Judith

The most elegant trick up Julia Sullivan’s sleeve at Judith, her exceptionally good neighborhood tavern-luxe in Sewanee, Tennessee, is the way she handles the mains—the larger-format dishes she calls Plates. They don’t come with sides so much as, well, the suggestion of sides. On the continuum from steakhouse-style à la carte to fully fledged traditional Southern entrée, Sullivan walks a tight path straight down the middle.

The grilled pork collar, a gloriously rich and fatty cut, is carved into charry-edged white-pink marble slabs and cascaded across a wide, shallow bowl. A few spoonfuls of pork jus, a small tangle of dressed pea tendrils dotted with strawberry and radish slices, some griddle-burnished snap peas—and that’s it. An enhanced-garnish situation, really.

Chicken Milanese follows suit: a boned-out half-bird’s worth of light and dark meat, pounded thin, deep-fried to a schnitzely crisp, sliced, and set onto a puddle of green goddess. On top: a sprightly mini salad of crunchy lettuce, cucumber, and green tomato. Meanwhile, an assertively crusted hanger steak comes with a swoosh of caramelized onion sauce, some charred radicchio, a couple chunks of sweet potato. In nearly every case, it’s just enough to timestamp the season and ensure no bite leaves the plate without a few precise, cheffy flourishes. But minus the heft. For that you’ll have to look to the rest of the menu.

And that, as it turns out, is the format’s genius. Each Plate is one à la carte side away from becoming a generously portioned entrée, yet modular enough for the whole menu to function as a grazing tableau. Which is why the missing starch reads not as deprivation but permission—to go long on the bready, creamy, shareable things you might otherwise skip if you were bracing for the full starch-and-veg parade later. Preferably something involving the stellar housemade sourdough with its gorgeous blistered crust and heady garlic-chile oil. Or the leek tartine: a slab of grilled sourdough smeared with farmers cheese and citrusy mostarda, then paved with torched confit leeks laid on in painterly, charred stripes. Classic French leeks vinaigrette writ portable.

But the format isn’t simply a kindness to diners’ appetites; it’s oxygen for Sullivan’s imagination. By not surrendering a third of every plate to potatoes, polenta, or dutiful medleys, she frees up space for mini tasting-menu-like compositions. The rainbow trout may be the purest expression of that freedom: deboned, cooked to a crisp-skinned finish, and set in a nutty brown butter sauce punched up with capers, preserved lemon, and herbs. It also gives the roster of sides a refreshing intentionality. Judith offers three: hand-cut fries (excellent ones) with aïoli, plus two seasonal vegetable riffs—the focused kitchen’s best produce ideas on any given night.

The rest of the Judith experience aligns with that same spirit of intentionality. Cocktails are ambitious without being fussy; the two I tried were balanced and quietly clever. The wine list blends bright-toned bottles with a handful of cool oddities—tangerine-tinged Tannat from Uruguay, anyone?—and the sommelier guides gently, sans agenda. Service is warm, collegiate without being green. Get there before sunset and the dining room glows: high ceilings, warehouse bones, oversized windows framing the Cumberland Plateau. Once the Old Steam Laundry for nearby University of the South, the building feels both lived-in and chic—an improbably polished restaurant in a tiny college town.

Sullivan, who grew up in Nashville and spent meaningful childhood stretches in Sewanee, calls her food New American, and I understand the impulse to stay un-pigeonholed. But the more I eat at Judith (and at Henrietta Red), the more I sense something Southern under the hood—not in neon-sign swooshes of pimento cheese or sorghum-drizzled maximalism, but in quieter cues: the choice of trout over bluefish; the way strategically placed coils of turnip greens sop up extra hits of brown butter the way collards hoard potlikker; pickled Basque piparras that might as well be roadside-farmstand chow-chow.

Nothing against the back-row-friendly exuberance of the Husk era. It’s been a benne-crusted blast. But when I think about the future of Southern dining, I wonder if there’s room for something more restrained, more confident in the subtle gesture. If so, I’d say Judith offers a viable—and rather appealing—glimpse of what that path might look like.