Big Al’s Deli offers traditional meat-and-three entrees like fried chicken and meatloaf as well as innovative dishes like chipotle raspberry chicken, and owner Al Anderson posts daily specials on a big blackboard. This essential neighborhood restaurant in a former house in Salemtown is also beloved for breakfast and biscuits.

Why stop at one meat and three sides? Family-style Monell’s lets you scoop from as many platters as your heart desires, passing fried chicken, salads, biscuits, desserts, and so much more from communal table to table throughout your visit, family-style. The beautiful flagship location in Germantown is set fittingly inside a historic home, while the restaurant has a manor-style second location near the airport. If you’re not full when you leave, you’ve done something very wrong.

Germantown’s Silver Sands Cafe has been perfecting its recipes for three generations, and the meat and three serves soulful Southern fare starting as early as 6 a.m. on weekdays. The unfussy cafeteria’s collection of staples includes catfish, beef tips, mashed potatoes, and corn, but the showstoppers appear as daily specials: oxtail on Sunday, Thursday, and Friday, meatloaf on Wednesday. On weekdays until 10:30 a.m., you can also order a meat-and-two plate of breakfast items like bacon, ham, apples, eggs, and pancakes.

Tennessee natives Susie and Walter Swett had 10 children to care for, an education capped at second grade, and faced pervasive racism. Despite the odds, they opened Swett’s Restaurant in 1954, creating what has become a Nashville institution. The family’s homey meat and three has served meats, vegetables, and desserts cafeteria-style on the city’s west side ever since, from pork chops to ribs, turnip greens, cornbread, and cobbler.

Make your way down the line at City Cafe East, near Donelson, choosing from rotating options like country-style steak, fried pork chops, and chicken and dumplings with sides ranging from broccoli rice casserole to deviled eggs. Every third Friday of the month is extra special when owner George Reed serves up smoked brisket with peppers and onions.

Catering duo Stephen Wilkerson and Michael Gilbert opened MacHenry’s at an inauspicious time: March 2020. Thankfully, MacHenry’s pulled through the early days of the pandemic, and it’s been a welcome addition to the meat-and-three scene. The Murfreesboro Pike restaurant has a garden-lined drive-thru in addition to dine-in seating, so you can settle in or grab mains and sides like smoked barbecue beef tips and broccoli casserole to go in eco-friendly packaging. Just be sure to cap your meal with a scoop of banana pudding.

If you follow Broadway southwest as it changes its name to 21st Avenue and then to Hillsboro Road, you’ll come to the small community of Grassland and its culinary pride and joy, Barbara’s Home Cooking. The quaint home-style restaurant is situated on a gravel lot, and the food within will transport many Southerners straight to their childhoods. The menu is mostly fixed with a handful of rotating specials, with standouts including poppyseed chicken, pork chops, and sweet potato casserole.

Located in a Franklin strip mall, Bishop’s is a modern classic that flies under the radar despite coming from the family behind the mega-popular locally grown chain Hattie B’s Hot Chicken. That means at Bishop’s you’ll find the same coveted Nashville hot chicken with much shorter wait times, plus rotating alternatives like stuffed peppers, turkey and dressing, black-eyed peas, and cucumber salad.