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City House
City House opened in 2007 in a historic brick building in Nashville's Germantown neighborhood, founded by chef Tandy Wilson around a menu that blends Italian comfort food with Southern classics rather than committing fully to either tradition. That hybrid identity is unusual enough on its own, but it's the restaurant's pizza — a genuinely secondary item on paper, in a restaurant that isn't primarily a pizzeria — that's become City House's most famous dish. The belly ham pizza is the specific draw: pork belly that Wilson brines for five days before roasting it into a rich, house-cured ham, then layers onto pizza dough alongside house-made mozzarella and oregano. It's a labor-intensive process for a topping most restaurants would buy pre-made, and that five-day commitment is a big part of why the dish has become a genuine signature rather than just another pizza option on a broader Italian-Southern menu. Wilson's own reputation carries real weight here — in 2016 he became the first Nashville chef to win a James Beard Award, taking Best Chef: Southeast, national recognition for a kitchen built around Germantown's brick walls rather than a big-city flagship. City House's pizza specifically drew further national attention in 2024, when the New York Times included it among its list of the 22 best pizzerias in the United States — a notable distinction for a restaurant that isn't primarily known as a pizza place at all. That combination — a James Beard-winning chef's most acclaimed dish happening to be a pizza, at a restaurant that also serves handmade pasta and Southern-inflected small plates — makes City House a genuinely different kind of pizza destination than anywhere else on this list, closer to a chef's tasting menu than a neighborhood pizzeria. For a Nashville pizza list, City House is the essential "a James Beard chef's pizza" entry — a five-day-brined belly ham pizza from an Italian-Southern kitchen that the New York Times named among the best pizzerias in the country in 2024.
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Nicky's Coal Fired
Nicky's Coal Fired opened in 2016 in The Nations, a West Nashville neighborhood built out of former industrial land, founded by Tony and Caroline Galzin as a family-owned Italian restaurant centered on a single, genuinely rare piece of equipment: a four-ton, custom-built coal-burning pizza oven the Galzins named "Enrico," described as the only coal-fired pizza oven in Tennessee. The restaurant occupies a converted space in the former Belle Meade Hosiery Mill on Centennial Boulevard, giving it real industrial character that fits the neighborhood's own transformation from mill town to one of Nashville's fastest-growing residential pockets. The pizza menu runs seven red and six white options, all built on daily sourdough crusts made from scratch and finished in Enrico's coal-fired heat, which produces a different char and texture than a standard wood-fired or gas oven. Beyond pizza, Nicky's runs a full Italian menu of house-made pastas, charcuterie and cheese boards, and gelato and other desserts, plus a private event space called The Maxwell Room — a broader ambition than a single-format pizzeria, closer to a full neighborhood Italian restaurant that happens to have built its identity around one very specific oven. That coal-fired distinction is a genuine rarity worth understanding: most American pizzerias chasing a wood-fired or Neapolitan reputation use wood or gas, and coal ovens require a specific, harder-to-maintain setup that few restaurants bother investing in — Nicky's built its entire brand around being the one Tennessee kitchen willing to do it. For a Nashville pizza list, Nicky's Coal Fired is the essential "the only coal oven in the state" entry — a family-owned Italian restaurant in a converted West Nashville hosiery mill, built entirely around a four-ton custom coal-burning oven no other Tennessee pizzeria has replicated.
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