The best fried chicken in Nashville.

Monell's Dining & Catering is a converted house on Sixth Avenue North with a courtyard and a fish pond out front. A sign at the door tells strangers they will leave as friends, and the seating plan backs it up: tables are shared, and platters are passed around.

Breakfast is the draw. Biscuits are named more than any other item, fried chicken comes next, and pancakes, mac and cheese and baked barbecue chicken fill the platters. Diners describe a second plate as necessary because food keeps arriving. Some guests ate here three times in one visit, including a late breakfast.

Seating is first come, first served, and holidays can mean waits of hours. The breakfast and lunch schedule can confuse newcomers, so ask on arrival. Arriving near opening is the best plan for a short wait.

The Loveless Cafe sits on Highway 100 in a former motor lodge, with a large dining room, a gift shop and a takeaway food counter. Visitors arrive for a plate of warm biscuits and a table spread with preserves, and many say the setup matches the idea of a southern meal. Servers get praise for being warm, informed and quick with samples.

The biscuits come free before the order, crumbly and salt forward, with jam or honey as options. Fried chicken is the entree most diners recommend, with breading that stays crisp and meat that stays juicy. Country fried steak, the BBQ omelet, ribs and pulled pork add range, and chicken and dumplings appears as a Wednesday special that one diner called the best they had eaten. Sides carry the table: mac and cheese, creamed corn, hash brown casserole, turnip greens, fried green tomatoes and pimento cheese.

The kitchen handles a heavy volume of visitors with solid execution. One fried chicken biscuit was a little salty for one diner, so ask for light seasoning if that matters. Plan to browse the gift shop on the way out.

The Southern Steak & Oyster on Third Avenue South is a downtown dining room near Broadway. Diners describe it as upscale but relaxed, with a lively bar and a room that runs loud. It is not the tourist trap some visitors expect.

Oysters lead, and happy hour is a favorite time to order them by the dozen. Steak, filet, ribs and BBQ shrimp bring variety, and crab cakes are praised, including a dairy-free version. Southern touches show up in meatloaf with gouda grits, fried chicken salad and a biscuit benedict at Sunday brunch. Banana pudding ends many meals.

The Pinnacle garage is next door and can validate parking. The room is packed, so waits happen even with a reservation. Some diners found service uneven at the front door, so arrive with patience.

Urban Grub is a polished restaurant on 12th Avenue South in the 12 South area. Diners book it for conferences, anniversaries and weekly dinners, and servers who learn about a celebration have been known to bring a complimentary toast. A patio adds to the seating.

The menu pairs seafood with Southern plates. Oysters, shrimp and crab lead the starters, and the double cut pork chop is called the most tender one some diners have had. Steak and biscuits, risotto, salmon and the peach burrata salad get mentions, and brunch features butter pecan donuts and biscuits. Wine is a common order at dinner.

Reservations matter, with some diners booking weeks ahead. Parking nearby can be hard to find. A few diners reported slow service on busy nights, so allow time. The room is lively and can be loud.

Arnold's Country Kitchen on Eighth Avenue South is a cafeteria-style meat-and-three. The menu rotates by day and is posted on the wall. Guests join the line, point to what they want and carry a tray to a table. Visitors and locals both fill the room.

The country fried steak, fried chicken, roast beef, ribs and brisket are the meats diners name. Chicken and dumplings and mac and cheese are the plates repeated in the most accounts, along with bread pudding. A Saturday evening menu, called After Dark, serves different dishes, and one diner found it less satisfying than lunch.

The doors open at 11, and by five minutes after the room is half full. The line is long, so go early. Diners bus their own tables, and the staff are described as welcoming.

Maneet Chauhan opened Chauhan Ale & Masala House in 2014, and the room has held its position as Nashville's most considered Indian restaurant through the full run of the It-City boom. The thesis is straightforward: Indian cooking as a framework for Nashville's hybrid appetite, not a museum piece and not a novelty act. The menu earns that position dish by dish.

The Butter Chicken Poutine is the room's signature collision, gravy-soaked fries carrying the weight of a north Indian braise, and it works because the butter chicken itself is sound. The Tandoori Fried Chicken takes the tandoor's char logic and runs it through a format Nashville already understands. That is not a gimmick; it is a chef making an argument about two traditions that share a commitment to seasoned heat and crunch. The Masala Mac and Cheese occupies the same category, a familiar architecture rebuilt in a spice register the city was not used to in 2014 and has since come to expect here.

Beyond the crossover signatures, the kitchen runs a full Indian program. The pani poori is executed with care, the chai masala arrives properly hot, and the shrimp kababs come through the kitchen fresh and seasoned. Vegetarian options carry real weight on the menu, not an afterthought column. The room turns at full-service pace on weekend evenings; a 7 p.m. reservation is the way to control the experience rather than wait for a table.

Moderately priced for what Nashville charges for dinner in 2024, Chauhan sits in the neighborhood between casual and special-occasion without committing to either. It is the room for a group that wants something more directed than a standard curry house and more grounded than the new-American tasting circuit. The beer program supports the spice register without demanding it.

Big Al's Deli sits in a residential neighborhood on Fourth Avenue North, and first-time diners say they wondered if they had the right address. The room is tiny and plain. The reasons people come are the biscuits, the breakfast plates and the lunch specials, along with a welcome that diners compare to family.

Breakfast is the busiest meal. Chicken and waffles, the egg and cheese biscuit, pancakes with chocolate chips and the Bowser biscuit all get praise, and the biscuits are homemade. At lunch the menu moves to pork chops, shrimp and grits, fried catfish and jerk chicken. When it is busy, folding tables go outside.

There is nowhere to sit while waiting, and a few diners report long waits. Hours can change, so call ahead and go early. Takeout and catering are options for larger orders.

Soy Bistro sits on Maryland Way in Brentwood, a small room that fills at lunch and offers Korean-style food. Parking fills fast, so arriving near opening is wise. Service is the thing diners praise first: staff wipe tables as guests leave, adjust the temperature without being asked, and even let a late customer finish a meal after closing.

The bibimbap skillet is the dish diners name most, arriving piping hot with a crisp layer of rice at the bottom, much like the stone bowl versions one diner grew up with. Kimchi tacos and Korean spicy tacos are the other signature orders, and spicy fried rice, spicy udon, gochujang chicken, teriyaki chicken and dumplings fried with a sauce are all liked. A spicy Korean queso with crispy corn chips makes a fun starter, and hot chicken appears for those who want Nashville flavor.

Portions are large, so sharing is easy. Vegetarians report that staff remade a fried rice without egg. First-time visitors have been offered a free appetizer. Takeout travels well, though a runny egg yolk made a mess for one family on the drive home.

Husk Nashville opened in 2013 as a sibling to the original Charleston location, and it arrived with a thesis: Southern cooking grounded entirely in Southern ingredients, with the wood fire doing most of the structural work. That premise is still the program. The wood-fired cornbread with sorghum butter is the table's opening statement, and it holds up as one of the more honest bread courses in the city. It is not performing rusticity. The heritage pork shoulder carries the same logic: a long-cooked cut from a named breed, the smoke and fat doing what they have always done in Southern kitchens, with nothing added to make it seem more interesting than it already is. The seasonal wood-fired vegetables operate on the same principle: the oven is the technique, the sourcing is the argument.

The room sits at the upscale end of Nashville dining, and the price reflects that. It is a special-occasion room. Large groups move through it, and the front-of-house manages the load well enough that the experience stays coherent across different table sizes. That consistency matters at this price tier. What the room cannot always control is expectation: the national press and the influencer circuit have run well ahead of what any kitchen can deliver on a given Tuesday night, and some visits land short of the mythology.

The Nashville location belongs to a broader story. Sean Brock's Charleston Husk (2010) built the template; Nashville extended the argument to a city that was just beginning to attract the level of food attention that makes a room like this viable. In the context of where Nashville's restaurant scene has gone since, Husk was an early proof of concept. The question now is whether the execution on a given night matches what the room set out to prove in 2013. On the right night, with the pork shoulder and the cornbread working, it still makes the case.