The Villager Tavern

This is a great little neighborhood spot that serves great local beer and makes a pretty mean mule drink. They serve all of their mules in random pewter mugs and if you go on Mondays they are 2 for 1. Also, if you want a crazy place to watch a Preds game and can’t make it to the game itself, this is a pretty good spot for that.

Smokey, cheap neighborhood bar. Shiner is a great deal! Lots of memorabilia on the walls. About 5 dart boards towards the back.

The Villager Tavern is quite possibly my favorite place to hang in Nashville. It’s the prefect bar to finish your night on the town or spend a few hours making friends with the regulars. There is no pretense; there is good beer, great people, and great conversation, not to mention 5 dart boards to help you work on your game. On top of that, the bar staff is not only personable but they treat you like friends.
It may not be fancy but there is always a great time to be had at the Villager.

It’s a dive and it’s smokey. If you’re into that kind of thing, read on…
Cheap beer — check. Shiner is $ 9.50 for a pitcher, $ 2.75/pint. LaGunitas will run you about $ 4.75 but that’s still not bad.
Really that’s the only check you need but wait! There’s more!
I heard a rumor they’ll give you a dog bowl of beer on your 21^st birthday…
They serve food. No, really, I promise. And it’s GOOD. You only have one choice of food (sandwich) and two choices of kind of sandwich (turkey or roast beef) but it’s actually really tasty.
They also have darts and foosball and a jukebox and a couple video game machines.
A fun neighborhood bar. My husband and I ended up her on our first date after Fido closed for the night so it has a special place in my heart. I hope it stays around for a while.

The diviest of dive bars. Sit down pac man machine, dart boards, foosball table and only beer. If you can handle a smokey atmosphere, it’s a MUST.

I’m not from Nashville, just a visitor… but this is one of my favorite dive bars (if not my favorite) in the country. Small place, still allows smoking, great people, amazing jukebox. I don’t even throw darts, but if I lived near here I would start. Awesome, warm, laid back. What a dive bar should be. Hell, I even watched the Masters here one year.

Darts are great. Very divey. Cheap beer. Good music.
Definite minus: place reeks of smoke. Like leave your clothes outside for 2 days smokey.

I love dive bars, so I really like this place. Definitely a spot where you smell like cigarettes. Lots of dart boards but some nights are league nights. There’s a pretty cool jukebox and a foosball table as well. The beer is cheep and everyone is friendly.

A true relic. Unapologetically smokey, dark, and filled with all kinds of weirdos. Cigarette smoke helps mask the B.O. of a drunk evangelical who won’t stop talking to you. Not a bad dive! Cheap beer and darts downtown. Count me in!

Really like this spot. Excellent dive in the village. The bar doesn’t feel at all like the rest of the area, which is excellent, though if you can’t handle smokey bars this probably isn’t the place for you. They turned on the Breaking Bad season première, which was awesome, and I met up with fellow Unilocalers at the bar to watch the show.

If I ever get around to writing my memoir, I would base it around nights spent at The Villager. I will never forget the first time I walked in and breathed in the smoky air way back in July 2008. Over the years I’ve celebrated countless friends’ birthdays with a dog bowl, honed my dart throwing skills, chatted with many a Belmont hipster, old guy, and Vandy bro and led the crowd in a Bohemian Rhapsody jukebox sing-​a-​long. I’ve often closed the place down as time has a way of speeding up when you’re surrounded by good people (old friends + new strangers alike), great beer, and a stellar jukebox.
Some of the best times of my life have been at The Villager. I’m feeling both sentimental and scared for the future in the face of all the Hillsboro Village gentrification. Go here and make some memories while this gem of a dive bar still stands. I’ll see ya there.

Who can resist the classic dog bowl on their birthday? As far as «dive bars» go, this is an unmissable Nashville classic. Darts for days, a classic running joke almost that all of Nashville knows, and wall to wall photos. There will be more cigarettes burned in this place than perhaps any other you’ve ever been to, but it’s a lot of fun.

Rude service and regulars, but I like it. There is a place for these bars on the world. I hope to return soon. I removed one star for the indoor smoking, but it seems to be well ventilated, so it wasn’t terribly offensive. Saturday afternoon crowd was festive and fun.

They’ve got Shiner on draft, which is always nice. It’s an old fashioned dive bar, to include all the smoke that is requisite with authentic dive bars.
The dog bowl is a fun idea and all the games, dart boards and juke boxes are great.
I did come in here with a themed birthday party at 4 PM once and got the most evil looks I’ve seen in a while from the staff and patrons, so I can safely say that they don’t appreciate nonsense– which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Drinking is serious business.

The one thing The Villager seems to have over many bars is authenticity. There are certain things that only come with time, the most noticeable being the dogbowl photos covering every inch of the place (on your birthday, you get to drink a dogbowl full of beer on the house). This tavern is unpretentious to say the least, which is a nice way of saying it’s a dive bar. A great one, at that.
This is definitely my favourite spot for playing darts with friends. On weekend nights, you can expect to wait a good bit for a board to open up, but that’s what beer is for. Which brings us to The Villager’s most notable draft special, The $ 9 Shiner Pitcher, which gets you 3 – 4 frosty glasses of beer. As a Shiner fan, this is a no-​brainier for a quality cheap beer.
As with every dive, there are less desirable features of the Tavern. Mainly, the smoke. Some nights it gets very thick and although I don’t smoke, I imagine even the Marlboro Man isn’t a huge fan of the lack of oxygen. I can also say that I’ve personally killed the occasional cockroach; I mean, it’s not the cleanest pub I’ve ever been to.
Other than that, there aren’t too many detractors to having a great time here. The bartenders are chill and, as long as you’re waiting at the bar, they’ll actually ask you what you’re drinking instead of ignoring you half the time. How ’bout that.

The villager is a small (long) dive bar that is a great place to hit up on your birthday. Why you ask? Because you get a free dog bowl of beer on your bday. Or a pitcher if there is a line for the bowl. There are also tons of photos of others taking their turn with the beloved, dirty, awesome dog bowl.
Why else is it great? Darts, Ms. Pac Man, and a foosball table.
It is a 21+ establishment, which means its a smoking bar, which means its going to have a thick layer of smoke lingering in the air.
Definitely a place worth checking out.

The decision to go to the Villager is usually a late night one. And one must question all decisions made after leaving the Villager… they get progressively worse (and the stories, correspondingly, get better and better of course). Cheap beer, darts, a good jukebox, and a tabletop Ms Pak Man. Oh, and enough second hand smoke to make the Malboro Man jealous. Seriously jealous.
I love this place. I always have a fun time here, good crowd late night (I will neither confirm nor deny that I have been here in the middle of the day for hours on end). Been there for years and always a late night go to when I’m in town. My only question is this: How the hell isn’t the Villager mentioned in nearly every country song? It damn sure deserves to be!

I was introduced to the Villager by Vandy alums and it is a landmark in Hillsboro Village that holds a lot of memories for its patrons. As an outsider, I enjoy hanging out at the Villager and checking out dogbowl pictures on the wall and stopping in around birthdays because you get a free dogbowl of beer.
However, there are no other alcoholic beverages offered for those who are not beer drinkers. And now that most Nashville bars are smoke free, its difficult to enjoy myself for an extended period of time through the blanket of smoke that engulfs you upon entering.
They have decent juke box and darts, foosball, and some old school video arcade games (Ms. Packman!) that are very enjoyable. They have a couple menu items, but to be honest, I wouldn’t eat here. Sorry.
It’s not a place where I would ever be a regular, but I’ll stop in for my dogbowl or to share in a friends birthday dogbowl celebration!

The Villager might be the classic Nashville dive bar. Wedged between Pangaea and Davis Cutlery in Hillsboro Village, you might miss it driving by if you’re not paying attention. Just look for the American flag painted onto the side of the building.
The «birthday dog bowl» deserves special mention. Visit on your birthday and receive a complimentary dog bowl full of beer. That’s 3.5 pints for those counting at home. If you have a popular birthday, prepare to wait because there’s only one dog bowl to go around. The walls are adorned with photos taken of birthday visitors with faces stuffed in their bowl…
If you like to play darts, this might also the place for you. They have several boards, and they also sell dart supplies in house.
The beer is cold and it’s cheap. Their jukebox is pretty good. Your clothes will smell like smoke for about a week after your visit, but it was probably worth it.

Villager has done a fine job at serving my wants and needs every time I’ve been here.
Before moving to Nashville, I’d been here a couple times visiting friends. It was a dive-​y, seemingly popular and convenient place to grab beers before going elsewhere. I went last night for that «not quite ready to end the night, but restaurants are closing» beer with a friend.
On a Tuesday, we were able to find a comfortable place at the bar, but I would assume it gets incredibly crowded and noisy during the weekend, which is why I will probably frequent Villager as a pit spot, not my destination for a night out.
It should also be noted they only serve beer, so if you are trying to accommodate a large group, this is not the place to go. That being said, they have a gazillion different bottled brews to choose from, however the draft selection is kind of weak (although I wouldn’t expect much from a bar of this size.)
As a lot of other people pointed out, it is very smokey, but it’s not the worst bar I’ve been to in Nashville as far as that goes, and as a non-​smoker, I appreciated them keeping the front door open.

I love this bar. A tiny little dive in Hillsboro Village, it’s always a great place to go with friends for a beer (they don’t serve liquor), darts (my favorite), foosball and to hear some good music from their classic jukebox. Be warned, however, it is a smoking establishment and everything (I mean EVERYTHING) you wear when you go there will smell like ashtray the next day.
Be sure to make this a stop on your birthday pub crawl to get your free dog bowl of beer and picture on the wall! (although, good luck finding it. Someone let me know if they find mine? I’ve been searching for 2 years…)

First of all, what a great place to go in Hillsboro. Yes, it’s smokey. It’s a bar!!! What did you expect??? Children are not allowed in here. Beer. Beef Po-​Boy. Darts. Did you expect anything less?
Did you come to watch a game? Which one? Because there are few «dive» bars (at least… TRUE dive bars} that actually offer these games in hd. I mean, come on people… this is a classic dive bar!!!
You get a dog bowl of beer (free of charge, I assume) on your birthday. I say «I assume» only because I have not been here yet on my birthday.
However, on my birthday this year I plan on coming here. I love it.
The only reason I give it a 4 star review it because, well, they don’t offer liquor. That’s understandable, though. That’s a much bigger license to carry. Who can blame them.
So for a good time, check out the Villager. Yes, it’s smokey. Yes, it’s a bar. Yes, it’s a good time. No, it’s not for everyone.
Like it, love it, need it. I frequent this bar every week (at least).