Why The Catbird Seat matters.
The Catbird Seat is a pioneering American tasting-menu restaurant where The Gulch's industrial reinvention meets Nashville's rise as a destination for experimental cuisine, an influential succession of acclaimed chefs and a MICHELIN-starred approach to seasonal cooking.
Positioned on Eighth Avenue South near Division Street and a short distance from Broadway, the restaurant occupies the uppermost floor of the Bill Voorhees Building within Nashville's redeveloped South Gulch. Its contemporary dining room centers on a sweeping U-shaped counter fashioned from Tennessee Pink Marble, placing diners directly around the working kitchen. Bird's-eye maple cabinetry, integrated lighting and floor-to-ceiling windows create a carefully composed setting that balances architectural warmth with the precision of a professional kitchen. A dedicated wine lounge extends the evening beyond the counter, providing a separate setting for cocktails and conversations around the restaurant's beverage program. The result is an intimate culinary theater where the preparation, presentation and enjoyment of a meal unfold within a shared architectural space.
What defines The Catbird Seat.
The Catbird Seat is best known for transforming Nashville's fine dining landscape through a chef-driven tasting-menu format that has continually reinvented itself under successive culinary leaders. Brothers Benjamin and Max Goldberg established Strategic Hospitality in 2006, developing a restaurant group that helped introduce ambitious independent dining concepts to the city's growing hospitality industry. Their partnership with chef Josh Habiger led to the restaurant's opening on Division Street in October 2011, with Habiger and Erik Anderson directing an experimental kitchen organized around direct interaction between cooks and diners. Both chefs brought experience from internationally influential restaurants, including Alinea, Noma, The French Laundry and The Fat Duck, introducing techniques that were still relatively unfamiliar within Nashville's restaurant landscape. Their opening menus combined Southern ingredients with contemporary culinary experimentation, including a lively interpretation of Nashville hot chicken using crisp chicken skin, sorghum and Korean chile. Food & Wine recognized Habiger and Anderson among its Best New Chefs in 2012, and both GQ and Bon Appétit included the restaurant among America's best new dining establishments that year. Habiger subsequently departed to help develop Pinewood Social, and Irish chef Trevor Moran, who had trained at Noma, assumed culinary leadership in 2014. Ryan Poli followed, continuing the restaurant's practice of introducing distinct culinary perspectives through changes in kitchen leadership. Chefs Will Aghajanian and Liz Johnson took over in 2019, earning a James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef nomination before Brian Baxter succeeded them in 2020. Baxter developed a seasonally focused approach incorporating regional agriculture and ingredients sourced internationally, further extending the restaurant's reputation as an incubator for ambitious chefs. A new chapter began in September 2024 when husband-and-wife chefs Andy Doubrava and Tiffani Ortiz assumed leadership following their traveling culinary project, Slow Burn. Strategic Hospitality relocated the restaurant in May 2025 to the fifth floor of the Bill Voorhees Building in SomeraRoad's Paseo South Gulch development, expanding the kitchen's possibilities through a larger purpose-designed setting. The project brought Nashville design firm Dryden Studio into the restaurant's architectural evolution and introduced a dedicated space for its beverage program. MICHELIN awarded The Catbird Seat one star in November 2025 during the guide's inaugural American South selection, recognizing its inventive cooking and commitment to seasonal ingredients. The James Beard Foundation subsequently named the restaurant a finalist for Outstanding Restaurant in 2026, affirming the significance of a culinary institution whose changing leadership has continually renewed its creative ambitions.
Andy Doubrava and Tiffani Ortiz's cooking centers on a closed-loop approach to ingredients, connecting regenerative agriculture, preservation and experimental technique through an evolving sequence of carefully composed courses. Their collaboration developed through a shared interest in reducing kitchen waste and understanding the agricultural systems responsible for producing food. Doubrava worked directly in farming before returning to lead Rustic Canyon in Santa Monica, where his cooking earned the restaurant its first MICHELIN star. Ortiz developed a complementary culinary perspective through independent pop-ups, and their partnership evolved into Slow Burn, a traveling series that covered 45,000 miles across North America. The project introduced them to regional growers, producers and culinary communities, building an extensive collection of preserved ingredients that subsequently became central to their Nashville kitchen. Fermentation, dehydration and careful storage allow the chefs to capture ingredients at peak ripeness and incorporate their flavors into preparations throughout the year. Wild juniper, cedar and cypress connect those techniques with the surrounding Tennessee landscape, introducing aromatic qualities that extend beyond conventional agricultural produce. Their approach to meat and seafood emphasizes the development of concentrated flavor through smoking, grilling and carefully controlled cooking temperatures. Rich ingredients acquire balance through acidic preserves, botanical oils and finely textured purées, creating contrasts that unfold across successive bites. The kitchen also explores how texture alters flavor perception, using crisp elements, delicate granitas and aromatic powders to introduce changing sensations within individual preparations. A deboned chicken wing filled and finished with Périgord sauce demonstrates the relationship between technical precision and familiar ingredients, transforming a recognizable preparation into a concentrated expression of poultry, mushrooms and savory richness. The chefs' treatment of grains follows the same principles, allowing ingredients such as Carolina Gold rice to absorb complex broths and support carefully balanced combinations of meat, vegetables and preserved seasonings. Beverage pairings develop alongside the food through collaboration between the kitchen and drinks team, with alcoholic and nonalcoholic selections responding to the acidity, aromatics and texture of individual courses. Music and energetic service establish a lively atmosphere that complements the concentration required by the cooking. The Catbird Seat expresses Doubrava and Ortiz's culinary character through the relationship between environmental responsibility, experimental technique and a continuously changing interpretation of the American landscape.
How The Catbird Seat fits.
The Catbird Seat works as the anchor for an outing connecting Nashville's nineteenth-century religious architecture, the preservation of its Depression-era civic institutions and the railroad infrastructure that established the city's importance as a regional commercial center.
Begin at Christ Church Cathedral, the historic Episcopal church whose congregation developed from Nashville's early nineteenth-century religious community. Architect Francis H. Kimball designed the present Gothic Revival sanctuary, which opened in 1894 with pointed arches, substantial stone construction and architectural details inspired by medieval European churches. The building's imposing exterior introduced a distinctive ecclesiastical landmark to the growing commercial district along Broadway. Its subsequent designation as the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee strengthened its institutional importance within the city's religious history. The sanctuary preserves an important example of Nashville's late Victorian architectural ambitions during a period of rapid commercial expansion. Continue to Frist Art Museum, the visual arts institution housed inside Nashville's former main post office. Architects Marr & Holman designed the expansive federal building, constructed between 1933 and 1934 with white Georgia marble, gray-pink Minnesota granite and an architectural composition combining stripped classicism with Art Deco detailing. The building opened for postal operations in November 1934, introducing a major federal institution during the Great Depression. A public-private preservation partnership subsequently transformed the underused property into an art museum, which opened on April 8, 2001. Its exhibition galleries occupy former postal sorting areas, connecting Nashville's contemporary visual arts programming with the preservation of a significant civic landmark. Conclude at Union Station Nashville, the expansive railroad terminal completed in 1900 for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway. Chief engineer Richard Montfort designed the Richardsonian Romanesque building using Bowling Green limestone and Tennessee marble, creating a landmark distinguished by its clock tower and imposing masonry. The station's elaborate interior arcade and skylit spaces reflected the economic importance of passenger rail transportation at the beginning of the twentieth century. Following the decline of rail service, preservation efforts converted the building into a hotel during the 1980s, safeguarding its principal architectural features. Its continued prominence demonstrates the importance of railway infrastructure in shaping Nashville's commercial geography and subsequent urban redevelopment. The progression moves from Victorian religious architecture through the adaptive reuse of a Depression-era federal building and concludes at the expansive railway terminal that helped establish Nashville's modern commercial landscape.
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