The plates that define Nashville: what they are, and where to eat the canonical version.
The plates that define Nashville. what they are, where they came from, and where to eat the canonical version.
Bone-in fried chicken painted with a cayenne paste, served on white bread with pickles. The lacquered red crust hides serious heat; bread soaks the oil.
Where: Prince's Hot Chicken, Hattie B's Hot Chicken, Bolton's Spicy Chicken and Fish, Pepperfire Hot Chicken
Price: $10-18
A plate-lunch tradition: one Southern protein plus three vegetable sides, with cornbread and sweet tea. Counter ordering, cafeteria lines, lunch hours only.
Where: Arnold's Country Kitchen, Monell's Dining and Catering, Elliston Place Soda Shop
Price: $11-15
Scratch buttermilk biscuits, halved and topped with country ham slices and redeye gravy: pan drippings deglazed with strong black coffee.
Where: Loveless Cafe, Biscuit Love, Monell's Dining and Catering
Price: $10-16
Tennessee-style barbecue: pulled whole-hog pork over hickory, served with vinegar sauce or Alabama white. Slow-cooked overnight, served on a soft roll.
Where: Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint, Peg Leg Porker, Edley's Bar-B-Que
Price: $14-22
A round chocolate-coated candy of caramel, marshmallow nougat and peanuts, invented in Nashville in 1912. The first ever combination candy bar in America.
Price: $2-6 per cluster
Salt-cured, smoke-cured and aged Tennessee ham, sliced thin and pan-fried. The signature pork product of the region, with redeye gravy as its match.
Where: Loveless Cafe, Husk Nashville, Monell's Dining and Catering
Price: $14-24
Cornmeal-dredged catfish fillets, deep-fried until the coating shatters. Plated with hush puppies and cole slaw, dipped in tartar or hot sauce.
Where: Loveless Cafe, Arnold's Country Kitchen, Monell's Dining and Catering
Price: $13-18
Layered dessert of vanilla wafers, banana slices and from-scratch vanilla custard, topped with meringue or whipped cream. Cold service.
Where: Arnold's Country Kitchen, Hattie B's Hot Chicken, Loveless Cafe
Price: $5-9
Slow-smoked pork shoulder pulled into tender shreds, piled on a soft white bun with creamy slaw and a thin Tennessee-style tomato-vinegar sauce.
Where: Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint, Edley's Bar-B-Que, Peg Leg Porker, Husk Nashville
Price: $11-16
True Tennessee cornbread: white cornmeal, buttermilk, bacon fat, baked screaming-hot in a cast-iron skillet with a crackling crust. No sugar, no flour added in the meat-and-three tradition.
Where: Loveless Cafe, Arnold's Country Kitchen, Husk Nashville, Monell's Dining and Catering, Folk
Price: $3-7 as a side
A laminated croissant-donut hybrid: 100 layers of laminated dough fried to a crisp shell, then filled with pastry cream and topped with house glazes.
Where: Five Daughters Bakery, Dozen Bakery, Biscuit Love, Proper Bagel
Price: $6-9 per donut
The South's caviar: sharp cheddar, pimento peppers, mayonnaise, and a kick of cayenne, served as a dip with crackers or spread thick in a sandwich.
Where: Husk Nashville, Arnold's Country Kitchen, Folk, Loveless Cafe, City House, The Mockingbird
Price: $8-14 as a starter; $3-6 as a side
Whole catfish or whiting fillets cornmeal-fried and basted in a heavy cayenne-and-lard slick, stacked on white bread with pickles. The North Nashville hot-fish answer to hot chicken.
Where: Bolton's Spicy Chicken and Fish
Price: $11-16
A short stack of sweet-potato pancakes with cinnamon-brown-sugar syrup and whipped butter, served in the queue-out-the-door Hillsboro Village diner since 1961. The Nashville breakfast institution.
Where: The Pancake Pantry
Price: $12-18
Bone-in fried chicken painted with a cayenne paste, served on white bread with pickles. The lacquered red crust hides serious heat; bread soaks the oil.
History: Thornton Prince, in the 1930s in Nashville, was given a too-spicy plate by his girlfriend as punishment for staying out late. He liked it. The Prince family opened a hot chicken shack in North Nashville and the rest of the city followed. Bolton's, Pepperfire, Hattie B's and others built on the template. Today the dish is on menus from KFC to Carla Hall's New York shop; the original Prince's location on Ewing Drive closed in 2018 but the family expanded.
Where to try it: Prince's Hot Chicken, Hattie B's Hot Chicken, Bolton's Spicy Chicken and Fish, Pepperfire Hot Chicken
Watch out for: Gluten, Egg
A plate-lunch tradition: one Southern protein plus three vegetable sides, with cornbread and sweet tea. Counter ordering, cafeteria lines, lunch hours only.
History: The meat-and-three is Tennessee's plate-lunch tradition, descended from boarding-house cooking. Lunch counters serving working Nashvillians codified the format by the 1950s. Arnold's Country Kitchen, which won the James Beard America's Classics Award in 2009, runs the canonical version. The 'three' refers to vegetables but typically includes mac and cheese; the protein rotates daily. Most counters are lunch-only, Monday to Friday, with prices still under $15 in 2026.
Where to try it: Arnold's Country Kitchen, Monell's Dining and Catering, Elliston Place Soda Shop
Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy
Scratch buttermilk biscuits, halved and topped with country ham slices and redeye gravy: pan drippings deglazed with strong black coffee.
History: Tennessee country ham, salt-cured for 6 to 12 months, has been a regional pantry staple since the 1800s. Frying a slice releases drippings that, deglazed with leftover coffee, make redeye gravy. The Loveless Cafe on Highway 100 in Nashville has plated the dish since 1951 and remains the canonical reference. Biscuits at Loveless are made from scratch every 20 minutes; the recipe stayed unchanged through ownership transitions in 2003 and 2014.
Where to try it: Loveless Cafe, Biscuit Love, Monell's Dining and Catering
Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy
Tennessee-style barbecue: pulled whole-hog pork over hickory, served with vinegar sauce or Alabama white. Slow-cooked overnight, served on a soft roll.
History: West Tennessee whole-hog barbecue tradition runs through Memphis and out to Nashville's Pat Martin, who opened Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint in 2006 and has since franchised to four states. Carey Bringle's Peg Leg Porker in The Gulch since 2013 runs Memphis-style dry-rub ribs alongside pulled pork. The two pull-pork sauces of Tennessee are tangy red and the lighter Alabama white, both common on Nashville BBQ menus.
Where to try it: Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint, Peg Leg Porker, Edley's Bar-B-Que
Watch out for: Gluten
A round chocolate-coated candy of caramel, marshmallow nougat and peanuts, invented in Nashville in 1912. The first ever combination candy bar in America.
History: The Standard Candy Company invented the Goo Goo Cluster in Nashville in 1912: caramel, marshmallow nougat, peanuts and milk chocolate. It is widely cited as the first combination candy bar in America, predating the Snickers by 18 years. The cluster shape was named in a streetcar after a passenger said 'goo goo' at a child. Goo Goo's are still made in downtown Nashville; the Standard Candy flagship at 116 3rd Avenue South runs a chocolate-shop tasting and limited-edition flavours.
Watch out for: Peanuts, Dairy, Soy
Salt-cured, smoke-cured and aged Tennessee ham, sliced thin and pan-fried. The signature pork product of the region, with redeye gravy as its match.
History: Tennessee country ham follows a 200-year-old tradition: pork hind legs are salt-cured for several weeks, smoked, then aged six to 18 months. The result is a dry, salty ham closer to Italian prosciutto than to wet-cured American ham. Loveless Cafe's country-ham program has run since 1951 in Nashville. Edwards in Surry, Virginia and Newsom's in Princeton, Kentucky are the regional producers Nashville restaurants source from most often.
Where to try it: Loveless Cafe, Husk Nashville, Monell's Dining and Catering
Watch out for: None typical
Cornmeal-dredged catfish fillets, deep-fried until the coating shatters. Plated with hush puppies and cole slaw, dipped in tartar or hot sauce.
History: Catfish is the South's working-river fish. Farms in west Tennessee and the Mississippi Delta supplied Nashville fish fries through the 20th century. The dish became a Friday-night fixture in Black-owned restaurants and meat-and-three counters. Today catfish lives on at Swett's, the Loveless and most meat-and-three menus around Nashville, always with cornmeal coating and never with batter.
Where to try it: Loveless Cafe, Arnold's Country Kitchen, Monell's Dining and Catering
Watch out for: Gluten
Layered dessert of vanilla wafers, banana slices and from-scratch vanilla custard, topped with meringue or whipped cream. Cold service.
History: Banana pudding migrated South from Northern dessert columns in the late 1800s. The Nashville version that Arnold's, Loveless and most meat-and-three counters serve uses Nabisco Nilla wafers (Northern brand, fully assimilated), home-cooked vanilla custard and ripe bananas. It is the standard dessert closer at a meat-and-three. Hattie B's sells it by the cup as the heat-killer chaser to hot chicken.
Where to try it: Arnold's Country Kitchen, Hattie B's Hot Chicken, Loveless Cafe
Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy, Egg
Slow-smoked pork shoulder pulled into tender shreds, piled on a soft white bun with creamy slaw and a thin Tennessee-style tomato-vinegar sauce.
History: Tennessee whole-hog and pulled pork barbecue traces to West Tennessee's pit traditions, codified in Memphis by the 1920s and adopted in Nashville's BBQ joints from the 1950s. Pat Martin opened Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint in Nolensville in 2006 and grew it into the Nashville flagship; Peg Leg Porker (Carey Bringle) and Edley's Bar-B-Que round out the city's BBQ trinity.
Where to try it: Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint, Edley's Bar-B-Que, Peg Leg Porker, Husk Nashville
Watch out for: Gluten, Egg, Dairy
True Tennessee cornbread: white cornmeal, buttermilk, bacon fat, baked screaming-hot in a cast-iron skillet with a crackling crust. No sugar, no flour added in the meat-and-three tradition.
History: Tennessee cornbread descends from the Cherokee tradition of corn cakes; the cast-iron skillet preparation became standard by the 19th century when iron cookware replaced stone hearth methods. The unsweetened, flourless style remains the Tennessee marker, distinguishing it from the cake-like Yankee cornbread version. Loveless Cafe in Bellevue has baked the same recipe since 1951.
Where to try it: Loveless Cafe, Arnold's Country Kitchen, Husk Nashville, Monell's Dining and Catering, Folk
Watch out for: Egg, Dairy
A laminated croissant-donut hybrid: 100 layers of laminated dough fried to a crisp shell, then filled with pastry cream and topped with house glazes.
History: Isaac and Stephanie Meek (parents of five daughters: Dylan, Lucy, Maggie, Evangeline, and Constance) launched Five Daughters Bakery in 12 South in January 2015, adapting the cronut format with a 3-day, 100-layer lamination process. The donut requires 72 hours of folding and resting before frying. Five Daughters' East Nashville and Franklin locations followed; the 12 South queue regularly stretches down the block on weekends.
Where to try it: Five Daughters Bakery, Dozen Bakery, Biscuit Love, Proper Bagel
Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy, Egg
The South's caviar: sharp cheddar, pimento peppers, mayonnaise, and a kick of cayenne, served as a dip with crackers or spread thick in a sandwich.
History: Pimento cheese emerged as a Southern staple in the 1930s when canned pimentos became widely available; by the 1950s it was the universal Southern lunch counter and church-potluck spread. Husk Nashville under Sean Brock made the chef-driven version a fine-dining starter; Arnold's Country Kitchen still serves the meat-and-three version with crackers, a daily staple.
Where to try it: Husk Nashville, Arnold's Country Kitchen, Folk, Loveless Cafe, City House, The Mockingbird
Watch out for: Dairy, Egg
Whole catfish or whiting fillets cornmeal-fried and basted in a heavy cayenne-and-lard slick, stacked on white bread with pickles. The North Nashville hot-fish answer to hot chicken.
History: Bolton Matthews opened Bolton's Spicy Chicken and Fish on Main Street in East Nashville in 1997 with his wife Dolly, using the family hot-chicken recipe of his late uncle Bolton Polk (who had cooked at Prince's). The hot fish is Dolly's branch innovation: the same cayenne-and-lard slick from the hot chicken poured over cornmeal-fried whiting or catfish, stacked on white bread with pickles and queued out the door at lunchtime.
Where to try it: Bolton's Spicy Chicken and Fish
Watch out for: Fish, Gluten
A short stack of sweet-potato pancakes with cinnamon-brown-sugar syrup and whipped butter, served in the queue-out-the-door Hillsboro Village diner since 1961. The Nashville breakfast institution.
History: The Pancake Pantry opened on 21st Avenue South in Hillsboro Village in 1961, founded by Robert Baldwin, and has served scratch-made pancakes from the same worn linoleum counter ever since. Country-music recording artists, with Music Row a short drive northeast on 16th and 17th Avenue, made it a regular stop from the 1970s; Taylor Swift named the sweet-potato pancake her favorite Nashville dish in Bon Appetit (2012). The queue down the sidewalk has not stopped since.
Where to try it: The Pancake Pantry
Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy, Egg
Nashville's signature dishes include Nashville hot chicken, Meat-and-three, Biscuits with redeye gravy, Tennessee whole-hog pork, Goo Goo Cluster. See our signature dishes chapter for where to eat each.