The Patterson House

Nashville’s first craft-cocktail bar, opened Tax Day 2009 by brothers Benjamin and Max Goldberg of Strategic Hospitality. It runs on house-made syrups, fresh juices, and 8 kinds of twice-filtered ice.

The original Midtown house near Music Row had been Patrick’s, a Cajun restaurant, until the 2009 conversion by Lankford Construction and designer Landy Gardner Interiors.

The name honors Malcolm Patterson, Tennessee’s governor from 1907 to 1911, who vetoed a statewide prohibition bill and called controlling what people eat and drink “tyranny and not liberty.”

The Goldbergs opened The Catbird Seat upstairs in fall 2011: 2 chefs, a U-shaped counter with 30 seats, and a 7-course menu cooked in front of you.

After 16 years in the Midtown house, the bar reopened on May 13, 2025, on the top floor of the Bill Voorhees Building in the Gulch. The Catbird Seat made the move too.

House rules are enforced: no standing, no name dropping, phones for texting only. Salon wrote in 2014 that not even Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman skip the first-come, first-served line.

The drinks carry national weight: consecutive James Beard Foundation nominations for Outstanding Bar Program.