Nashville Eats, Two Meals & No Hot Chicken

Travel

Audio By Carbonatix

I love Nashville hot chicken.

But Nashville has figured out a few other things.

On my latest swing through Music City, two meals made the case perfectly—one involving handmade pasta and sea urchin butter, the other involving breakfast tacos that refuse to acknowledge breakfast has an ending time.

Start with iggy’s in Wedgewood-Houston.

Brothers Ryan and Matthew Poli built the place around handmade pasta, inventive Italian cooking and the entirely reasonable belief that dinner should be fun. The Michelin Guide has noticed, too, singling out the restaurant’s house-made pasta program. 

Order the Shells

The dish that got me was the pasta with crab and sea urchin butter.

Yes. Sea urchin butter.

Depending on the constantly changing menu, the pasta shape and preparation evolve—the restaurant currently lists Maine crab tortellini with yuzu kosho, sea urchin butter and toasted seaweed, while previous versions used little shells with Maine peekytoe crab. 

Whatever shape they’re making when you arrive, if Ryan Poli is combining crab, pasta and sea urchin butter, order it.

The sea urchin doesn’t overwhelm the dish. It deepens it—salty, rich, unmistakably oceanic—while the crab brings sweetness and the pasta gives the whole thing somewhere to live.

Also: get the garlic bread.

Trust me.

Then the next morning—or whenever you’ve decided morning should happen—go find Ladybird Taco.

Breakfast Doesn’t Have a Curfew

Ladybird brings Texas-style breakfast tacos to Nashville, built on house-made tortillas, and here’s the important part:

Breakfast tacos are available all day. 

As they should be.

Eggs do not become illegal at 10:31 a.m.

Go traditional with bacon, scrambled eggs and Monterey Jack. Or get the migas: soft scrambled eggs, house-made tortilla chips, pico, green onions, avocado, cheese and more crushed chips on top. 

But don’t stop at breakfast.

Ladybird smokes its own brisket and offers two particularly dangerous options: brisket with potato, roasted peppers and queso, or brisket with avocado and pico. 

My solution is obvious.

Order breakfast and brisket.

This isn’t the Nashville culinary itinerary everybody hands you.

That’s why I like it.

One stop gives you handmade Italian pasta dressed with crab and sea urchin butter. The other hands you brisket and eggs wrapped inside warm tortillas.

No cowboy boots required.

No three-hour line.

And not a piece of hot chicken in sight.

Sometimes the best way to eat Nashville is to ignore what everybody told you Nashville tastes like.