Where to Eat in Chattanooga [Our 6 Favorite Restaurants]

Looking for where to eat in Chattanooga for a delicious meal? Read on for our top 6 favorite restaurants in the city!

Chattanooga, Tennessee is definitely a hidden gem destination in the southern USA, and it’s one of our favorite southern cities. We’ve visited Chattanooga on many occasions and will definitely be back!

While it’s a popular day trip destination from cities like Nashville, Atlanta, Charleston, and Savannah, there’s enough to do that you could easily spend an entire weekend in Chattanooga – exploring the vibrant downtown, the beautiful Tennessee River, Lookout Mountain, and the trains of Chattanooga.

And of course, Chattanooga has a THRIVING food scene! We always look forward to hitting up new restaurants or visiting old favorites when we visit Chattanooga, and we’ve found some really great places during our trips to the city.

In this post, I’m sharing our top favorite places to eat in Chattanooga, which include a variety of different types of restaurants and cuisine. At the end, I’m also sharing two restaurants that we tried, but unfortunately, fell far short of what we were hoping to experience.

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Check Out My Other Chattanooga Guides:
Where to Stay in Chattanooga: Best Areas + Hotels
8 Gorgeous Boutique Hotels in Chattanooga to Escape To
How to Spend a Weekend in Chattanooga

Where to Eat in Chattanooga – My Favorite Restaurants

Tulepo Honey Cafe

Four plates of food with golden waffles, chicken tenders, and yellow spicy french fries on a brown wooden table.

Tulepo Honey Cafe serves classic Southern fare with an impressive lineup of choices. We went for the crispy fried chicken and waffles, a selection of chicken sandwiches, and a simple yet delightful blueberry waffle—all of which were exceptional.

A silver metal plate with two large biscuits with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and blueberry jam.

But the true highlight here were the biscuits. Ordered as an appetizer, they were colossal, with the perfect flaky, crumbly texture, and rich buttery taste. Honestly, they were so good, I could’ve happily made a meal out of those biscuits topped with a generous slather of creamy butter!

Goodfellas Pizza

A large pizza with pepperoni and sausage on half of it and pepperoni, sausage, olives, and jalapenos on the other side.

Goodfellas Pizza is an absolute treat. When you arrive, settle into the restaurant dining room, or head down to the bar to grab food and drinks. You can choose a slice of whatever’s fresh in the display case, or order a specialty pizza.

The real draw is the massive, 22-inch pizza—a colossal crowd-pleaser. Definitely also order the breadsticks, which are also huge (and only $3.50 – a total steal). The pizza was perfectly chewy (not too thick, not too thin), and the toppings were plentiful and fresh.

If we were local, Goodfella’s Pizza would be in the regular rotation, for sure.

Maple Street Biscuit Company

Six plates of food on a wood and metal table with biscuits, waffles, fires, and cookies.

You can’t get more southern than flaky, buttery biscuits, and Maple Street Biscuit Company serves up delicious, quality biscuits in a variety of flavors and styles. It’s grown into a small but mighty chain across the southern states.

Choose from an array of toppings and sandwich options to customize your biscuit experience. I’m a bit of biscuit snob, and these were fantastic. The rest of their menu is also very delicious, including the fried chicken that is a star in many of the biscuit sandwiches!

Sticky Fingers

A crispy seasoned brisket with coleslaw and cornbread on a metal pan with a brown sheet covering it.

Sticky Fingers, nestled in the heart of downtown Chattanooga, serves top-tier Southern barbecue. Their brisket, seasoned with a savory dry rub, was tender and melted in your mouth.

They had a lot of sides, a good variety of meats, and sandwiches to choose from, including some more inventive options like the BBQ Banh Mi. Plus, they had several unique, housemade sauces to add to your meats and sandwiches – a fun touch.

Ice Cream Show

Two cups of soft serve ice cream, one with chocolate and the other strawberry vanilla in front of a dessert cafe.

The Ice Cream Show offers a refreshing take on soft-serve. Start with a base of chocolate, vanilla, or frozen yogurt, then dive into their extensive list of flavors and mix-ins to create your own blend. The raspberry marshmallow was a standout favorite for us!

While it’s on the pricier side, the quality of the ice cream justifies the cost. Plus, its prime spot at the end of Walnut Street Bridge makes it a convenient spot to satisfy your sweet tooth.

City Cafe

4 containers with slices of cake and cheesecake on a gray and black table.

City Cafe is a classic, no-frills diner, offering typical diner fare and an array of desserts. The real stars here are the cakes and cheesecakes – each one a massive creation with unique and tantalizing flavors that are as delicious as they look.

The cakes are all displayed in cases near the front so you can peruse and drool over the options, or sit down and look through what’s listed on the menu.

Be prepared for generous portions – the slices are enormous. We ordered four slices for our group of six, and we ended up taking about half of the cake home with us. (To be fair, this is not really a problem!)

A Few Places We Haven’t Loved

Look, I hate to do this, but I want to give y’all the best information! And that should include places that we have tried, but have ultimately been less than impressed with. These are two places that unfortunately, I wouldn’t recommend:

Julie Darling Donuts: I wanted to like this donut shop so bad – it’s a local place and there were some fun and unique donut flavors. Unfortunately, the donuts just weren’t all that good – they were all cake donuts (which I generally do like), and the texture was just very dense and even a little dry.

Downtown Dough: Again, in theory, this is a really fun shop – they serve slices of cookie dough that you can eat “raw”. Unfortunately, we thought there was something a little off about the taste of the cookie dough, and it wasn’t worth the steep $5/slice.

Best Eats in Chattanooga – The Wrap Up

Chattanooga’s thriving culinary scene means that there are a host of delicious restaurants to choose from – and I can personally vouch for any spot on this list. I can’t wait to visit the city again and find more gems to share with you!

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