Culamar

The name is a portmanteau of Culaccino and mare — the Italian word for sea — and the etymology tells you exactly where Culamar comes from. Chef Frank Pullara launched it as the seafood-focused sibling to Culaccino, the Italian restaurant that had built a devoted following in Franklin since 2021. Both restaurants share a commitment to Italian technique and quality sourcing; Culamar redirects that sensibility toward the coast.

The restaurant is at 99 E Main St in historic downtown Franklin, and it operates the distinction of being the only rooftop bar on Main Street. The rooftop functions independently from the main dining room — no reservations, first come first served — with light bites like fresh oysters, shrimp ceviche, and charcuterie alongside handcrafted cocktails and an extensive wine list, with sweeping views over the street below.

The main dining room menu is more ambitious: hamachi crudo, steamed mussels, octopus carpaccio, red snapper in crustacean bisque, and a cioppino that draws on properly made stock. The raw bar is a particular strength, with a broad selection of à la carte oysters that changes with availability. The format is individual ordering, which gives the table flexibility to build a meal across multiple courses or focus on a few standouts.

Culamar sits at the leading edge of a Franklin dining scene that has grown significantly more sophisticated in recent years, and it's one of the restaurants that drove that change. It's worth the drive from Nashville — roughly twenty minutes — for a dinner that combines a genuinely good rooftop experience with serious Italian seafood cooking.

Culamar earns its Damn Good rating by doing a specific thing at a high level: Italian coastal seafood, taken seriously from the oyster selection through the pasta and into the fish preparations. The crudo dishes are fresh and confidently seasoned. The cioppino has the depth that comes from proper stock work. The raw bar is legitimate — a broad oyster selection that changes with availability rather than sitting static, which signals that someone is paying attention.

The rooftop changes the picture significantly. As the only rooftop bar on Main Street in downtown Franklin, it functions as both a destination in its own right and the right way to start a dinner at Culamar. The cocktail program works at that altitude — light, aperitivo-adjacent, built for the hour before you move downstairs. Oysters and ceviche up there on a good evening is one of the stronger pre-dinner rituals in the broader Nashville area.

The main dining room is well-designed for a full sit-down dinner, with service that reflects the same hospitality sensibility that made Culaccino successful. Chef Pullara's cooking intelligence shows throughout — in the quality of the pasta, in how the fish is treated, in the general commitment to doing things properly rather than quickly.

Culamar is in Franklin, not Nashville, which requires twenty minutes and some intention. The combination of rooftop drinks, serious raw bar, and solid Italian seafood cooking makes that trip genuinely worth making. For anyone who has already been to Culaccino, this is the obvious next stop.