In 2009, a property company remodeling a Nashville shopping plaza decided every tenant needed modern, uniform signage and took down a neon sign featuring dancing doughnuts and a Dutch boy mascot. They had no plans to give it back. Green Hills reacted the way a neighborhood reacts when somebody touches its landmark, and the sign came back. It still hangs over the storefront today.
Norman Fox was a recent Lipscomb University graduate in 1973 when he bought a portion of a Memphis franchise called Harlow’s Honey Fluff Doughnuts. His wife suggested he name the business after himself, so Fox’s Doughnut Den it was. In 1977, he moved to the Green Hills location it still occupies, bought that neon sign off Harlow’s for $1,200, and had it trucked across the state.
Over 50 years later, Fox still owns it and is still in the building; the counter is staffed in part by students from the local high school, and a national readers’ poll put the shop at No. 3 in the entire country. If you’re chasing our 50 best donut list, this is the entry where a ranking that high surprised nobody who grew up in Green Hills.
What to Expect When Visiting Fox’s Donut Den in Nashville, Tennessee
The apple fritter is the item regulars push hardest, and the old-fashioned cake donut is the one purists order. Beyond those, the case runs glazed, blueberry cake, custard-filled, sprinkles for the kids, and donut holes that adults claim are for the kids and then eat. The recurring description is that these are lighter than what other Nashville shops turn out.
Price is a real part of the appeal in a city that has gotten expensive fast. One local writer put it plainly: you can order a dozen here without regretting it the instant the register total appears, which is not universally true of Nashville’s gourmet donut shops.
The hours are extraordinary for this series. Doors open at 5 a.m. on weekdays and 6 a.m. on weekends, and they stay open until 9 p.m. every night, which makes this one of the few places where an evening donut is a normal thing to do rather than a special arrangement…