Best of Nashville.
Hot chicken, meat-and-threes, and more working songwriters per square mile than anywhere on earth.
The 2025 winners, by category.
Every winner below cleared the same published bar. Only winners are published — no rankings, no runner-up lists, no sponsored placements.
Restaurants · 3 winners · 2025
Arnold's Country Kitchen
Best Meat-and-Three in Nashville Nashville, TN · Since 1982 2025
Loveless Cafe
Best Biscuits in Nashville Nashville, TN · Since 1951 2025
Prince's Hot Chicken
Best Hot Chicken in Nashville Nashville, TN · Since 1945 2025
Every category in Nashville
Categories open as their first winner is verified. If a category is still accepting nominations, the fastest way to open it is to put a business forward.
Why Nashville is worth the fuss.
Nashville’s kitchen canon is non-negotiable: hot chicken that earns its name, meat-and-threes where the line moves like church letting out, and biscuits treated as a serious art form. The new-Nashville boom added range; the old guard kept the soul.
Any given night, the best songwriters in America are playing writers’ rounds in rooms that hold fifty people. Add Percy Warner’s trails, porch-swing weather, and a hospitality reflex that’s completely genuine — Music City earns its myth the honest way.
Nashville, in short
What locals would tell you first:
What “best” means in Nashville.
This guide is built for people who want a better local signal than vote drives, paid badges, or anonymous directory rankings.
Each category starts with public evidence: years in operation, sustained online presence, a real customer track record, positive community sentiment, and recognition in the local community. Open a category to see the winner, the reasons it cleared the bar, and links back to the business itself.
Only winners are published. We don’t sell sponsored placements, publish negative verdicts, or let a business buy its way onto this list. The exact thresholds stay internal so the award can’t be gamed, but the methodology is public and applies the same way in every market.
Know a Nashville business that deserves a serious look?
Nominate it for the next evaluation. Free, takes a minute, and nothing is ever published unless it clears the bar.