropic Like It's Hot, a Honeysuckle Oolong, and a Blackberry Lemon Americano that can be made sparkling with tonic water, which is the most interesting thing on the board if you want coffee without wanting it hot. Order one of those, take a book off the shelf, and use the room the way it is built to be used.