Nashville Best Of 2026 · Best Italian Restaurant

Demos’ Restaurant

For more than three decades, the Demos family has served Middle Tennessee heaping plates of spaghetti, homemade lasagna, and genuine Southern hospitality. It’s our pick for the best Italian restaurant in the Nashville area.

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The Verdict

Why Demos’ Earns the Title

Nashville has no shortage of Italian restaurants, but few have earned the kind of loyalty Demos’ has built since 1989. This is Italian-American comfort food done the old-fashioned way: generous plates, made-from-scratch recipes, and prices that feel like a welcome throwback.

The kitchen is best known for its spaghetti, served with a lineup of house-made sauces, alongside baked lasagna, creamy fettuccine, marinated steaks, and warm signature bread. Add friendly, attentive service and portions that practically guarantee leftovers, and it’s easy to see why generations of Middle Tennessee families keep coming back.

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1989

First Demos’ Opens

12+

Homemade Spaghetti Sauces

Greater Nashville Locations

Generations of Restaurant Family

What to Order

The Dishes That Made Demos’ Famous

First visit? Start with these house favorites, each made from a time-honored family recipe.

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‘The’ Soup

Demos’ famous baked chicken and rice soup is the house signature. Regulars order a bowl on nearly every visit, and many have it shipped home.

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Meat Sauce Spaghetti

The dish that built the reputation: tender spaghetti under a slow-simmered sauce of seasoned meat, olive oil, herbs, and spices from the family recipe book.

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Homemade Baked Lasagna

Layers of pork and beef with ricotta, Parmesan, Romano, and mozzarella, oven-baked until bubbling. Big enough to share, though you may not want to.

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The Story

Four Generations of Family Recipes

The Demos family’s restaurant roots trace back to Birmingham, Alabama, where a 9-year-old Jim Demos started working alongside his father, Pete, in 1943. As a Greek immigrant family, they believed in authentic ingredients, honest prices, and treating every guest like family.

Jim and his wife, Doris, brought that philosophy to Tennessee and opened the very first Demos’ in downtown Nashville in 1989. The original downtown restaurant closed in 2020, but the tradition lives on under owner Peter Demos, with the same recipes and signature bread served across Greater Nashville.

“We want the customer to leave in a better mood than when they came in.”

Peter Demos, Owner

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