Nashville Food Friday: Bella Nashville

I'm constantly on the quest for delicious pizza. As a native New Yorker, of course New York style pizza is my favorite, but I've come to the conclusion that true NY style pizza does not really exist in Nashville (with 5 Points Pizza being the closest thing). This means I have to branch out and learn to love different styles of Pizza. Lucky for me, Bella Nashville makes amazing wood oven pizzas, similar to what I had in Italy.

Located inside the Farmer's Market on Rosa Parks Blvd., Bella Nashville provides a very casual dining environment. Steve and I went on a Saturday and the place was packed! Once you order, you wait for your name to be called, which was about 20-30 minutes (for fresh pizza that's acceptable to me). We grabbed a seat at their eat-in bar and waited our turn.

Bella Nashville offers fresh sodas with house-made syrup. Steve ordered the lemon soda with basil and I had the orange soda with mint. This was the perfectly refreshing on a hot day and a great compliment to the pizza.

All the pizzas at Bella Nashville are personal size, so Steve and I decided to order two and split them. The first one we ordered was the Meat Pizza, with thin sliced country ham, mozzarella, crushed tomatoes and basil. This is a very simple pie, and done very well. The ham itself had a really nice flavor and provided a good dash of salt. The dough was cooked well in the wood oven, leaving the beautiful tell-tale charred marks around the edge.

For our second pizza we went for the daily special: the spring chicken. It contained honey-lemon local chicken, chard, roasted green garlic, aged Gouda and sheep's milk cheese. Holy Hell this was amazing! I have to say that my favorite part was the blasts of flavor I got when biting into a spot of that roasted green garlic.

I really like Bella Nashville's overall vibe. All their ingredients are super fresh, as any restaurant located in a Farmer's Market should be. The staff was friendly and the pizza was tasty. What more can you want for a summer lunch?