Kisser

Kisser is named for the kissaten — Japan's neighborhood restaurants, unpretentious by definition — and Leina Horii and Brian Lea run it exactly to that spirit: a tight menu of Japanese comfort food built from Horii's childhood food memories. That specificity is the whole engine. This isn't Japanese cuisine as a genre; it's one family's food, cooked by someone who knows precisely what it's supposed to taste like.

The menu argues in single dishes: the Japanese Breakfast bento, the katsu sando on house-made milk bread, the spicy miso udon with duck confit. Nothing overreaches, nothing pads.

The country noticed fast — a New York Times list, Bon Appétit's best new restaurants, a Beard Best New Restaurant nod, and a Bib Gourmand in Nashville's first Michelin guide. The kissaten spirit survived all of it.