Prime + Proper, a Detroit steakhouse ranked among the world’s best, opens its second location in Nashville Yards Feb. 23, bringing high-touch service and local flavors.
Prime + Proper, the Detroit steakhouse known for in-house butchery and high-touch service rituals, opens Feb 23 at Nashville Yards, taking over and fully redesigning the former Continental space.
Inside the 7,200-square-foot restaurant, oversized curved banquettes dominate the dining room. Their high backs afford enough privacy to eat meat with abandon, and it’s a mission you should not take lightly. These are premium steaks and, as with many high-end steakhouses, they come at a premium.
How much are Prime + Proper menu items?
Large-format items like the Proper Plateau, porterhouse and Wagyu steaks run roughly $160 to $200, while steaks and seafood such as ribeye, lamb chops, branzino and Dover sole land around $70 to $96. Entrées like scallops, salmon and fried lobster hover near $52 to $59, and starters, salads and sides fall between about $17 and $42, meaning a full steakhouse experience climbs quickly into the hundreds per person.
This is a splurge restaurant, and it’s easy to imagine an intimate dinner here followed by a wander across the street to the Frist Art Museum.
What is Prime + Proper?
Founded in 2017 by Heirloom Hospitality owner Jeremy Sasson, Prime + Proper is all about luxury, with high-end steaks and rare cuts and sumptuous accessories such as shaved truffle and foie gras to accompany them.
The restaurant carries all the hallmarks of a traditional American steakhouse, with aged prime cuts hanging behind glass along the restaurant’s approach, meticulous tableside service and a large wine cellar presided over by the restaurant’s sommelier.
But there’s more than meat on the menu: there are colossal prawns, big theater seafood dishes like tableside Dover sole and Ora King salmon with champagne beurre blanc. There’s caviar too, plus a whole menu section devoted to potatoes, whether they’re pureed with obscene amounts of butter a la Joel Robuchon, roasted in beef fat, or made into “proper” hash browns with sunny side eggs and black salt.
The opening marks the brand’s second location and its first expansion outside Michigan, and it already appears to be a destination restaurant. During a preview event, a server estimated nearly half the dining room had traveled from out of town.
The menu mixes global Wagyu with local influence, using Tennessee products where possible. The signature cowboy ribeye is dry-aged with Leiper’s Fork Distillery whiskey, a local ingredient that also appears on the plate in an au poivre sauce. Steaks are cooked over Tennessee white oak. Handling that smoke with apparent efficiency is a half-million-dollar hood system.
Sasson said the goal is precision rather than spectacle.
“This isn’t about scale for us,” he said. “It’s about bringing a level of care and discipline to a city that appreciates craftsmanship.”
That approach includes high-end service touches, such as steaks presented before the kitchen begins to cook, sauces finished at the table and courses timed around temperature rather than speed. All of that combined helped London-based Upper Cut Media House name Prime + Proper No. 20 in the United States on the World’s 101 Best Steak Restaurants list.
Prime + Proper seats about 219 guests between its main dining room, private dining room and bar.
The restaurant will also introduce its “Knife Society” membership locally, which means priority reservations, curated dining experiences and access to rare cuts of beef.
Members receive a custom steak knife displayed prominently inside the restaurant.
Prime + Proper is open daily at 1000 Broadway.
Read the full story from The Tennessean here.