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Bajo Sexto Taco
Bajo Sexto Taco opened in March 2015 inside the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in downtown Nashville, founded by chefs Jonathan Waxman and Kaelin Ulrich-Trilling as a quick-service taqueria built into one of the city's most-visited tourist landmarks. The name is a nod to the museum's musical setting — a bajo sexto is the largest guitar typically used in a mariachi band, a small, deliberate wink connecting the restaurant to the honky-tonks and instruments surrounding it. Under Chef Ulrich-Trilling's direction, the counter serves traditional Mexican staples — tacos, flautas, soups, salsas, and guacamole — built for museum visitors who want a real meal rather than typical gift-shop food-court fare, alongside a bar program that includes an unusually deep rum selection for a museum café. Bajo Sexto briefly expanded beyond the museum in spring 2016 with a full-service Bajo Sexto Taco Lounge in Sylvan Park, but that satellite location closed in January 2018 after roughly a year, not long after the chef who'd led it departed. The original museum location weathered that contraction and has stayed open as part of Red Pebbles Hospitality's restaurant portfolio, the one true constant of the concept since 2015. Being embedded inside a major tourist attraction gives Bajo Sexto a genuinely different context than any other entry on this list — most of its customers are visiting the Country Music Hall of Fame first and eating tacos second, which makes it a rarer thing: a quick-service taco counter serious enough about its food to earn repeat visits from locals who come specifically for the tacos, museum ticket or not. For a Nashville taco list, Bajo Sexto Taco is the essential "chef-driven tacos inside a landmark" entry — a quick-service counter built into the Country Music Hall of Fame, serving genuinely considered street-style tacos to a mostly tourist crowd since 2015.
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Taco Mamacita
Taco Mamacita was founded by Mike and Taylor Monen alongside Chad Phillips, opening its original location in Chattanooga in the fall of 2008 before expanding to Nashville a year later, in December 2009. The Nashville location landed in Edgehill Village, at the corner of Villa Place and Edgehill Avenue, in a space that had previously been home to another restaurant — a neighborhood that's since become one of the busier small commercial pockets near Music Row and Belmont. The restaurant's identity is built around what its owners describe as made-from-scratch, unique fresh-mex food and handcrafted margaritas, a slightly different lane than either strict Tex-Mex or traditional Mexican street food. Creative tacos like the Sloppy Jose and a Korean BBQ-inspired version sit alongside more expected options like enchiladas suiza with mole roja, and a vegan tortilla soup that's kept the menu accessible beyond just meat-forward orders. Taco Mamacita has grown carefully rather than aggressively since that 2009 Nashville debut — a second Nashville location later opened in Germantown before closing in 2026 after 17 years of operation, while a newer location opened at Hamilton Place in 2024, keeping the brand's overall footprint modest even as individual locations have opened and closed over the years. The handcrafted margarita program has become as central to Taco Mamacita's identity as the food itself, the kind of restaurant regulars pick specifically for a fun, festive meal rather than a quiet dinner — Eater Nashville has included it in coverage of the city's best Mexican restaurants, recognition for a kitchen that's stayed creative rather than settling into a fixed, predictable menu. For a Nashville taco list, Taco Mamacita is the essential "fresh-mex with a margarita program built to match" entry — a Chattanooga-born concept that's anchored Edgehill Village since 2009 with inventive tacos and a genuinely festive atmosphere.
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