Urban Grub
Eat12 South#35 of 50

Urban Grub

Nashville, Tennessee

Photo: Zachary Hudacko

A Southern seafood and smokehouse that doesn't fit neatly into any box, and that's the point. The raw bar is excellent, the smoked meats are legit, and the brunch situation — complete with a Bloody Mary bar — is one of the best on 12 South. The space is big and warm, with a patio that fills up fast for good reason.

Insider tip

The smoked trout dip to start, then the shrimp and grits. The Bloody Mary bar at brunch is build-your-own and dangerously fun.

Make a Reservation
See all 50 picks in Nashville

More in Nashville

You might also like

Prince's Hot Chicken Shack
EatEast Nashville

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
EatEast Nashville

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
StayGermantown

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.

Eat picks elsewhere

More eat we love

EatCapitol Hill · Seattle, Washington

Serious Pie

Tom Douglas got serious about pizza and the city never recovered. The dough is impossibly blistered and chewy, the toppings are restrained and perfect — chanterelle with truffle oil, clam with pancetta, a simple margherita that proves the basics matter most. The original downtown location is a wood-paneled cave with a roaring oven at its heart. Order a pizza, order a second pizza. Nobody's judging.

EatChinatown · San Francisco, California

Mister Jiu's

Brandon Jew's Chinatown restaurant sits in the space that once housed Four Seas, a banquet hall where his grandparents celebrated their wedding. The food honors that lineage while pushing in every direction — Dungeness crab rice noodles, smoked quail, a hot-and-sour soup that rewires your understanding of the dish. It's Chinese-American fine dining that feels both deeply rooted and entirely new.