All restaurants have a story, but the one behind Amerigo is better than average, not just the history of a place but a testament to a man, a vision, the vagaries of fate. Ben Brock was a kid when he went to work at Amerigo in Ridgeland, Mississippi. A college student who started as a dishwasher and worked his way up to wait tables and tend bar, he'd drive home from Mississippi State on weekends to work.

But when his dad stepped in and said he was working too hard, he gave it up until he graduated. When he came home that summer, he went back while waiting to start grad school, but his plans changed and instead he found himself moving to Nashville to open Amerigo for then-owners Bill Latham and Al Roberts.