Butterfly

The Restaurant

Butterfly opened March 23, 2026 on the thirteenth floor of W Nashville at 300 12th Avenue South in The Gulch, replacing the former Proof rooftop bar with a full-service Mexican-inspired dining concept from the José Andrés Group. Andrés - the Spanish-born chef whose ThinkFoodGroup operates more than thirty restaurants across the United States, including the two-Michelin-starred minibar in Washington DC, Bazaar Meat by José Andrés at SLS Las Vegas, and a national network of Beefsteak and Jaleo locations - chose Nashville for the brand's third Butterfly location after Culver City and Miami Beach. The rooftop dining room runs across approximately three thousand square feet of indoor-outdoor space with nearly three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views across The Gulch, downtown Nashville and the Tennessee State Capitol: a glass-walled main lounge, a covered terrace bar, an open-air dining deck with retractable awnings, and a polished concrete cocktail rail that runs along the western edge for sunset service.

The kitchen project is the Andrés Group Butterfly concept refined for the Nashville hotel context: a Mexican-inspired small-plates and ceviche menu, an extensive agave-spirit programme, and a deliberately convivial shareable structure. Signature plates include the aguachile verde with Gulf shrimp and avocado, the tuna ceviche with serrano and hibiscus, three rotating taco compositions (Baja-style fried fish, suckling pig with pineapple-habanero, dry-aged ribeye with charred onion), a tableside guacamole prepared in a volcanic-rock molcajete, esquites with chipotle aioli and cotija, a roasted half chicken al carbon, and a small but ambitious raw bar (kanpachi tiradito, scallop crudo with leche de tigre). The bar programme is the room's quiet luxury: more than one hundred mezcal and tequila references including small-production Oaxacan and Jalisco producers rarely seen outside Mexico City, a selected agave-spirit flight, and a cocktail menu built on those spirits by a bar team that trained at Andrés Group operations in Las Vegas and Miami.

The setting is the obvious differentiator. Butterfly is now the most architecturally photogenic rooftop in The Gulch - the 360-degree city views are the city's clearest sunset photograph, and the western-facing cocktail rail at golden hour has become Nashville's most-Instagrammed weekend ritual. The W Nashville context adds incidental polish: the elevator ride from the lobby reads as event-arrival; the hotel valet and front-of-house operate at international hotel-brand standards; and the room's connection to W's full beverage and accommodation programme simplifies the logistics of a celebration evening. For a Nashville dinner that wants serious technical kitchen work paired with a once-a-decade rooftop view, Butterfly has rapidly become the city's go-to celebration call.