K&S World Market

Welcome to K&S World Market! This stop is different from any other on our tour because it’s not simply a restaurant or historic site. Rather, it is a grocery gold mine full of rare spices and fruits, fresh seafood, and flavored snacks and foods beyond your wildest dreams. James Sun opened K&S World Market on Nolensville Pike in 2004. Sun immigrated from China in 1998, and he desired to establish an international market with a focus on Asian cuisine.

The grocery store includes an impressive selection of organic produce from bok choy to white dragon fruit, and their seafood department features live fish tanks with crabs, tilapia, and lobster. Employees select fish from these tanks and prepare them right in front of the prospective patrons. A 2021 article in the Nashville Scene states: “Diversity and cost-efficiency are recurring themes throughout the store. . . . When I enter through the sliding double doors, I’m immediately in the heart of the produce section. The first word that comes to mind is ‘reverie,’ and then ‘variety.’ Avocados the size of my open palm adorn an unassuming corner; melons, cucumbers and peppers are quadruple the size and half the price.”

The store also includes unique snacks and other packaged food from different countries all over the world. This market celebrates many different cultures by exposing customers and visitors to exciting food to purchase and take to their own homes. The K&S World Market has since opened another location on Charlotte Avenue and continues to attract food enthusiasts from across the Middle Tennessee area. As journalist Victoria Finch writes, “This place caters to everyone. I look up and see a Middle Eastern family, an elderly Asian man, a Latina grandmother and her granddaughter, and a white couple near the end of the aisle. This is the real Nashville.”

Now on to our final stop of the tour, Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, 5814 Nolensville Pike. To get there, continue south on Nolensville Pike approximately 2.5 miles. Once you cross over Old Hickory Boulevard, you’ll see Prince’s on your left.