The Best Italian Food in Nashville

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants
3. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in Nashville

Sfincione is Sicilian street food, something between focaccia and pizza, and this focacceria in the Gulch has built its entire identity around it. The dough gets folded in an open kitchen, then topped with fontina, breadcrumbs, and pecorino before rotating varieties like roasted potato cream or spicy tomato with burrata take over. The menu is short by design. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and Esquire named it among the best new restaurants in America in 2024.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America
3. The Infatuation #25 · The Best Restaurants In Nashville

A glass-enclosed pasta room visible from the dining floor sets the tone at this Italian wine bar in Wedgewood-Houston, where the look is sleek and industrial and the menu stays concise enough to actually read. House-made pastas anchor the middle of the card, soft serve sundaes close it out, and the kitchen treats both with equal seriousness. The New York Times put it on their Nashville list, and the Michelin Guide has selected it too.

1. Nashville Scene 2024 · Best Chef · Best of Nashville · Ryan Poli
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. The Infatuation #6 · The Best Restaurants In Nashville

The name comes from "shokunin," a Japanese word for total devotion to a craft, which tells you something about how seriously Sean Brock takes his pizza. This Neapolitan slice spot in Riverside Village has a domed wood-fired oven imported from Italy and a glass-walled prep area where you can clock exactly where the cheese and cured meats came from. The crust is cold-fermented slow and bakes up light enough that you'll order a second. Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. 50 Top Pizza #30 · 50 Top Pizza USA
2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Germantown was still dozing when this Italian-Southern trattoria and pizza spot opened, and it has been packing the room ever since. The kitchen treats Southern ingredients as native Italian speakers, so cavatelli gets field peas, cornmeal-crusted trout gets salsa verde, and summer pies get loaded with Tennessee tomatoes or ripe peaches. Leave room for dessert; the pastry chef has a following of her own.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Nashville Right Now
2. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in Nashville

The red-drenched dining room and prix fixe menu of "Asian Italian" dishes at this East Nashville spot signal that something genuinely odd is happening here, in the best way. A trio of industry vets serves garlic noodles from a vintage lunchbox and caviar over French onion dip, then hands out red-checked bibs when the gochujang short ribs arrive. The bit never quite tips into exhausting, and the New York Times named it among Nashville's top restaurants.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Nashville Right Now

The garlic bread is the open secret here: brioche baked pretzel-brown with molten creamy cheese at the center, and somehow that's what you'll talk about after leaving a pasta-centric Italian spot. The menu is fusilli alla vodka, rigatoni Bolognese, cacio e pepe, nothing you haven't seen before. One co-owner came up at Catbird Seat, which may explain why the familiar tastes like it means it.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Nashville Right Now

Savarino's is a small Italian bakery in Columbia, Tennessee, where the cannoli, sfogliatelle, and bomboloni come out of a family operation that started in a Walmart shopping center and now sells to the public only on Fridays and Saturdays. Plan accordingly, because showing up on a Tuesday gets you a locked door and a lesson in wholesale. Nashville Scene named it the Best Reason to Go to Columbia, which is a narrow field, but still.

1. Nashville Scene 2023 · Best Reason to Go to Columbia · Best of Nashville