Best Chicken Parm in Nashville, TN

Chicken parm in Nashville, TN: our top picks

Nashville never had a Little Italy, and its oldest Italian thread ran through a chili bowl. Varallo’s, opened in 1907 by Italian immigrant Frank Varallo Sr. and known for its "three-way" of spaghetti, tamale and chili, announced its closing in early 2026. Mario Ferrari’s fine-dining room on Broadway burned in 2006 and never reopened, and Sole Mio downtown is gone too. The old guard that remains is small: Amerigo has been on West End Avenue since 1991, and Valentino’s spent nearly three decades in a West End mansion before moving to Hayes Street in Midtown in 2019.

The newer wave started in Germantown. Tandy Wilson opened City House in 2007, cooking Southern-inflected Italian food, and won the James Beard award for Best Chef: Southeast in 2016. Philip Krajeck’s Rolf and Daughters followed in 2012, built around handmade pasta. Neither is a red-sauce house; both are better known for pasta than for parm.

Most of the parm now comes from out-of-town families and groups. Pelato, a small-plates spot on 3rd Avenue North in Germantown, opened in 2023 from the Scotto family, the New York restaurateurs behind Fresco by Scotto; chicken parmigiana is one of its shareable plates. The family’s first Nashville restaurant, Luogo, opened on 12th Avenue South in the Gulch in late 2022. A few blocks away, V Modern Italian opened in May 2025 as the first U.S. location of a European restaurant group, with Michelin-starred chef Stefano Ciotti collaborating on the menu. And Alla Vita, from Chicago’s Boka Restaurant Group and chef Lee Wolen, arrived in Wedgewood-Houston in June 2026 with chicken parmigiana on the menu.

1. Pelato - Nashville (Nashville) — Parm Score 86. Chicken parm comes up in 1 of the recent Google reviews we sampled, and the tone is positive. It is on the menu, too. 4.8 on Google across 5,685 reviews.
2. Alla Vita Nashville (Nashville) — Parm Score 74. Chicken parm comes up in 1 of the recent Google reviews we sampled, and the tone is positive. 4.8 on Google across 469 reviews.
3. V Modern Italian (Nashville) — Parm Score 73. Chicken parm is on the restaurant’s own menu (checked November 2026). 4.8 on Google across 6,508 reviews.

We ranked 19 restaurants within 10 miles of Nashville, TN. 4 of them have the parm confirmed, by reviewers or on their own menu, and Parm Scores run from 56 to 86. Confirmed places rank first; the rest are well-reviewed Italian spots where the parm is not yet confirmed, and pizzerias and steakhouses need a mention to appear at all. How Parm Score works.

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