The Horn

The Horn started the way a lot of good food businesses start, which is without a building. The founder's father left Somalia, came to Nashville and sold sambusas out of his car; the family opened the first proper shop in 2015 and has been hand-folding sambusas and brewing Somali chai ever since. The business now runs two Nashville sites - this one, the headquarters on Murfreesboro Pike in South Nashville, and a second in Midtown - and describes what it does in five words on its own site: crispy sambusas, spiced chai, and hospitality. No alcohol is served at either.

The reason to know about it beyond lunch is what happens in Ramadan. WPLN, Nashville's public radio station, reported in March 2025 on a cluster of Muslim-owned Nashville coffeehouses that close for the daylight fast and reopen at night to long queues of customers breaking it - and on the fact that the owners want that alcohol-free evening culture to be a year-round habit rather than a seasonal one. The Horn is one of the shops in that story. Outside Ramadan the normal hours are daytime: 7am to 5:30pm Monday to Thursday, a split day on Friday around midday prayer, and shorter weekend hours.

The drinks are the thing to order. Chai is the anchor, and the shop makes several versions - Somali chai, a brown sugar chai, and a dirty chai pulled with a shot of espresso - all available iced, all around $4. The coffee side is short and unfussy: americano, latte, white mocha, cinnamon white mocha. Alongside them are the sambusas the business was built on, filled and folded by hand. Two practical notes. First, the Friday split means the shop shuts around midday for prayer, so check before making a lunchtime trip. Second, this is a cafe and a counter rather than a bar with a zero-proof list: what you are buying is a good cup of chai and a room where nobody is drinking, which for many people is the whole point.