East Nashville Is the Hottest Neighborhood In the Hot-Chicken City
Everyone wants to come to Nashville these days. On the hunt for hot chicken? We had it before anyone else (I see you, L.A.). Need a “Last Bash in Nash” T-shirt for a bachelorette party? We’re stocked to the gills. But while downtown’s honky-tonks are filled with tourists, I’m headed across the river to East Nashville. The neighborhood has morphed into the kind of place where you’ll find competing ramen shops, ultra-hipster coffee snobs, and all the locals. Ever since the iconic Margot Café opened in 2001, a new crew of restaurants and bars has cropped up, cementing East Nashville’s status as the city’s most delicious neighborhood.
Photo by Tim Robison1/9The Kinda-Sorta-Southern Stunner
The running joke for the past decade is that thousands of barns gave their lives to supply the amount of reclaimed barnwood decorating the city’s institutions. So it was with a healthy amount of skepticism that I approached Pelican & Pig, a Southern-ish restaurant with, yes, a bar wrapped in wood. I should have been more trusting since (a) those are new pine boards and (b) it’s from Nick and Audra Guidry, the husband-and-wife duo behind the excellent Slow Hand Coffee + Bakeshop next door. Here they give Southern staples a twist, smoking short ribs and layering them with a Sichuan-spiked soubise and making pillowy gnocchi out of biscuit dough to slide under braised rabbit.
Photo by Tim Robison2/9The Spanish Answer
For all the strides Nashville has made, our culinary scene has room to grow. Love Filipino food? It’s only just taking off here. Want good Sichuan beyond hot pot? Drive to Memphis. Thank God for Peninsula, which stepped into our Iberian breach and filled it with textbook-perfect Spanish small plates, creative gin and tonics, and a pan con tomate that is obscene, but in a good way, layered thick with tomatoes and nigella seeds. Chef Jake Howell is afraid of neither squid nor sweetbreads on his menu, and he deploys them simply: the former with beans, the latter deep inside an eggy morcilla crepe.
Photo by Tim Robison3/9The Forever Neighborhood Gem
Someday Hal Holden-Bache will get his due as one of the city’s best chefs, but until then he can settle for having the best local spot in town. Lockeland Table has emerged as the strongest in the wave of farm-to-table restaurants that swept through Nashville. That’s because his relationships with local producers give him unbeatable access to fresh vegetables and heritage meats. They’re the through line of his menu, woven into wood-fired Neapolitan pizza and Lockeland Table classics like roasted mountain trout with sugar snaps. I’m not one to force you to order something, but I must when it comes to the smoked peach jam with chicken liver pâté. It’s salty, sweet, and perfect.
Photo by Tim Robison4/9The New-School Middle Eastern Spot
The city’s large Kurdish population means it’s easy to find good Middle Eastern food, but there’s something exciting about chef Hrant Arakelian’s modern perspective on it at Lyra. Here he focuses on vegetables, turning carrots into kibbeh nayeh by grinding them like tartare and mixing with bulgur wheat. But don’t skip the protein: The roasted halibut wrapped with steamed grape leaves is sublime, and grassy lamb comes as chops, sausages, or minced with a sour cherry sauce.
Photo by Tim Robison5/9The Constantly Experimenting Pop-Up
Ask any local chef about pure talent and you’ll hear a lot about Jason Zygmont. After three years at East Nash hot spot The Treehouse and stints at Noma and Per Se, he debuted Setsun Pop-Up at Sky Blue Cafe. Zygmont plays with trendy ingredients but pulls in bolder flavors: oysters served with a zippy black vinegar mignonette and beef tartare charged with gochujang and a confitted egg yolk. It reflects his borderless worldview, hopping all over in search of flavor.
Photo by Tim Robison6/9The Café Redefining the “All-Day” Part
Most Southerners’ idea of an all-day café is a place where hash browns come scattered, smothered, and covered. But chef Julia Jaksic is changing that. At Cafe Roze, her menu leans more toward verdant English pea toast than biscuits and gravy in the morning and, in lieu of fried chicken, simple pasta with garlic, anchovy, and parm in the evening. It’s too easy to spend the whole day here, sunken into a comfy chair after breakfast or hunched over an “it’s almost 5 p.m.” cocktail at the pink bar.
Photo by Tim Robison7/9The Breakfast Game Changer
Chef Bryan Lee Weaver started slinging real-deal breakfast tacos at Redheaded Stranger, along with green-chile cheeseburgers and burritos stuffed with crispy hash browns and chorizo. It’s a mash-up of what he grew up eating in Texas and Colorado and his fascination with New Mexican comfort foods. Once Weaver set up shop, we didn’t know what hit us. Tacos filled with wobbly brisket, scrambled eggs, and melty American cheese? I’ve never been so happy to enter a biscuit-free zone.
Photo by Tim Robison8/9The Second Act
Chef Philip Krajeck, known for his dazzling pasta work at Rolf and Daughters, shifts gears at his nearly two-year-old hit restaurant, Folk. There’s simple- yet-satisfying pizza—the clam pie is so popular that it can’t come off the menu—as well as creative takes on vegetables (summer beans with XO sauce and buttermilk) and Italian classics (chicken Milanese with giardiniera). It’s all set in a refurbished grocery store that’s airy and inviting and stocked with expertly curated natural wines.
Photo by Tim Robison9/9While You're There…Five Bars to Hit Up
Hang out all night on plush couches and sip perfect Palomas at Rosemary & Beauty Queen. At the tropical Pearl Diver (pictured), pretend you’re by the beach with a Jamaican soda-and-rum drink. You’ll hear more Afro-punk than country at the throwback watering hole that is Wilburn Street Tavern. Embrace the robot decor at Chopper—or let the fresh fruit daiquiris win you over. No. 308 is the original spot from bar titans (and sisters) Britt and Alexis Soler shakes up the most creative cocktails on the east side.
