"For all the strides Nashville has made, our culinary scene has room to grow. Love Filipino food? It’s only just taking off here. Want good Sichuan beyond hot pot? Drive to Memphis. Thank God forPeninsula, which stepped into our Iberian breach and filled it with textbook-perfect Spanish small plates, creative gin and tonics, and a pan con tomate that is obscene, but in a good way, layered thick with tomatoes and nigella seeds. Chef Jake Howell is afraid of neither squid nor sweetbreads on his menu, and he deploys them simply: the former with beans, the latter deep inside an eggy morcilla crepe." - BySTEVE CAVENDISH