The Best Seafood In Tennessee Is At Nashville's Iconic Restaurant With Generous Caviar Servings

With one Michelin star, just 10 tables, and multiple "best of" accolades, it's no wonder Locust is considered one of the hardest reservations to score in Nashville. The landlocked city may be better known for hot chicken sandwiches — rightly so — but Locust is giving that reputation a run for its money. The topsy-turvy brainchild of Trevor Moran, an Irish chef who cooked at Noma before leading the kitchen at Nashville fine-dining institution The Catbird Seat, Locust braids American seafood with Japanese and Irish influences into a playful yet precise menu, resulting in innovative but very eatable dishes, lots of caviar, and spots on big lists like The New York Times' top 25 restaurants for 2024 and best restaurants in America 2022, as well as Food & Wine's top 20 U.S. restaurants for 2024 and 2022's restaurant of the year. 

Moran originally launched during the early days of the pandemic as a dumpling and kakigōri (Japanese-style shaved ice) spot. The chef, who has also earned James Beard nominations, meticulously perfected the shaved ice craft before expanding into more ambitious, seafood-forward dishes. Past offerings have included Nashville hot-style swordfish, escargot-stuffed halibut, crab omelettes, scallops with shaved green apple, abalone, and pork dumplings, but the menu continues to change as the team experiments (both the kakigōri and "too much caviar" have remained constant).

One of just three Nashville restaurants — including The Catbird Seat and Bastion — to receive a Michelin star the first year the guide honored the American South, Locust operates behind an unassuming exterior in 12South, one of Nashville's best shopping neighborhoods. It's open for lunch and dinner Friday through Sunday, and reservations open on the first of each month for the following calendar month. Parties are capped at four and require a $50 deposit per person.

Locust is hard to describe but exquisite to experience. At least, that's the consensus among food critics from the New York Times to YouTube alike, and the hundreds of online reviews that give the restaurant 4.7 out of 5 stars on Google. In a 2025 interview with YouTuber Babish, Chef Moran said he'd once heard Locust described as "Noma at the State Fair," a phrase that encapsulated his vision for the restaurant. "We just kinda tend toward extreme things pretty much in everything we do," Moran said. "Everything dialed up too far and a little over-generous, [even the] extreme music." New York Times contributor Ellen Fort agreed, writing in 2024: "One constant? The enthusiastically loud playlists that feature the crew's favorite albums, from metal to '90s hip-hop." It's certainly different from loud and splashy Nashville icons like Miranda Lambert's four-level Tex-Mex pink house or Kid Rock's Honky Tonk.

"Too much caviar" was born from a trip to Spain, where one of Moran's favorite dishes was caviar on bread. He brought the simple concept back to Locust, where the pillowy potato bread is smeared with clarified butter and toasted to perfection, served alongside a generous 50-gram tin of black caviar. Another mainstay is a DIY-style beef tartare hand roll. Diners are given a small four-step diagram explaining how to arrange and roll their beef, dried nori, marinated rice, and capers for the perfect bite. Another favorite is the black currant cordial-laced Guinness, creamy and frothy, tapped from a keg shipped directly from Ireland. No meal at Locust is complete without the kakigōri, the powdery shaved ice filled and infused with curds, creams, egg yolks, fruit, or whatever the chef is currently working with. As of this writing, it's Earl Grey tea and raspberry.