The honest answer is that “East Nashville chef” has become a somewhat misleading category because the chefs who built their reputations in East Nashville have expanded or moved while still being associated with the neighborhood that made them. But the person generating the most sustained national attention right now is Dung “Junior” Vo at Noko.
Dung “Junior” Vo, Noko
Vo earned James Beard Award semifinalist nominations in consecutive years, 2024 and 2025, both in the Best Chef: Southeast category. Back-to-back nominations at that level is not common for Nashville restaurants. Noko at 701 Porter Rd is a wood-fired Japanese restaurant that takes a live-fire approach to fish and proteins in a way that national food press finds interesting rather than just locally noteworthy. The East Side shrimp, tuna crispy rice, and the wagyu brisket have all appeared in coverage beyond Nashville’s regional outlets.
Leina Horii and Brian Lea, Kisser
Kisser’s co-chefs landed in the New York Times 50 Best Restaurants list in 2023, which is the kind of national recognition that changes a restaurant’s trajectory. The James Beard 2024 nomination for Best New Restaurant followed. Kisser operates as a Japanese-influenced restaurant and represents the wave of serious Japanese cooking that has made Nashville’s food scene harder to dismiss.
Josh Habiger, Bastion
Habiger’s Bastion in Wedgewood-Houston has earned James Beard semifinalist nominations in 2023 and 2025 (Outstanding Restaurateur through Strategic Hospitality, the restaurant group behind Bastion and Locust). Bastion’s 24-seat tasting menu format and the serious bar program adjacent to it have generated consistent national coverage since the restaurant opened.
Trevor Moran, Locust
Locust’s James Beard 2024 semifinalist nomination for Best Chef: Southeast placed Moran in the same national conversation as Vo. Locust’s Japanese-Irish-British synthesis is the kind of specific culinary identity that food writers find worth explaining to national audiences. Moran is associated with 12 South rather than East Nashville proper, but the Wedgewood-Houston and 12 South scenes are closely linked in how Nashville’s serious restaurant world operates.
Jake Howell, Peninsula
The 2025 James Beard semifinalist nomination for Howell at Peninsula is the most recent addition to this list. Peninsula has been generating coverage in Bon Appétit and national outlets for the past two years.
The Pattern
What connects most of these names is the James Beard process, which functions as the primary mechanism for translating local reputation into national food press. Nashville went from having one James Beard-recognized operation (Arnold’s Country Kitchen, 2009) to having five or six nationally recognized chefs inside a decade. The East Nashville and Wedgewood-Houston neighborhoods are where most of that happened, which is why the question of which chef “from East Nashville” has national press produces a list rather than a single name.
Sources
- James Beard Award semifinalist and nominee lists 2023, 2024, 2025 via jamesbeard.org
- New York Times 50 Best Restaurants 2023 (Kisser)
- Noko Nashville via Eater Nashville and Nashville Scene
- Bastion and Strategic Hospitality group via Eater Nashville
- Locust Nashville via Nashville Scene
- Peninsula Nashville via Bon Appétit and Eater Nashville