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.

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.

Stepping inside The Pizza Machine & Co. always feels a little bit like stepping into a carnival. Staffers hand-toss discs of dough high into the air like jugglers, a pizza-themed chandelier mimics the feeling of a fun house, and an in-house buggy touted as the world’s first pizza-delivery vehicle acts as an intriguing sideshow. Though the sights might draw customers in, the shop, like any good carnival, has to keep them coming back. That’s where the restaurant’s chefs come in, creating hand-tossed pizzas and Italian cuisine in both classic forms and zany reinventions. Take their signature 40-inch pizza, for instance, which dons an unlimited combination of toppings to feed several dozen people. Their standard-sized pizzas often mimic the flavors of classic dishes, as with such fan favorites as the bruschetta, the hero, and the taco pizza. They also pair their pies with appetizers and desserts such as cheesy breadsticks, crab-stuffed mushrooms, and s’mores pizzas to create a meal as flavorful as a Willy Wonka employee’s severance package.