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Five Points Pizza
Five Points Pizza opened in 2011 at the East Nashville end of the Five Points intersection, founded by David and Tara Tieman with a straightforward goal: build a genuine New York-style pizzeria in a city that didn't really have one at the time. That original location has stayed a neighborhood anchor ever since, busy enough on a given night that it functions as much as a Five Points hangout as a restaurant. The pizza itself sticks close to New York tradition — thin crust, a proper fold, pies sized and priced for a table that comes back weekly rather than a once-a-year splurge. The Margherita functions as the restaurant's own baseline test, the pie the Tiemans use to judge whether the dough, sauce, and cheese are all working together the way they should, a useful detail for anyone deciding what to order first. Five Points Pizza has been voted the best pizza in Nashville in local polling, recognition for a restaurant that built its reputation the unglamorous way — consistent, well-executed slices and pies rather than a single viral menu item. That kind of steady local acclaim, sustained over more than a decade, tends to mean more than a single splashy write-up. The concept proved durable enough to expand beyond East Nashville, with a second location opening on Charlotte Avenue in West Nashville in 2018 — growth that's kept the New York-style approach available on both sides of the river without diluting what made the original Woodland Street spot a neighborhood favorite in the first place. For a Nashville pizza list, Five Points Pizza is the essential "real New York-style, done right" entry — a thin-crust, proper-fold pizzeria that's anchored East Nashville's Five Points intersection since 2011 and earned its reputation one weekly regular at a time.
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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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