Reviewing Butcher & Bee: Mediterranean food made with local ingredients in Nashville.

As a lover of Mediterranean food, I had wanted to try the sister restaurant of Charleston’s, Butcher & Bee, for years. It’s a pretty popular spot, so we made a Friday dinner reservation a couple of weeks in advance. Multiple dining spaces are available for reservation; we booked the main dining room, which offered a dimly lit, romantic atmosphere. However, you can also make a reservation on the large, bright patio or mezzanine, or walk in and sit at one of the several spacious bars. When we arrived for our reservation, we were sat immediately at an intimate two-person table in a dark area of the restaurant. This was ideal for us, but if you’re catching up with friends earlier in the day, I recommend a table outside or closer to the window to enjoy the summer sun.  

Our waiter informed us that Butcher & Bee is a Mediterranean and Israeli-inspired small plates restaurant, where dishes are served family-style and meant to be shared. If you’re a serial plate-sharer like myself, this is the place for you. After quickly scanning the menu and being interested in numerous acidity-forward dishes, I picked out a bottle of Austrian riesling. It was both reasonably priced and highly recommended by our waiter — and it perfectly accompanied everything we ordered. 

I always appreciate a menu with something connecting the dishes so that the meal feels cohesive. During the summer, many restaurants execute this with lemon, as did Butcher & Bee. In fact, I was hoping to dine at B&B in the summer because lemon pairs well with many Greek dishes. We started with whipped feta, a notorious staple of the menu, which comes with honey and cracked black pepper. Unlike other restaurants in Nashville, this whipped cheese was not overly salty and certainly lived up to the hype. Although we tend to prefer roasted vegetables, we couldn’t resist the tahini Caesar salad. It was much more exciting than its traditional counterpart, with the inclusion of tahini and heavy lemon, halloumi replacing parmesan, and a chickpea hazelnut dukkah replacing croutons.  

For our mains, we shared the green garlic ravioli and the smoked steak. The ravioli was delicate, stuffed with feta, and tossed in a lemony cream sauce. To balance the richness, the pasta is strewn with a spring vegetable pistou, which included asparagus, cucumber, and leafy greens. The steak comes perfectly medium rare and is sliced and served alongside crispy chickpeas and green harissa. Even though the steak was amazing, and we’re steak lovers, we agreed that the ravioli was somehow even better. Consistent with the tahini Ceasar, the pasta and the chickpeas in the steak dish both had heavy notes of lemon.  

With regards to service, although our waiter sometimes lapsed in checking in on us, other waiters did a fantastic job of refilling our waiter and even removing empty plates so that our table didn’t get too crowded with all our shared dishes. I would love to return to Butcher & Bee for their supposedly fantastic brunch as well as for dinner since the menu changes so frequently. The flavors here are on point.