Imogene + Willie

Prince's Hot Chicken Shack

The place that started it all. Prince's has been serving Nashville hot chicken since the 1940s, and everything else in town is a footnote. The heat levels are real — medium here would be extra-hot anywhere else. The room is no-frills, the wait can be long, and none of that matters once you bite in. This is ground zero.

Audrey

Sean Brock's love letter to Southern Appalachian cooking, served in a converted house with a garden out back that supplies half the menu. This isn't nostalgia food — it's painstaking research into heirloom ingredients and forgotten techniques, plated with a precision that makes every course feel like a thesis defense. The tasting menu is the move.

The Hermitage Hotel

Nashville's only Beaux-Arts hotel, open since 1910 and still the most elegant room in the city. The lobby ceiling alone is worth a visit — barrel-vaulted stained glass that makes you stand a little straighter. The rooms have been updated without losing the gravitas. The men's restroom downstairs won an award. No, really.