Restaurants in Cookeville

Please give Otter's 24-hours' notice when placing your catering order. Delivery fees apply but you may pick up for free.

Tully's is the realized brain baby of executive chef Tully Wilson, a graduate of the prestigious Culinary Institute of America. This villa of victuals features classic American favorites presented in a French-influenced, aesthetically pleasing manner. Menu options vary, though sample dinner items include two pounds of fresh Prince Edward Island mussels ($12) served in a white-wine-butter sauce, and pecan encrusted chicken tender salad ($12), a sprightly summer salad that evokes thoughts of William Blake's romantic salad-inspired poetry. Savorlicious steaks gratify meat-believers, like the eight-ounce filet mignon ($19) and the 10-ounce Cajun rib eye ($23) with grilled shrimp and Creole sauce that can be shared with your significant other or an insignificant identical twin. Climb a mountain of chocolate with Tully's six-layer chocolate cake ($9), slipping and sliding on the fudge icing along the way.

A huge statue of Buddha watches over the dining room at Surin of Thailand, although his peaceful gaze is subverted by complex curries, spicy stir-fried noodle dishes, and flavorful barbecue-chicken entrees a day in the making. Half chickens are marinated in Thai barbecue sauce overnight before being slowly roasted and grilled, then they’re plated with scoops of shrimp fried rice and reminders to chew each bite thoroughly, not matter who’s threatening to steal the flavorful dark meat.

Surin measures its dishes' spiciness on a three-pepper scale, where one is "spicy" and three is "Thai hot." Though most dishes fall between nonspicy and hot, a few earn their trio of peppers, including a medley of mussels, scallops, and shrimp with spicy basil sauce.

Another Buddha—actually, just a head—guards the sushi bar, where nigiri, sashimi, and creative maki rolls are born. Under the two Buddhas' protection, diners settle into leather seats or tuck into booths backed by ferns and foliage. Outside the stone-walled eatery, a patio seasons dishes with sunlight and refreshing breezes.

The patty sculptors at Your Burger hand-form locally raised beef, Alaskan salmon, and vegan-friendly veggies into juicy patties crowned with a farmers’ market’s worth of local produce. Available at a buffet, toppings such as crisp onions, cool lettuce, and plump tomatoes hide and enhance certified Angus or grass-fed patties, just as footie pajamas both hide and enhance the existence of a person's flippers. Sides of sweet-potato fries and onion rings round out casual American meals, as staffers blend up creamy hand-dipped shakes and scoops of Edy's ice cream, providing a more pleasantly frosty epilogue than a cryogenically frozen narrator.

Just as Your Burger's patties outpace stereotypical burgers, its decor transcends typical quick-service eateries. An exposed stone divider cordons off the open kitchen, allowing guests to watch their meals being flipped as they recline near the purple-and-orange Edy's counter.

In 1818, George and Elizabeth Moore built a new house in which to raise their future family. Their youngest daughter, Mariah, would go on to spend her entire life in the home her parents had bequeathed to her. When Rick Kelley and David Sears decided to transform the historic residence into a restaurant nearly a century after her passing, they chose the name to honor its longest-term resident. They also added a 3,000-square-foot expansion and restored the fireplaces, wood flooring, and brick walls to their original appearance.

Thanks to these refurbishments, Mariah’s old home seems to have found new life in the 21st century. Where she used to cook, chefs now hand-cut steaks and slide thin-crust pizzas into a large brick oven for firing. As Bowling Green's oldest standing brick structure, the nearly 200-year-old Mariah Moore House offers diners much to gaze at if they can pry their eyes away from the hearty fare on their plates. The building’s historic accents include a Brunswick bar top from the 1880s, an aged carousel horse, and a TV-video wall salvaged from Grover Cleveland’s presidential situation room.

Barbecue is about balance, about finding the right suspension of smoky and sweet flavors even if it requires hours of labor and patience. At Slick Pig BBQ, chefs achieve flavor harmony by slow cooking and saucing up meats—which range from classic ribs to honey-barbecue wings—and then plate them with requisite sides such as corn bread, turnip greens, and mac ‘n’ cheese. They also tantalize visitors with an array of Southern staples, frying up catfish, baking chess pie, and sweetening tea by telling it how special it is.