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Why Nashville Is One of America’s Most Exciting Food Cities

11 Minute read

24 Apr 2026

Hillary Eaton

Journalist

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A three-day look at the chefs, restaurants, and dishes defining Nashville’s dining scene right now.

If Nashville’s food story was flattened into a shorthand, you might feel tempted to go with hot chicken, bachelorette parties, and a booming hospitality economy fueled by tourism dollars. But spend a few days actually eating here, and a different picture comes into focus. One defined by intention. Less by trends than by cooks deeply invested in building something personal, sustainable, and locally rooted.

“Nashville has always felt like a place where you connect with people,” says Josh Habiger of Bastion, a restaurant that has quietly become one of the city’s anchors. “We really strive to connect through the food we make and the service we provide. Maybe that’s more of a Nashville style than what a larger city might consider.”

That sense of connection between chef and guest, memory and technique, and ambition and restraint threads through many of the city’s most compelling restaurants right now. It’s what makes Nashville not the loudest food city in America, but one of the most alive.

This itinerary maps out go-to stops for a culinary-focused Nashville visit. It’s centered at the The Nash (formerly the Bobby Hotel), a boutique property with a central location that makes it easy to move around the city. There’s also a rooftop bar, and it’s close enough to Broadway for a bit of the whisky-and-water tourist circuit if the mood strikes.

Day One: Kisser, Bad Idea, and the New Shape of Southern Hospitality

Nashville for Asian food? Very much yes. At Kisser, chefs Leina Horii and Brian Lea are part of a growing cohort of Nashville cooks rethinking how Asian cuisines live in the city—not as novelty or fusion, but as personal, evolving expressions. “People in Nashville have been so receptive to Japanese cuisine,” Horii says. “It’s allowed us to take risks with what we can put on the menu and be more creative.”

That openness matters. It’s what makes a lunch at Kisser, focused on their fresh udon, possible not just technically, but emotionally. The noodles are made in-house, a labor-intensive process Horii describes with pride. “Udon is something my mother made every Sunday for our family lunch,” she says. “It makes me really happy that we’re able to make it here.” This is the kind of cooking that thrives in a city willing to slow down and pay attention.

Nashville’s dining public, once assumed to want only bold Southern flavors and big gestures, is showing a growing appetite for nuance. For dishes that reward repeat visits. For restaurants that build trust over time.

Dinner picks up at Bad Idea, a spot in an old church that feels like stepping into a version of the city still coming into focus: international, confident, and deeply aware of where it stands in the national dining conversation. Laotian flavors meet fine-dining structure under chef Dave Breeden, formerly of The French Laundry, without the stiffness that often accompanies that label. The room hums. The food is precise without being precious. Standouts include the crispy rice salad with cashew and mint and the scallop-stuffed crepe with nam prik blanquette and laced tuile.

This is not a restaurant trying to prove that Nashville belongs in the same sentence as New York or Los Angeles. It already assumes it does. What’s interesting is how unforced that confidence feels, how seamlessly global references sit alongside Southern hospitality. There’s a generosity to the pacing, the portions, and the way the staff reads the room.

That generosity shows up again and again across the city. It’s one of Nashville’s quiet strengths: an ease that allows chefs to take risks without alienating diners and to cook ambitiously without building walls around the experience.

Day Two: Locust and the Joy of Free-Wheeling Precision

If there’s a restaurant that captures Nashville’s current moment especially well, it’s Locust. Casual in appearance and exacting in execution, it blurs the line between everyday eating and chef-driven obsession in a way that celebrates fun. It’s also one of the best restaurants in the city right now. With its most extensive menu available at lunch, and only open Friday through Sunday, opt for a daytime reservation. Helmed by Irish chef Trevor Moran, previously of Noma and The Catbird Seat, Locust doesn’t announce itself as important or take itself too seriously. It doesn’t need to. The care is evident in the restraint, in dishes that feel edited rather than embellished, in flavors that land clearly and confidently. It’s the kind of place that draws both industry insiders and regulars, not because it’s exclusive, but because the cooking is honest, clean, and expertly executed.

“I had been living in Copenhagen for a few years and I got an offer to work at The Catbird Seat with Chef Erik Anderson,” Moran says of how he ended up in Nashville. “I had met Erik while in Denmark and we fell in love after a few late nights of drinking fisk. Nashville has been very kind to me. The people I have met and know here are why I stay. Community is everything.”

The community of chefs at Locust, clad in baseball hats and T-shirts under their aprons, reflects a growing number of young, talented cooks drawn to one of America’s burgeoning culinary hubs to learn from the best. “Almost nobody that works at Locust is from Nashville originally, but I suppose that's part of the Nashville story in a way, too,” Moran says. “People come here from all over to play music, to study, to cook, whatever it may be. It can be a transient place, but that brings excitement also.”

Locust’s unbridled creativity shows up on the table in unadorned plates of bonny melon topped with briny caper leaf, alongside razor clams whose melon-like flavor echoes through the dish. Build-your-own beef tartare handrolls come with a small diagram showing how it’s done. A thick slice of swordfish gets the Nashville hot chicken treatment, bejeweled with a wedge of tomatillo and a chunk of golden honeycomb. “There are almost no recipes at Locust,” Moran says. “It's cooking by feel and taste and the chat between cooks. It's food I like to cook, and an atmosphere I find really fun and welcoming. Those're the only rules. And work nice and clean if you can. You can.”

Moran, who calls Locust an Irish restaurant, takes liberties with the term, but that may be what makes it such a special place. With Guinness on tap, tissue-thin lamb dumplings, and that monolith of shaved tea ice that has become as synonymous with the restaurant as the crab-filled omelette or a perfectly square sliver of tuna belly, it’s clear this is food that couldn’t come from anyone else, in any other place.

The kind-as-can-be chef/waiters, many of whom move between both roles, will write a list of their favorite spots if asked. Moran frequents many of the same places. “I go to the same places all the time, and I listen to the same albums all the time. I have no more disc space left.” Taquería Andrea, Peninsula, Mas Tacos, Hugh-Baby’s, and SS Gai are all in his rotation.

The move? With seatings during the day, order the entire menu at Locust and settle in for a long lunch. If there’s room for dinner a couple of hours later, try one of the chef’s favorite casual spots for a pressure-free evening of exploring.

Day Three: Audrey, The Catbird Seat, and the Evolution of the Nashville Tasting Menu
Midday Option: Audrey

For a slower interlude between Nashville’s evening tasting menu spots like The Catbird Seat, a midday reservation at Audrey offers a perspective rooted in the traditional, with a strong weekend brunch. While the restaurant was originally conceived by Sean Brock, the kitchen is now guided by executive chef Sam Jett, who helped open the restaurant and has since shaped its current direction. The menu moves easily between familiar comforts and more composed plates, emphasizing ingredients that speak clearly of place. A warm wedge of heirloom cornbread arrives with cultured butter, while buttermilk biscuits might be paired with sausage gravy or seasonal preserves, depending on the day’s offerings. Elsewhere, dishes like trout served over creamy grits or a structured country breakfast built around regional pork illustrate how Audrey treats foundational Southern ingredients as a canvas to bridge past and future. Even more casual items, such as the hickory-grilled cheeseburger accompanied by fries cooked in smoked beef fat, sit comfortably alongside plates that require more technical handling.

At The Catbird Seat, Nashville’s relationship with fine dining comes into sharp relief. The tasting menu format, which elsewhere can feel rigid or overly ceremonial, feels newly relevant here, precisely because it’s been rethought by husband-and-wife team Andy Doubrava and Tiffani Ortiz.

Two years into their move from California, the couple have evolved alongside the restaurant’s next chapter, adapting their cooking to a region where relationships matter as much as the ingredients themselves. “We spent so much time in Southern California, where you get used to the incredible variety and quality of produce,” Doubrava says. “Out here it’s more about relationship-building with farmers. We have this great website, Nashville Grown, that connects us to local growers.”

That shift has required a more hands-on approach to sourcing. “A lot of the infrastructure Andy and I are used to just isn’t here yet,” Ortiz adds, “but the city is growing, and the food scene is growing just as quickly, if not faster than other places. It’s been really rewarding to see that change and be part of it. It’s very boots-on-the-ground as far as our sourcing is concerned.”

The results show up in dishes that balance technical precision with deeply personal references. One example is Doubrava’s ongoing pursuit of what he describes as the “most perfect crab omelette,” an egg dumpling stuffed with crab, shaped in a quenelle mold, and cooked in multiple stages over several days. “I’ve been working on that dish on and off for about a year and a half,” he says. “It’s something I first encountered briefly during a dinner I did in Winnipeg, and we’ve kept refining it, with four separate cooking steps over three days to get the texture exactly right.”

Ortiz’s contributions similarly translate memory into the language of a tasting menu. She’s been adapting elements of pasteles, a Puerto Rican preparation built from root vegetables, green bananas, plantains, and sofrito, into forms that can function within the pace of service. “I knew how to make it traditionally,” she says, “but I didn’t know how to execute it in a restaurant setting with the rapid-fire timing you need for a tasting menu. It’s about maintaining those flavors I grew up with while using Southeastern ingredients and making it work operationally.”

At The Catbird Seat, the format becomes less about spectacle and more about iteration—technique applied in service of something deeply personal. The result is a tasting menu that feels grounded rather than performative, shaped as much by regional realities as by fine-dining ambition.

While MICHELIN recognition has recently arrived in the city, giving restaurants like Locust, The Catbird Seat, and Bastion a star, it hasn’t fundamentally altered the way these restaurants operate. “We definitely got an immediate pop,” Habiger says, “and it feels great to have a full restaurant. But mostly, it’s one less thing to worry about.”

Where Nashville Is Headed

Having lived in Nashville for more than 16 years, Habiger is clear-eyed about both the city’s momentum and its vulnerabilities. Rising costs, higher rents, and the influx of national restaurant groups threaten to blur local identity. “That’s where we’ll lose innovation,” he notes, “because new voices are where creativity comes from.”

Still, the energy is undeniable. Nashville is no longer a city cooking toward recognition; it’s cooking from a place of self-knowledge. The most exciting meals here aren’t chasing trends; they’re building memory. They’re shaped by chefs who understand that hospitality isn’t about performance, but presence. And right now, that presence is felt most strongly not in cities like New York, where it’s already expected, but here, in Nashville dining rooms that feel alive with possibility.