Critics’ choice: The tastes that make Nashville a culinary star

City House

At a time when the whole nation seems to have gone bonkers for Southern cooking, chef Tandy Wilson may hold an unbeatable hand, said Andrew Knowlton in Bon Appétit. In Nashville, a place that feels like “the South’s city of the moment,” seven out of 10 locals are likely to tell you that City House is their favorite restaurant. “On any given night, Wilson’s place, which is hidden in a residential area, is filled with Nashville’s elite: politicians, artists, chefs, and musicians.” The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach claims that when he’s not on tour, he’s most likely to be found in the big open dining room “eating the octopus with butter beans, the North Carolina mussels with linguine, and the belly-ham pizza.” Wilson clearly has a “passion for Southern kitchen traditions,” but he blends in Italian influences and always keeps his offerings “modern and fresh.” My most recent meal there was “a delicious progression of mint-and-citrus-spiked corn salad, cornmeal-crusted North Carolina catfish with fall salsa, and pulled pork over house-made fettuccine.” 1222 4th Ave. N., (615) 736-5838

The Catbird Seat

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“At the highest end of the Nashville food renaissance” sits a 9-month-old newcomer that national food critics can’t seem to write enough about, said Kim Severson in The New York Times. “A small, precise restaurant,” the Catbird Seat has its customers tuck in at a U-shaped bar surrounding an open kitchen where chefs Erik Anderson and Josh Habiger prepare and serve an ever-changing tasting menu featuring dish after dish steeped in Southern tradition but influenced by some of the world’s best restaurants—the French Laundry, Alinea, Noma. “Beef tartare gets depth from horseradish, juniper, and burned bread crumbs.” Yogurt is infused with sweet hay. Always, Anderson and Habiger’s attention to detail is serious, but the chefs have fun, too, offering a nod to Nashville’s hot chicken with crisp squares of chicken skin coated in sorghum and finished with Korean red pepper and a dusting of dill powder. Outsiders might not expect such sophisticated cooking “from the city that gave America Hee Haw,” but we’re learning. 1711 Division St., thecatbirdseatrestaurant.com

The Southern Steak & Oyster

Dining in the New South also has a less showy side, said Carrington Fox in Nashville Scene. In a sunlit room just down the street from the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the team at the Southern Steak & Oyster forgoes gimmicky embellishments but still conveys a confident sense of place. Chef Matt Farley, a New York transplant, delivers “a menu shaped largely by culinary traditions of the South and flavored, when possible, by ingredients of Middle Tennessee.” There are local eggs in the breakfast omelets and local country ham in the Caesar salad. Come dinnertime, the grass-fed beef served here makes the Southern “a welcome new answer to the popular request for steakhouse recommendations.” For the Nudie Suit, a steak homage to country music wardrobe designer Nudie Cohn, each customer has to stroll to the copper-clad back counter by the open kitchen to tell the butcher how thick to make the cut. “But don’t get carried away.” At roughly $3.75 an ounce, the tab multiplies quickly. 150 3rd Ave. S., (615) 724-1762