The restaurants, butchers and produce purveyors in the tight, tattooed East Nashville neighborhood are one place to find it. On blocks where a year or two ago you might have been mugged, you can now buy bars of locally made Olive & Sinclair chocolate from Scott Witherow, a Tennessee native who collected résumé points from Nobu and the Fat Duck. He grinds his own cacao and uses brown sugar to give his chocolate a Southern character.

The surprises in East Nashville continue at Mas Tacos Por Favor, which Teresa Mason started in 2008 by selling well-rendered examples of Mexican street food from a 1970s Winnebago. The storefront is more recent, and decorated as if Ms. Mason had called her friends and asked them to scour their attics for tables and chairs. The fried tilapia tacos and carnitas are a draw, certainly, but the tortilla soup is perhaps best in show.

All over the Nashville hipster food kingdom, mention that broth — clear and bright with lime and unimaginably chickeny — and people close their eyes and nod.

Walk across the street and you’ll find a party at the Pharmacy Burger Parlor and Beer Garden, which opened in December. On a busy day, hundreds of hamburgers are ground from Tennessee beef and served on soft potato rolls. The backyard is a sea of picnic tables holding local beers and house-made ginger ale, filled sometimes until closing at 3 a.m.

People like Scott and Sara Gibson eat there regularly. They’re a couple in their 20s, attracted to the pretty and plentiful old housing stock in East Nashville. He sells toner to the government. They’re far from hipsters. But they go to the local butcher because the meat tastes better, and they like eating close to home.

That makes them grateful for the food and music revolution in their neighborhood, led in no small part by Jack White, formerly of the White Stripes. He records in one of the dozens of studios in the neighborhood. “He’s kind of a god around here,” Mr. Scott said. “Where he goes, the hipsters follow.”