Food & Wine Restaurant of the Year 2022: Locust, Nashville
Locust in Nashville is the most perfect restaurant for our time.
Locust is open three days a week, for five and a half hours a day. Two hours are dedicated to lunch; the remaining time is for dinner service. On average, there are about six dishes on the menu, plus the occasional special (or three). The wine list is just as short. It’s hard to define what exactly the restaurant is, but as of right now, the food mostly has a Japanese bent. And on any given night, there might be a heavy metal soundtrack blasting from the open kitchen, with a few chefs head-banging away as they prepare your next dish. Locust is fully, uncompromisingly, and unapologetically itself—which is exactly what makes it so playful and brilliant.
“Australian barbecue” is not, however, what Lennox Hastie, the chef at Firedoor, would use to describe his own cooking. Nor is it a term that’s been used much by anyone to describe any type of cooking. Here, the word “barbecue” is generally synonymous with the American term “cookout,” and, much like the cookout, it remains an integral part of Australia’s national identity.
The kitchen is powered entirely by wood — there are no electric or gas ovens, burners or microwaves. Mr. Hastie came to this style after working five years at 
Boomers Daily 