Bastion

Josh Habiger cooked on Alinea’s opening team and co-founded The Catbird Seat before opening this, his first solo restaurant: a warehouse cocktail bar in Wedgewood-Houston with a 24-seat tasting-menu room behind a sliding door.

The brick and heavy timber factory went up around 1900 and housed the American Syrup Company, which cooked syrups, jams, and jellies here and shipped them out by rail.

The building next door was May Hosiery’s original home. The Mays built the company into the South’s largest sock maker and sponsored more than 250 Jewish refugees out of Nazi Germany, with mill jobs waiting.

Habiger opened it in February 2016 with Strategic Hospitality, the Goldberg brothers’ group. No sign marks it; look for the garage door quoting The Neverending Story: “never give up and good luck will find you.”

Bon Appétit put Bastion on its 2017 list of America’s 10 best new restaurants, and the James Beard Foundation made it a Best New Restaurant semifinalist. Eater Nashville named it 2023’s Restaurant of the Year.

The inaugural Michelin Guide to the American South gave Nashville 3 stars in November 2025, and all 3 went to Strategic Hospitality spots: Bastion, Locust, and The Catbird Seat.

The neighborhood swears Neil Armstrong wore May Hosiery socks on the moon. Its restored campus nearby now houses Soho House Nashville.