Brian Nagele
Whether you’re in Nashville to see a show at the historic Grand Ole Opry, tour the Country Music Hall of Fame, or bar hop along the famous Broadway Street, there’s no shortage of historical, cultural, and entertainment attractions for every age and interest.
Nashville’s panoply of colorful neighborhoods full of urban art, parks, street performances, and one of the best zoos in the nation will occupy your day, while the honky-tonks, country concerts, and eclectic bars will have you drinking and dancing all night. Of course, you’ll need to have a big, hearty southern breakfast to fuel your days and recover from a late night on the town.
During my most recent fun-filled visit, I found so many delicious Nashville breakfast restaurants, with great food and friendly, warm service steeped in southern charm. If you’re looking for where to get breakfast in Nashville, you can consult my long and varied list of excellent restaurants.
Whether you’re looking for a slow, sit-down dining experience, or a quick but delicious breakfast on the go, you’ll find the atmosphere you’re looking for to savor the best breakfast in Nashville.
The Pancake Pantry
1796 21st Ave S, Nashville, TN 37212
Phone: 615-383-9333
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Located halfway in between Vanderbilt University and Belmont University in the Edgehill neighborhood, The Pancake Pantry is a favorite breakfast haunt for students and families alike. Opening its doors in 1961, The Pancake Pantry is Nashville’s official pancake house with over 20 varieties of scratch-made pancakes. On any given morning, there’s a line that snakes out the front door and around the building full of eager breakfast-goers awaiting a fluffy stack of pancakes.
While their menu has a vast array of egg dishes, waffles, French toasts, and breakfast sandwiches, they’re famous for their pancakes. You can get classic fluffy pancakes, or thinner crepe-like pancakes rolled and stuffed with fruit compote, nuts, or any number of sweets. They also have savory pancakes like the Santa Fe Cornmeal cakes filled with bacon, cheddar cheese, and green chiles and served with salsa sour cream, butter, and maple syrup.
Fido
1812 21st Ave S, Nashville, TN 37212
Phone: 615-777-3436
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Located in East Nashville, Fido is a popular café and coffee roaster serving the freshest cup of fair-trade coffee. Their original focus was coffee when they opened their doors in the Hillsboro neighborhood in 1996, but when they moved to East Nashville, they decided to offer a full breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu featuring ingredients as fresh and sustainable as their coffee.
Their breakfasts encompass a wide range of American and Mexican classics. I love a Mexican breakfast, so I had the deliciously filling Chilaquiles with corn tortilla chips, two scrambled eggs, Monterey Jack and cheddar, and black beans smothered in a guajillo chile sauce and topped with cilantro-lime sour cream, avocado, radish, cilantro, feta, and jalapeno hot sauce.
Sky Blue Cafe
700 Fatherland St, Nashville, TN 37206
Phone: 615-770-7097
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Sky Blue Café is a cozy, welcoming southern comfort food café in the historic Edgefield neighborhood. They have an espresso bar and a wide variety of coffee drinks as well as classic breakfast cocktails if you feel like a boozy brunch. They serve all the southern favorites but also have Mexican and French breakfast options.
The menu at Sky Blue Café has great modern fusion spins on southern-style breakfasts, incorporating novel flavors from Europe and beyond into traditional dishes. For instance, one of their specialties is the smoky grits bowl, with goat cheese grits topped with grilled peppers, Polish sausage, and runny eggs.
The Loveless Cafe
8400 TN-100, Nashville, TN 37221
Phone: 615-646-9700
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Named for the original owners, Lon and Annie Loveless, this classic southern café has been serving Nashville home-cooked meals since 1951. Lon and Annie lived in the Pasquo neighborhood on the outskirts of Nashville and converted their house into a café, and built a small adjoining motel to offer weary travelers a true taste of southern comfort.
The Loveless Café has been featured on the Food Network and has an honorable mention from the James Beard Foundation. They’re famous for their perfectly buttery and fluffy biscuits, which are served with every dish. I recommend going with a group and splitting the biscuit sampler platter with four biscuit sandwiches stuffed with fried green tomato and pimento cheese, pulled pork barbeque, fried chicken, and country ham.
Biscuit Love
Multiple locations
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With locations in the Gulch, Downtown Franklin, and Hillsboro Village, Biscuit Love is a local family-owned and run breakfast eatery that started as a food truck serving some of the best biscuits in town. Today, their brick-and-mortar locations serve an award-winning menu, using locally sourced ingredients and donating a portion of their profits to Nashville-based charities.
They specialize in biscuits, and theirs are super flakey and light small squares of goodness. They also use their biscuit dough to make one of their most popular menu items, Bonuts, which are fried biscuit dough tossed in sugar and topped with lemon mascarpone and blueberry compote.
Monell’s
Multiple locations
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Monell’s is a classic Southern comfort diner with locations around Nashville, including the original in Germantown and a second Manor location inside a historical-landmark building that dates to the 19th century. Their down-home country cooking has received copious awards, and their food is often featured in Nashville weddings and corporate events.
Breakfast is served 7-days a week family-style with a menu that includes smoked sausage, bacon, biscuits and gravy, fried apples, pancakes, scrambled eggs, hash browns, cheese grits, skillet-fried chicken, corn pudding, and a nice warm cup of coffee.
Proper Bagel
2011 Belmont Blvd, Nashville, TN 37212
Phone: 615-928-7276
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Located right across the street from Belmont University in the Belmont Hillsboro neighborhood, Proper Bagel is a New York native family-owned New York-style bagel shop and eatery. Before relocating to Nashville, the New York native family had been making from-scratch bagels for over 40 years. The shop offers fresh bagels, countless spreads, and smoked fish in their market section and a chill, shabby chic dining room for customers to enjoy a bagel sandwich or house-made toast.
These are the best bagels in town, so I would get a dozen to go along with a few spreads like bacon jalapeno, scallion dill, and lox cream cheese with capers, to name a few. As for a sit-down breakfast, try their New Yorker bagel sandwich with a farm egg, applewood bacon, yellow American cheese, and ketchup.
Frothy Monkey
Multiple locations
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Frothy Monkey is a coffee roaster, café, bakery, and eatery with multiple locations around Nashville, including North and South Nashville and Downtown Nashville. They offer every variety of fresh-baked bread imaginable, and they roast their coffee in-house with a variety of frothy milky espresso drinks, hence the name.
Their menu is a well-rounded selection of elevated southern and new American food, all using their freshly baked bread as key ingredients. I recommend their PRB Andouille and Hash with andouille sausage over roasted purple potatoes, wilted collard greens, and sauteed onions, topped with Red Dragon cheese and fresh blackberries.
The Southern Steak & Oyster
150 3rd Ave S #110, Nashville, TN 37201
Phone: 615-724-1762
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Located in the heart of Downtown Nashville’s SoBro District, The Southern Steak & Oyster is a high-end steak and oyster house with adjoining meat and fish market. The lively, bustling dining room has beautiful, white-tiled floors and a giant wooden bar lining an entire wall replete with big-screen TVs and old photographs of family and employees.
Lavish brunches are only offered during the weekend, as Southern Steak and Oyster is mainly a dinner and cocktails establishment. That said, their boozy upscale brunch menu offers the best of steak and seafood dishes. I recommend the Steak and Biscuit Benedict with grilled beef tenderloin, poached eggs, and bleu cheese over a biscuit, smothered in hollandaise and served with mixed greens and griddled potatoes.
The Nashville Biscuit House
805 Gallatin Ave, Nashville, TN 37206
Phone: 615-228-4504
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Located between the Greenwood and Eastwood neighborhoods of Nashville, The Nashville Biscuit House is an unassuming family-owned and operated breakfast dive. You can get breakfast and lunch all day, and you can dine in or take out a delicious southern home-cooked meal at their handy drive-through window.
Their menu is simple and to the point with all your favorite southern dishes and plenty of all-American favorites, too. They are the most budget-friendly restaurant in Nashville with the best value for your buck. I recommend the sinfully savory homefry bowl with home fries smothered in country gravy, cheddar cheese and topped with two fried eggs.
417 Union
417 Union St, Nashville, TN 37219
Phone: 615-401-7241
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Located in East Nashville, a few blocks from the lovely Victory and Bicentennial Mall State Parks, 417 Union is a contemporary, casual breakfast and lunch restaurant serving New American cuisine with an emphasis on southern dishes. They take pride in sourcing all their produce, bread, and meat from local vendors and producers. However, like any true southern café, they make their buttermilk biscuits from scratch.
Their menu features southwestern and northeastern American favorites like breakfast quesadillas and fancy prime rib hash. I opted for Rachel’s Favorite breakfast platter with salami, onions, and eggs scrambled together with cheddar cheese and served with house potatoes and a toasted everything bagel and cream cheese. You certainly won’t leave hungry after breakfast at 417 Union.
Puckett’s Grocery & Restaurant
500 Church St, Nashville, TN 37219
Phone: 615-770-2772
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Originating as a small country grocery in the 1950s, Puckett’s Grocery and Restaurant has since transformed into a wildly popular restaurant chain with six locations around Nashville, the most popular of which is their Downtown Nashville Church street location. They specialize in southern meat-centric cooking, namely their award-winning slow-smoked BBQ.
Everything on their breakfast menu is creatively combined and expertly executed, from omelets to skillet cinnamon rolls. While I was tempted by the smoked brisket hash, I ended up opting for a sweet breakfast, and I don’t regret it one bit. I had the King’s French Toast, a nod to Tennessee native Elvis Presley, with thick French toast layered with peanut butter-cream cheese fluff and topped with fresh bananas, powdered sugar, and whipped cream.
Yeast Nashville
805 Woodland St #300, Nashville, TN 37206
Phone: 615-678-4592
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Located in the Historic Edgefield neighborhood, Yeast Nashville is a Czech-style Kolache house and coffee shop serving every variety of freshly baked sweet and savory kolaches imaginable. Kolaches revolve around a yeasty, dense bread that is stuffed with meat, cheese, vegetables, or topped with cream cheese and fruit compote.
Their signature yeasty dough makes all kinds of kolaches as well as amazing cinnamon rolls and muffins, not to mention Drew’s Brew coffee bean dripped coffee and espresso drinks. I recommend a sweet and savory kolache. I recommend trying the blueberry cream cheese sweet Kolache and the cheddar, jalapeno, and sausage savory kolache.
Pinewood Social
33 Peabody St, Nashville, TN 37210
Phone: 615-751-8111
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Located in the Rolling Mill Hill neighborhood right on the Cumberland River, Pinewood Social is a super trendy funhouse for adults, featuring an old-school bowling alley, and a large outdoor patio with a pool and hot tub, not to mention a sleek bar and dining room serving high-end southern comfort food for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
You can get breakfast every weekday and spectacularly boozy brunches on the weekend. If you’re there on a weekday, I recommend the crispy tots with Manchego, parsley, and smoked paprika aioli to start, followed by the hearty Southwest bowl with scrambled eggs, carne asada, habanero pico de gallo, chihuahua cheese, cilantro, and green onions.
Another Broken Egg Cafe
Multiple locations
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Another Broken Egg Café is a high-end southern-style breakfast restaurant and bar with multiple locations around Tennessee. Their flagship Nashville location lies in the fun and lively Arts District right across the river from the Nissan Stadium. They expect you to have a breakfast cocktail with your meal and recommend cocktail pairings for every menu item.
Their spectacular menu features flavor-infused pancakes, waffles, and French toasts as well as southern classics like shrimp and grits and biscuits and gravy. I recommend one of their over-the-top specials like the Mardi gras omelet filled with Louisiana crawfish, gulf shrimp, andouille sausage, and red peppers then topped with tomato hollandaise and served on grits with an English muffin.
The Row Kitchen & Pub
110 Lyle Ave, Nashville, TN 37203
Phone: 615-321-1224
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Located in the heart of Music Row right off the famous Broadway strip of bars and honky tonks, The Row Kitchen and Pub has been a favorite hangout spot for country singers and songwriters for over 20 years. To honor the musical spirit of Nashville, you can enjoy live music daily, starting at 6 pm.
You can also enjoy a delicious brunch seven days a week at the Row. I would start with the Deviled Eggs 5 Way with pimento cheese, peppadew hickory bacon, chow chow, and a dill pickle topping on each. For the main event, I recommend the BBQ Hash Skillet with pulled pork, potatoes, peppers, onions, and BBQ sauce, topped with a farm egg.
Sun Diner
105 3rd Ave S, Nashville, TN 37201
Phone: 615-742-9099
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Another music lovers’ pit stop, Sun Diner is a classic 24-hour diner named for the famous record label Sun Records that launched the careers of Elvis and Johnny Cash. In fact, Sun Diner is located right next door to the Johnny Cash Museum and adorned with ‘50s-themed music paraphernalia.
Breakfast is served at all hours of the day and night at Sun Diner. The menu is full of southern comfort fare with a gourmet presentation. I recommend the overindulgent Donut Breakfast Sandwich, consisting of homemade sausage patty, fried egg, and cheddar cheese between two glazed doughnuts.
Noshville Delicatessen
4014 Hillsboro Cir, Nashville, TN 37215
Phone: 615-269-3535
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Located in the Greenhills neighborhood, Noshville Delicatessen is an authentic taste of New York in Nashville. In the Jewish Yiddish language, “nosh” means to eat, and that’s all that is expected of you at Noshville Delicatessen, specializing in classic New York-style deli food.
Since they specialize in deli meats and smoked fish, I recommend ordering a breakfast item featuring their specialties, whether it be bagel and lox or a corned beef hash. If you want to make a brunch out of it, get to Noshville at 11 for a bowl of Matzo ball soup and the Pastrami lettuce and tomato sandwich that uses potato pancakes instead of bread.
Hermitage Cafe
71 Hermitage Ave, Nashville, TN 37210
Phone: 615-254-8871
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Located in Rutledge Hill, the Hermitage Café is a 24-hour diner with the best prices in town, serving all the southern favorites for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This classic, no-frills diner has all the markings of a traditional diner like the soda fountain counter lined with barstools where you watch your meal being made by the hooting and hollering chefs in the open kitchen.
The portions at Hermitage Café are more than generous, so come hungry. I recommend the southern biscuits and gravy. If you’re really hungry, try the country-fried steak with two eggs, home fries, and a biscuit.
Kitchen Notes
250 Rep. John Lewis Way S, Nashville, TN 37203
Phone: 615-761-3700
Located inside the upscale Omni Hotel Nashville, directly in front of the Country Music Hall of Fame, Kitchen Notes is a high-end Southern American food bistro in a beautifully designed space. The dining room is an industrial-chic style with exposed brig walls, large bulbed light fixtures, and interesting modern art paintings.
They serve breakfast during the week and brunch on the weekends. Kitchen Notes is proud to bring you farm to fork dishes using all locally sourced ingredients. I recommend their light and crisp cast iron waffles with pure maple syrup, berry, and basil compote, and whipped butter.
The Pfunky Griddle
2800 Bransford Ave, Nashville, TN 37204
Phone: 615-298-2088
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At the Pfunky Griddle, each table is equipped with a griddle flat top, so you can flip your own pancakes or create your own omelet if you want to. Located in the Grandview Heights neighborhood, The Pfunky Griddle is a family-friendly establishment where parents and kids can have fun cooking delicious breakfasts with the help of friendly staff.
There’s a “Lets Griddle” menu for the full hands-on experience of making all-you-can-eat pancakes, French toast, or egg and potato creations as a family. There’s also a more conventional “off the griddle” menu for patrons who’d rather leave the cooking to the kitchen staff.
Milk & Honey
214 11th Ave S, Nashville, TN 37203
Phone: 615-712-7466
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Located in the colorful Gulch neighborhood, Milk & Honey is a café, bar, and eatery offering delicious cocktails, coffee drinks, fresh baked goods, and gourmet New American cuisine breakfast and lunch menus. They take inspiration from Europe, the deep south, and even Canada for their delicious and beautifully plated dishes.
If you want a true taste of “milk and honey,” then I would order the Ricotta and Honey toast with whipped ricotta, local honey, and fleur de sel on sourdough toast. If You want the best poutine of your life, order the pork confit poutine with white cheddar cheese curds, melted swiss, and Stumptown redeye gravy and green onion for garnish.
Big Bad Breakfast-Nashville
5304 Charlotte Ave, Nashville, TN 37209
Phone: 615-610-3403
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Located in Sylvan Park, Big Bad Breakfast is owned and run by a James Beard Award-winning southern Chef John Currence who was born and raised in New Orleans. Chef Currence started cooking professionally right out of high school on a tugboat in the oilfields of the Gulf and worked his way through every kitchen and restaurant around the U.S. before opening his own restaurants to national acclaim.
Since Chef Currence is a New Orleans native, I recommend trying the Shrimp and Oyster Po Boy with fried gulf shrimp and oysters with shredded lettuce, tomato, pickles, and house-made tartar sauce on a French roll.
