I spent both of my 2 years living in the Gulch, which has a few great restaurants while being a short walk from the heart of downtown.
BRUNCH:
Gulch
biscuit love-great breakfasts with homemade biscuits they make overnight. Also the bonuts and chronic bacon are really good. The line on weekend is always really long so it's about a 45 minute wait to an hour of you go between 9-12 but if you go after that it will be shorter.
Midtown
pancake pantry- everything there is great the line is similar to biscuit love though.
Burbs
Another famous place is loveless cafe it's like 20 minutes outside the city though so tough to get to if you don't have a car. If you do though you can drive past some really cool houses where singers live.
monell's which is a southern family style restaurant. You have to wait almost everywhere because most places don't take reservations.
LUNCH/DINNER:
12 South
12 south is an area that is a lot of fun to walk around during the day and Reece Witherspoon has a shop on that street. It also has a famous painting that everyone takes pictures with on the street. It has a ton of really good restaurants for lunch or dinner too, eldleys (BBQ) Burger up, mafiazos (pizza) and bar taco.
The Gulch
Other good dinner places are whiskey kitchen, saint anejo (Mexican) virago (sushi) all on the same street.
Broadway
Also the stillery is good.
Midtown
Nashville is famous for Hot chicken and Hattie b's has really good hot chicken... everywhere usually has a wait too
BARS:
Broadway
you'll probably want to go to broadway there are so many bars there. The famous ones are tootsies,honky tonk, and the Stage which has a really cool rooftop so does tootsies but almost all of them have live music and are so much fun. Also acme is on the river and has an awesome rooftop it's fun to get a drink there to start. A bunch of my friends like crazy town and valentines because of rooftop DJs but they are wild and really packed usually.
Demonbreun
If you want to go to a place not broadway my friends go to demonbreun street where there's a some fun bars. Also there is a really fun pedestrian Bridge to walk and take pictures on that's right by broadway. Broadway is also really fun to day drink on
Midtown
There’s also a really fun area to go out in called midtown the bars are winners, losers and rebar