In the Where to Eat: 25 Best series, we’re highlighting our favorite restaurants in cities across the United States. These lists will be updated as restaurants close and open, and as we find new gems to recommend. As always, we pay for all of our meals and don’t accept free items.
Audrey
East Nashville | Modern Southern
For more than 20 years, Sean Brock has been insisting that Southern cuisine is both what you think it is, as well as an ideal medium for exploring the unknown. On the one hand, you have fried green tomatoes, lettuces tossed with hot ham fat, and chicken and dumplings served directly from their cast iron pot. On the other, you have top-of-the-line ingredients — tomatoes and watermelon, bucksnort trout and lion’s mane mushrooms — inspiring leaps of imagination that veer toward the avant-garde. That is the terrain covered at Audrey, the flagship restaurant Mr. Brock named after his grandmother. The food braids together supposedly opposing impulses — the sincere and nostalgic versus the resourcefully inventive — in a restaurant that is sedate, stylish and comfortable with its own gravitas. BRETT ANDERSON
Bad Idea
East Nashville | Lao, Wine Bar
Bad Idea may well be what many seasoned diners thought when they heard there was a wine bar specializing in envelope-pushing Lao food opening inside an East Nashville church. But given the level of cooking here, the name turned out to be a self-aware joke, rather than a self-own. The concept coheres in the hands of the owner, Alex Burch, a seasoned sommelier and first-time restaurateur. He had the good sense to bring on Colby Rasavong as executive chef. A former top lieutenant to Sean Brock, Mr. Rasavong grew up working in his Laotian family’s Thai restaurant and invests the weight of his life experience in food that stretches the boundaries of Southeast Asian cooking to the edge of Appalachia. And the wine list is wise beyond this restaurant’s years, mixing tantalizing obscurities, affordable crowd pleasers and connoisseur selections you’ll rarely find poured by the glass. BRETT ANDERSON
Bastion
Wedgewood-Houston | Tasting Menu
At Bastion, there are two sides to the coin: one, a boisterous drinking establishment with a laid-back vibe and impeccable cocktails, and the other, an intimate fine-dining restaurant with a multicourse tasting menu. And, they share a bathroom. On the fine dining side, overseen by the chef Josh Habinger, a menu of imaginative dishes is prepared by chatty, enthusiastic chefs with eagle eyes and attention to detail. Succulent agnolotti filled with merguez spiced lamb rested in a pool of sherry brown butter sauce. One dish is an absolute bonanza of potato products featuring potato mochi bathed in whey sauce and showered with wavy bonito shavings. When dinner is done, stop in at the “Big Bar,” as the rowdy side is called, for a nightcap and a dose of cool. ELLEN FORT
Bolton’s Famous Hot Chicken & Fish
East Nashville | Soul Food
Hot chicken, a Nashville specialty, is fried chicken so spicy it can literally cause you pain. (According to legend, that was actually the intention of the chef who invented it.) Bolton’s is no exception, particularly if you order it medium, hot or extra hot, which the staff strongly advises against. In a city where restaurants specializing in hot chicken have become a cliché, Bolton’s is a bit of an odd bird for two reasons: No. 1 it’s a friendly neighborhood restaurant with roots (it opened in the 1990s) that predate the hot chicken craze and No. 2 the best dish is arguably the fried catfish. Order it mild, which, truth be told, is still pretty spicy. BRETT ANDERSON
Butterlamp
East Nashville | Wine Bar
What should one expect at an establishment that bills itself as a “bread house and wine bar,” anyway? The husband and wife duo of Benjamin and Katie Rose Tyson dreamed up a restaurant featuring this ideal pairing of food groups after they got married. Mr. Tyson is a fine dining chef while Ms. Tyson’s experience is in wine and beverages. Thus, their marriage spawned Butterlamp, a casual but chic wine bar with dishes that reveal complex layers of flavor and technique below an unassuming surface. Plump mussels sit atop an umami oyster emulsion on konbu bread. Pork fat fries bring a deeply porky flavor, cut with a dollop of creamy spicy aioli. An entire section of chilled reds by the glass leads drinkers down a refreshing rabbit hole of choices. And don’t miss the gobsmackingly good vanilla ice cream made from milk steeped with herbs and vanilla beans that have been grilled over a live fire. ELLEN FORT
Choy
Capitol View | Chinese American, Southern
Arriving in Nashville by way of California is becoming a new normal in Music City. Take Choy, a contemporary Chinese restaurant that opened in the bustling Gulch in July. The menu is a Tennessee-influenced echo of the food at the chef Brandon Jew’s San Francisco restaurant, Mister Jiu’s, brought to town by that restaurant’s former executive sous chef and a Tennessee native, Brian Griffin. Mr. Griffin is taking the intricate, bold flavors of San Francisco’s Chinatown and incorporating Southern ingredients. The oil-blanched green beans gain bold flavor from fermented black beans and country ham, while a whole-fried flounder is accompanied by green tomatoes, jalapeño and fermented kohlrabi. The exceptional wine list, curated by Justin Mueller, completes the journey from California, with many hard-to-find Napa wines — most of which pair perfectly with the deep brown roast duck that comes with duck liver mousse, homemade pancakes and peanut butter hoisin. ELLEN FORT
City House
Germantown | Italian
Can pizza be Southern? Can Italian food? The answer is a resounding yes, at least when you’re eating at City House. The restaurant, opened by the chef Tandy Wilson in 2007, helped blaze a trail for the pizzeria-as-Italian-American-trattoria at a time when the Germantown neighborhood, now teeming with businesses, was relatively sleepy. It also showed how well Southern ingredients and recipes take to Italian cuisine, with dishes like cavatelli pesto dotted with field peas and cornmeal crusted trout with salsa verde. If it’s tomato season in Tennessee, keep an eye out for a pie inspired by Mr. Tandy’s mother’s favorite tomato sandwich, or one holding morsels of the juicy peaches that ripen around the same time. And always save room for the pastry chef Rebekah Turshen’s refined, down-to-earth desserts. BRETT ANDERSON
Edessa
South Nashville | Kurdish
Any meal at this Kurdish restaurant should begin with an assortment of dips, ideally including the walnut-studded haydari, along with savory baked items like lavash, which comes straight from the oven, filled with hot air and covered in sesame seeds, and the spinach-and-cheese stuffed gozleme flatbread. From there, you’ll have to make some hard choices. Pide, stuffed cabbage and magnificent lamb stew poured straight from its clay pot? You’ll definitely want a mixed grill of kebabs and an order of cig kofte, the spicy, inscrutably delicious bulgur wheat balls. Yes, it’s a lot of food, so bring friends. That’s what everyone else seems to do at this convivial restaurant in the Little Kurdistan section of Nashville, home to the country’s largest Kurdish population. BRETT ANDERSON
Elliston Place Soda Shop
Midtown | Southern
As any Nashvillian knows, this isn’t just the home of hot chicken; it’s also a town long fueled by the meat-and-three, a plate lunch consisting of, well, a meat and three sides. The Elliston Place Soda Shop is one of the original and finest of the genre, having offered its fried chicken, whipped potatoes, squash casserole and turnip greens since 1939. Despite a recent move — just next door, and bringing along its red leather booths and soda counter — the Soda Shop has maintained its heart, soul and legion of regulars who pack in for old-fashioned milkshakes, banana splits and slices of Linda Melton’s pies. Known as “the pie lady,” Ms. Melton has spent more than 30 years shepherding along the heart and soul of the Soda Shop. Given its sturdy new digs, that heart promises to keep beating. ELLEN FORT
Folk
East Nashville | Italian
Every neighborhood needs a restaurant like Folk, where it feels like no one is trying too hard, though the food and service are impeccable. Warm paper lanterns hang high above the cozy, bustling dining room in East Nashville, and vegetable-forward dishes tease out the best of each season. Yes, the chef Philip Krajeck’s more laid-back follow-up to his first restaurant, Rolf and Daughters, is easy to love. A massive chicken Milanese consistently retains a place on the menu, shifting its accouterments from paper-thin slices of green tomatoes with salsa verde to piperade jus and herbs as summer wanes. Pizzas with bubbled and blistered crusts are also a constant, particularly the signature clam pie studded with littlenecks and bonito flakes. Cocktails lean Italian, as do the wines, which include elegant old-world pours and funky orange wines from newer producers alike. ELLEN FORT
Henrietta Red
Germantown | Seafood, Eclectic
These days, Nashville’s landlocked situation is no longer an obstacle for seafood-loving diners and chefs. That’s certainly the case for Julia Sullivan, a Nashville native who has spent time in the kitchens of Per Se and Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Here, her menu focuses on the fruits of the sea. A raw bar stocked with oysters from the coasts — including the Gulf — is a focal point of the dining room. Don’t miss Poppy’s caviar, an amped up onion dip that’s topped with Tennessee paddlefish caviar. Named after the chef’s grandparents, Henrietta Red manages to surface of-the-moment flavors with the underpinnings of simple, Southern fare. ELLEN FORT
Iggy’s
Wedgewood-Houston | Italian
Iggy’s is a pasta-centric Italian place whose most famous dish is garlic bread. How such a conventional-sounding restaurant could also rank among Nashville’s best is easy to understand once you try that bread: a glistening brioche, baked pretzel-brown, with sweet, molten creamy cheese at its center. The co-owner Ryan Poli is a former executive chef at Catbird Seat, Nashville’s standout tasting menu restaurant, which recently reopened with a new chef after a brief hiatus. That pedigree helps explain how a restaurant that serves nothing you haven’t seen before — fusilli alla vodka, rigatoni Bolognese, cacio e pepe — could also be (like the garlic bread) unforgettable. It helps that the food is modest enough to share the stage with wines worthy of equal billing. Iggy’s concise, worldly list was written by Mr. Poli’s brother and partner, Matthew, a gifted sommelier. BRETT ANDERSON
International Market
Belmont | Asian
The struggle of old versus new is seamlessly resolved at International Market, the Thai market and restaurant that has been thriving on Belmont Boulevard since 1975. That’s when Win and Patti Myint opened the doors to Thai food in Nashville, offering this city its first tastes of pad Thai and more. The restaurant’s steam table lunch became a fixture, as did the hospitality of the Myints. Now the restaurant is in the hands of the new generation, the siblings Arnold and Anna Myint. Mr. Myint, a former “Top Chef” contestant, works to expand the understanding of the cuisine as a whole, bringing modern takes to family dishes. With the younger generation at the helm, International Market retains its inimitable spirit. ELLEN FORT
Kisser
East Nashville | Japanese
Against the cranes-in-the-sky backdrop of go-go modern Nashville, the ambitions of this lunch-only cafe are refreshingly modest. Leina Horii and Brian Lea, Kisser’s married owners, apply Japanese cuisine’s less-is-more aesthetic to the entire enterprise. The result is an austere restaurant that feels like a refuge, staffed by unrushed employees executing a concise menu of only good options. They include housemade udon, onigiri and salads bursting with fresh produce, as well as inari that eat like cool shrimp-roll sliders, with tofu in place of the bun. Truth is, there isn’t a neighborhood that wouldn’t be richer for the addition of this soulful, personal take on a Japanese teahouse. BRETT ANDERSON
Locust
12 South | Seafood
Dining at Locust is like a field trip into the constantly churning, chaotic mind of the Irish-born chef Trevor Moran, whose restaurant during the peak of the pandemic in 2020. Since then, like the world around it, the restaurant has evolved greatly. It shifted from its original conception as a dumpling shop to its current iteration, serving dishes like beef tartare wrapped in nori and swordfish in the style of Nashville hot chicken. The fish is possibly the freshest in town, with the chef and his team performing weekly sprints to the airport to retrieve tuna bellies from Japan, or briny Belon oysters from the Irish coast. The restaurant’s dining format will undoubtedly change again soon, as will its menu. One constant? The enthusiastically loud playlists that feature the crew’s favorite albums, from metal to ’90s hip-hop. ELLEN FORT
Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint
Downtown | Barbecue
Nashville is a Southern town with the Southern urge to eat smoked meats. With his whole hog barbecue, the pitmaster Pat Martin has zeroed in on the city’s needs on that front. Now with multiple locations, Martin’s has come a long way from its days as a small, nondescript spot in the neighboring burg of Nolensville. The whole hog is smoky, pulled and chopped and mixed to include every morsel of pork flavor. The brisket is tender, the jalapeño Cheddar sausage is spicy and everything that comes out of the kitchen is kissed by smoke. ELLEN FORT
Noko
East Nashville | Pan-Asian
Noko’s menu cherry-picks from across Asia to assemble a menu of dishes you probably already love, even if you haven’t seen them offered all in the same place, or in precisely this form. There is a peppy hamachi crudo, an assortment of bao buns and a long list of dishes enriched by contact with wood fire or a hot metal wok, from shishitos and Sichuan green beans to Wagyu brisket and a smoky half-chicken in wasabi-spiked white sauce. The restaurant’s chef, Dung Vo, who opened Noko last year with his partners Jon Murray and Wilson Brannock, has a knack for knowing what will please a crowd in East Nashville, circa now. That will be made clear by the first thing you’ll notice about the place: how hard it is to get a reservation. BRETT ANDERSON
Peninsula
East Nashville | Spanish
The food at Peninsula is shrouded in an air of mystery, beginning with a purposefully vague menu that reads — as is the style at many restaurants — like a haphazard grocery list (“octopus, tamarind, yeast”). A plate will arrive featuring those ingredients, though in exactly what configuration remains an enigma until finally the flavors are revealed bite by bite. The chef Jake Howell’s alchemic approach to ingredients, combined with influences of Basque and Iberian cuisine, results in a singular style that has no real boundaries. Along with his partners, Yuriko Say and Craig Schoen, Mr. Howell has created a restaurant that is both personal and global. ELLEN FORT
Present Tense
Wedgewood-Houston | Japanese, Eclectic
For the grammar fans out there, it’s true: Present Tense encapsulates what’s happening in Nashville right now. Which is to say, an influx of talent, including the chef Ryan Costanza, who came to Nashville from San Diego. Along with his partner and general manager, Rick Margaritov, Mr. Costanza has made a mark in the burgeoning Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood. An absolutely wild dish of squid ink noodles with rings of tender squid lashed with spice from ’nduja and wasabi proved impossible to resist. Other, more minimalist dishes also exceed expectations, particularly roasted Japanese sweet potatoes adorned simply with cream and sprigs of lovage. Drinks from Kenneth Vanhooser are lush and balanced, showcasing more of Nashville’s continuously growing cocktail scene, and the interest in pairing craft drinks well with food. ELLEN FORT
Red Perch
Sylvan Park | Seafood, Burgers
Fried fish, when done well, is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Sprinkled with a bit of malt vinegar and served with crispy chips topped with a shake of Australian chicken salt, it’s downright revelatory. At Red Perch, both pleasure and revelations are on offer. It’s a restaurant that bears revisiting often, to satisfy a craving for tender, crispy fish or a simple plate of salty anchovies in good olive oil. A very good burger sometimes appears on the menu, as does paella, or a bánh mi with shatteringly crisp fried shrimp on a toasted baguette. This is what happens when a fine-dining chef follows his dream: in this case the dream belongs to the Australian chef Cameron Payne, whose time at the vaunted Attica proved to be a perfect finishing school for opening a truly exceptional fish-and-chip shop in Nashville. ELLEN FORT
Silver Sands
North Nashville | Soul Food
“This is how we ate coming up” is the kind of thing you hear in the line that curves from the steam table through the dining room at Silver Sands. A few examples of “this” include saucy beef tips, stewed whole okra spears and fried-to-order whiting and catfish. Sophia Vaughn, the chef and owner of Silver Sands, was preceded in the kitchen of this landmark meat-and-three by her mother and aunt. She wakes up well before dawn to start cooking soul food that is consistently satisfying and often more than that. The salmon croquettes and hot water cornbread (imagine Johnny cakes crossed with gougères) are among the dishes that wouldn’t be out of place at one of the fancy restaurants downtown. BRETT ANDERSON
Sperry’s Restaurant
Belle Meade | Steakhouse
In a town filled with steakhouses, Sperry’s stands out for the warm patina it has acquired during its 50 years on the edge of Nashville’s upscale Belle Meade neighborhood. There are renowned steaks, including one stuffed with blue cheese as wrapped in bacon, known as the “Prince William” after the royal ordered it on a 2002 visit. But there is also a copious salad bar, purportedly the first in Nashville (and it may well be the last). The dark, moody interior conjures an English country tavern, where photos of horses and hunting hounds mingle pleasantly with dark wood beams to perhaps remind diners of a time when fine dining had a different meaning. Do not skip the bananas Foster, which are the star of the show each night, served tableside, the impressive flames drawing the rapt attention of the entire dining room. ELLEN FORT
S.S. Gai
East Nashville | Thai
Ostensibly, the hardest decision you’ll have to make here is whether to order your chicken fried or grilled. In reality, you can’t lose. Both versions deliver handsomely browned birds, their surfaces covered with flecks of fried shallots and garlic. However you deploy the accompanying sauces — one vinegar-based, the other fish sauce-based, both spicy — the chicken makes for rapturous, messy eating, as was certainly the case when Chris and Emma Biard encountered the chicken that inspired S.S. Gai on a honeymoon trip to Thailand. Their business is found in the Wash, a former East Nashville carwash that has been converted into an outdoor food hall filled with food entrepreneurs polishing their ideas. When you consider its equally flavorful snacks and pounded salads, S.S. Gai is already serving some of Nashville’s most memorably delicious food. BRETT ANDERSON
Tailor
Germantown | Indian
The grand crystal chandelier in the dining room of Tailor is reason enough to visit the chef Vivek Surti’s homage to modern Indian cuisine, but thankfully, it’s just a bonus. The tasting menu here is an extension of Mr. Surti’s familial hospitality. Dining at Tailor is like an invitation to Mr. Surti’s home, albeit a home with a kitchen full of top flight kitchen equipment and highly trained chefs. Each dish represents Mr. Surti’s passion for sharing his South Asian heritage and Nashville upbringing on the same plate: A classic Southern tomato sandwich features juicy heirlooms slathered with crunchy masala aioli, and a pani puri is filled with chunks of watermelon and its juice. For the final course, Mr. Surti’s chai is served, another family recipe redolent of ginger and cardamom, spicy enough to leave diners’ tongues tingling long after they’ve left the dining room for the night. ELLEN FORT
Xiao Bao
McFerrin Park | Asian
When it opened in 2022, Xiao Bao brought the city the hand-pulled noodles it had been yearning for. But the restaurant, a spinoff of Charleston’s Xiao Bao Biscuit, brought much more than that to its little corner of East Nashville, starting out front with guard house of sorts, shaped like a giant strawberry. The restaurant is a retro diner complete with a Formica tabletops and red velvet couches for lounging. It’s all a fever dream from the minds of husband-and-wife duo Joshua Walker and Duolan Li, whose eclectic style guides the menu and the buzzy vibes. Those noodles are topped with brisket, while a luxurious Thai-style fried rice is spicy and buttery and topped with a mountain of lump crab. At lunch, the la zi spiced smash burger on a bao bun, served with beef fat fries, is a complete showstopper (and nap inducer). ELLEN FORT
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