Review
About
Urban Grub invested seriously in the room and the bar, and both show it. The cocktail list has genuine thought behind it, the spirits selection is serious, and the bar team clearly knows what it's doing. As a place to drink well in a well-designed room, it earns a real recommendation.
As a food destination at these prices, it doesn't. The menu is too ambitious for its own kitchen — too many categories, too many dishes, too many opportunities for the inconsistency that a sprawling menu almost always produces. Some dishes are genuinely good. Others arrive as evidence of a kitchen stretched past its capacity for quality control.
Nope on the food. Defensible as a bar. If you want a genuinely good dinner in the same part of town, Nashville has better answers.
As a food destination at these prices, it doesn't. The menu is too ambitious for its own kitchen — too many categories, too many dishes, too many opportunities for the inconsistency that a sprawling menu almost always produces. Some dishes are genuinely good. Others arrive as evidence of a kitchen stretched past its capacity for quality control.
Nope on the food. Defensible as a bar. If you want a genuinely good dinner in the same part of town, Nashville has better answers.
The cocktail program is the strongest element by a significant margin. The food menu is too large, the execution is inconsistent, and the prices assume the kitchen is doing more than it is.
Urban Grub is a large, heavily designed bar and restaurant in 12 South where the cocktail program does the heavy lifting and the food can't keep pace. The bar is genuinely good — serious spirits selection, thoughtfully built cocktails, a team that knows what it's doing. The kitchen is too ambitious for its own execution.
