New York’s Prince St. Pizza Brings Its Pepperoni-Cup Legend to Fifth + Broadway
The pepperoni cups have arrived in Music City. Prince St. Pizza, the New York slice shop with a near-cult following, opened its first Nashville location in late June at the Fifth + Broadway development downtown — the brand's debut in Tennessee and, the company says, the largest restaurant in its portfolio.
The name is a nod to its origins. Prince St. Pizza began in a cramped storefront on Prince Street in Manhattan's Nolita neighborhood, where a single square slice built a reputation that quickly outgrew the address. Its calling card is the “Spicy Spring” — a Sicilian-style square with an airy, focaccia-like crust, a swipe of spicy tomato sauce, and a blanket of thick-cut pepperoni that curls and crisps in the oven into the little charred cups that have launched a thousand food photos. For years, visiting New Yorkers and social-media pilgrims alike have lined up for it. Now Nashville doesn't have to make the trip.
The downtown outpost drops the pizzeria into one of the city's busiest corridors, steps from the shops, bars and stages of the Fifth + Broadway complex and an easy walk from lower Broadway's honky-tonks. To mark the opening, the shop leaned into the loyalty play that has worked for it elsewhere: the first hundred guests through the door on day one were promised a free slice every week for a year, provided they joined the rewards program — the kind of stunt that turns an opening-day line into a roster of regulars.
Prince St. joins a growing list of buzzy out-of-town brands wagering on Nashville's appetite, and specifically on the foot traffic of Fifth + Broadway, which has become a landing pad for national names chasing the city's tourist-and-transplant boom. Whether a square slice can hold its own in a town with plenty of its own pizza loyalties is the fun question — but the pedigree, and the pepperoni, give it a running start.
Hungry for more? See where the new arrival fits on our running map of the city's dining scene in our essential Nashville food and drink guide.
For now, the advice is simple: go early, order the Spicy Spring, and don't be surprised if one square turns into two.
