Pizza debates rarely stay polite once the first slice lands on the table.
In East Nashville, one neighborhood shop has kept locals arguing happily since 2011. New York-style slices arrive broad enough to fold, with scratch-made dough aged in-house.
The experience can be as quick or relaxed as your appetite demands. Order one slice from the walk-up window, or commit to a whole pie and let the table negotiate the toppings.
Rotating daily specials keep the board changing, while cheese and pepperoni remain ready for anyone who trusts the classics.
Nashville keeps adding ambitious pizza newcomers, but this Woodland Street favorite still gives diners a reason to return to the same delicious argument.
Which slice would earn your vote?
Nashville Readers Keep Returning To The Original Shop
Five Points Pizza has repeatedly won the Nashville Scene readers’ choice for Best Pizza.
The restaurant states that it has received the honor every year since opening, and the 2025 readers’ poll again placed it at the top of the category.
Nashville’s dining scene has changed dramatically since 2011. New restaurants, regional styles, and ambitious pizza concepts have joined the competition, yet the original formula here still begins with a thin crust, tomato sauce, cheese, and a slice broad enough to fold.
The Woodland Street shop sits in East Nashville’s Five Points area, where the business first opened. It now includes dine-in seating, counter service, carryout, and a walk-up slice window added during a 2014 expansion.
You can stop for one slice during a neighborhood walk, order a full pie for a group, or sit down with garlic knots and a salad before the main event arrives.
Address: 1012 Woodland Street, Nashville, Tennessee.
Twenty-Inch Pies Create Proper Foldable Slices
The size creates the broad triangular shape associated with New York-style pizza. You can lift it flat, support the point with a second hand, or fold the slice lengthwise before taking the first bite.
That fold is optional, but physics strongly supports it. Bringing the sides together gives the crust more structure and helps keep the cheese and toppings from sliding toward the plate.
Cheese, pepperoni, and prosciutto with basil appear among the regular slice choices. The shop also prepares one meat and one vegetable slice of the day, giving the board a different personality depending on when you arrive.
Slices are served as prepared rather than rebuilt to individual specifications. You choose from what is ready, add chopped basil or prosciutto when available, and let the day’s recipe make the decision.
One slice may handle lunch for a smaller appetite. Two turn the paper plate into a serious meal.
The real challenge is reaching the first bite before the point bends under its own ambition. That decision is waiting for you at 1012 Woodland Street, Nashville, Tennessee.
Scratch-Made Dough Holds Every Pie Together
This spot makes its New York-style dough from scratch each day and ages it in-house.
The kitchen hand-tosses the dough, adds hand-crushed plum tomato sauce and house-shredded mozzarella, then bakes each pizza to order in old-school gas-fired deck ovens over two-inch bricks.
Those steps create the base for every cheese slice and specialty pie. The crust must stay thin enough for a broad fold while remaining sturdy enough to support sauce, cheese, and heavier toppings.
Deck ovens cook from the hot surface below as well as the heated chamber around the pizza. The brick cooking surface helps shape the underside, while the outer rim shows how the dough expanded during baking.
A simple cheese slice gives you the clearest view of that structure. The crust, sauce, and mozzarella have nowhere to hide behind a pile of toppings.
Specialty combinations may draw more attention, but each one still depends on the same foundation.
Here, the dough does the quiet work before the toppings start showing off.
Daily Specials Keep The Slice Board Moving
The East Nashville location posts separate meat and vegetable slices for each day of the week.
Those combinations rotate through sausage, meatballs, bacon, mushrooms, spinach, peppers, feta, ricotta, fresh mozzarella, pesto, red sauce, and cream-based sauces.
A Friday vegetable slice may look nothing like Monday’s option. The meat selection can also move between sausage, bacon, sliced meatball, and other combinations as the week changes.
That schedule gives regulars a reason to look at the board before automatically ordering pepperoni. Someone who visits on different days can encounter slices unavailable during the rest of the week.
The specials come from the same 20-inch pies as the standard offerings and are sold without substitutions. You can stay with a familiar favorite or let the calendar handle the choice.
For a first visit, one classic slice and one daily special create a useful comparison. Cheese or pepperoni shows the basic formula, while the special reveals how the kitchen stretches it.
Two slices also remove the need to pretend one would have been enough.
Specialty Pies Push Beyond Cheese And Pepperoni
Whole-pie orders open the menu to a broader range of topping combinations.
The T-Rex combines pepperoni, Italian sausage, sliced meatballs, and spicy capicola. The Zeus brings together pepperoni, capicola, black olives, banana peppers, red onions, and feta.
Dave’s Pie pairs prosciutto di Parma with fresh basil and extra pecorino Romano. The Bianca skips tomato sauce and uses fresh mozzarella, shredded mozzarella, ricotta, pecorino Romano, olive oil, and garlic.
Vegetarian combinations include mushrooms, artichokes, peppers, onions, olives, tomatoes, spinach, ricotta, and other toppings. Vegan cheese and vegan pepperoni give plant-based diners additional options.
House-made vodka tomato cream sauce and habanero cream sauce also move selected pies away from the standard red base.
The shop allows specialty pies to be split for an added charge, which helps when the table cannot agree on one direction.
Half the pizza can stay familiar while the other half takes the risk. Pizza negotiations become far easier when both sides receive exactly what they argued for.
Garlic Knots Give The Dough Another Job
The garlic knots begin with the same hand-cut New York-style dough used for the pizza.
The kitchen ties the pieces into knots, tosses them in olive oil and garlic, and finishes them with chopped basil and pecorino Romano. Marinara arrives alongside for dipping.
You can order four knots or a full basket of eight. A smaller portion also appears in a weekday lunch special with a salad and a drink.
Because the knots use pizza dough, they offer another way to notice its texture without sauce and mozzarella covering the surface. The twisted shape creates thicker folds and thinner edges within the same piece.
Pull one apart, and the softer interior appears beneath the seasoned exterior. Dip it into marinara, and the tomato component returns without turning the knot into a miniature slice.
The restaurant can prepare them without pecorino Romano for diners requesting a vegan version.
Ordering knots before a whole pie requires appetite management. Ordering them beside two slices demands even more discipline.
The basket usually empties before anyone finishes debating whether eight was excessive.
The Slice Window Keeps Quick Stops Simple
The East Nashville slice window offers counter service directly from the Woodland Street shop.
Five Points Pizza added it during the 2014 expansion of the original location. The window complements the dining room rather than replacing it, giving customers a faster route to the same broad slices.
You can walk up, choose from the available options, and continue through the neighborhood without waiting for a table. Cheese, pepperoni, and daily specials make the window useful for lunch, a late meal, or an unplanned stop that suddenly becomes necessary.
The setup also lets first-time visitors sample the restaurant before committing to a whole pie. One paper plate provides enough evidence to decide whether a larger order belongs in the near future.
Still, the Woodland Street window belongs to the original shop.
Sometimes dinner needs only a sidewalk, one folded slice, and enough napkins to keep the sauce away from your shirt.
East Nashville Still Supplies Another Slice
Five Points Pizza now operates beyond its original neighborhood, but the East Nashville shop remains the first chapter.
The company added a full-service West Nashville location in 2018 and later expanded into other Nashville settings. Growth made the menu easier to reach without replacing the identity of the Woodland Street address.
You can still order slices cut from 20-inch pies, inspect the daily board, add garlic knots, or carry a whole specialty pie home.
The restaurant also marks its September anniversary with Free Slice Night. The annual event began as a thank-you to Nashville customers and has featured scheduled servings of complimentary cheese and pepperoni slices while supplies lasted.
Dates and conditions can change each year, so it remains a special event rather than a standing promotion.
Awards keep the restaurant’s name in local and statewide discussions, but the experience remains direct. A slice arrives on a paper plate. The crust folds.
Sauce and cheese settle the argument.
After more than a decade of changing pizza trends, the original shop keeps serving the style that built its following.
The debate continues because Woodland Street keeps placing another slice on the table.