Geek Food Critic

It’s All So Yummy Cafe is a soup, sandwich, and ice cream shop in West Knoxville on S. Peters Rd. We had dinner there Friday night and it was really good. This place has changed owners at least once or twice over the last several years, but the formula and quality has remained the same. Sandwiches, soups, Hilton Head ice cream, and free iced tea with each meal.

My wife and son split first one, then a second Fried Bologna sandwich, along with the accompanying potato chips. They’d typically share just a single sandwich, but when he finds something he really likes, he just keeps eating, so she had to order a second one. I had a couple bites of the first sandwich and I can confirm it was very good - certainly worth ordering a second. The bologna was thick cut, and the bread was buttered, thick, and toasted - almost as thick as you’d expect from Texas Toast.

I knew what I wanted to order as soon as I scanned the menu. The Big Cheese is made with two grilled cheese sandwiches with meat of your choice in between. I had a choice between ham, turkey, or bacon. I went with bacon, of course. While this sandwich was simple, it was delightfully simply and tasty- yummy, in fact. My only suggestion for improving it would be to double the amount of bacon to more closely match the double grilled cheese on either side. I’ll order this again, and next time I hope they have some chili to go with it.

After we finished our sandwiches, we ordered ice cream. Our son had a kiddie scoop of Oreo ice cream. To say he loved it would be an understatement. My wife had a two scoop sundae with Oreo and Chocolate Brownie with Hot Fudge. She commented that the oreo ice cream was much better than the chocolate brownie, but was otherwise pleased with the combination.

I should have ordered a two school sundae myself, but as I was scanning the ice cream menu, I noticed something else that I hadn’t had in many years - a banana split.

I selected three different ice creams for my banana split - Butter Pecan, my favorite flavor, Butterfinger Crunch, and Krispy Kreme. I’m glad I decided to observe the young man making it, because I was able to catch him before he put anything on it I wouldn’t like - namely hot fudge sauce or really anything other than a banana and whipped cream. My wife informed me that the entire purpose of getting a banana split is to get three toppings in addition to three flavors of ice cream, but I didn’t care - I ordered what I wanted. The ice cream was great, and the combination of the three flavors with the banana and whipped cream was, you guessed it, yummy. I will say it was far too much ice cream, so I won’t be ordering it again unless my wife wants to split one.

Dinner and dessert at It’s All So Yummy was fun. We’ll be returning soon, if for no other reason, than to see this look on my boy’s face again.

This is post 23 in the #NaBloWriMo #vDM30in30 30 Day Blog Challenge

A quick post to document a revisit to one of our favorite restaurants and the best barbecue joint in Knoxville - Sweet P’s. If you’d like a longer write-up, you can check out my original review.

We ordered our usual on this visit. A pound of brisket, and a mixture of sides, including potato salad, green beans, and a double order of mac & cheese. We also added an order of zucchini pickles. The brisket was, as usual, amazing. The mac & cheese was very good, as were the green beans. I didn’t have any of the potato salad, because why would I if there is mac & cheese on the table? The new star of this meal were the zucchini pickles, and they were a such a hit that my wife and barely managed to snag a few for ourselves before our son finished them off.

I noticed that Sweet P’s had Crispin hard cider on the menu, so in addition to getting a fountain drink, I bought a bottle of cider. This cider was good, although of the many varieties of Crispin I’ve tried, their “Original” is my least favorite. It’s not bad - it just isn’t awesome. And since it isn’t awesome, I certainly won’t be paying $4.75 per bottle for it in the future.

Nothing new or special about this visit. Just more great barbecue.  If you haven’t tried Sweet P’s yet, you really need to - you won’t find better barbecue in Knoxville.

This is post 20 in the #NaBloWriMo #vDM30in30 30 Day Blog Challenge

This review will be short because I don’t have much to say that’s positive. We felt like Chinese for dinner the other night but didn’t want to drive all the way out to Turkey Creek. So we went to Lotus Garden. I’ve never cared for it but my wife has better luck there when I’m out of town. This night we settled for close and OK over far away but good. I wish we hadn’t.

We started off with an order of Gyōza. We like pot stickers and they’re usually hard to screw up. Unfortunately, these sucked.

My wife and son shared the Hibachi Chicken. It was good but unlike their other dishes, not a large enough portion for my wife and son to share and feel satisfied.

I ordered the General Tsao’s Chicken. I asked for it to be “extra spicy” but it had about as much heat as I would expect from sweet & sour chicken.

A disappointing meal overall.

I can’t recommend Lotus Garden.

This is post 19 in the #NaBloWriMo #vDM30in30 30 Day Blog Challenge

On a rainy Sunday evening this past week we decided to give one of our old regular spots that we hadn’t eaten at in a while another shot - Snappy Tomato Pizza in Farragut. We got into the habit of eating there on at least a weekly basis earlier this year, until I decided to cut out as many carbs as possible - something hard to do for a guy who loves pizza.

Snappy Tomato is a chain, and I typically avoid chains, especially as regular dinner spots. We stumbled across Snappy Tomato by mistake, looking for a local pizza joint that ended up being closed for good. We decided to give it a shot and liked it, so we came back a second time, then a third and more. We liked the pizza, and the service, from both the staff and the owner, was very friendly. When I started avoiding carbs, I avoided all pizza places for a while, and while I fell off the carbs wagon a while back, we just hadn’t made it all the way out past Campbell Station Road for dinner again until this week.

Sunday night we tried to order our usual, a large pizza with Spicy Pepperoni and Provolone Cheese (in addition to mozzarella), but they were out of spicy pepperoni, so we settled for regular. The pizza was good, and my wife and I discussed how consistently good it is. Maybe not amazing, and I don’t know that I’d describe it as the best pizza in Knoxville. But I believe one of the benefits of eating at a franchise restaurant is that, if the franchisee follows the established process, using the proper ingredients, what you should get every time is a consistent product. That’s what I like best about Snappy Tomato pizza - it is always what I expect it to be. In a way, that’s better than a restaurant that produces awesome pizza on one visit, but mediocre pizza on the next.

For our son, we ordered the Baked Rigatoni, along with a side of ham because he likes to eat it separately. What you may be able to tell from these pictures is that we were hungry when we got our food, and only after we’d started to eat did I recall I needed to take pictures for a possible review. I shared some of the pasta and it, like the pizza, was unsurprisingly good. The garlic bread was extremely good as well. Our son finished all of the ham, about a quarter of this adult-sized order of rigatoni, as well as a couple of pieces of the dessert pizza.

Speaking of dessert, we ordered the Cinnabread. I’ll readily admit this is something I should not be eating, and we don’t order it every visit. But like the pizza and pasta, it is consistently good. And Sunday night it was even better because it was free. The owner stopped by our table and asked why we hadn’t ordered our usual. I mentioned they had been out of spicy pepperoni and he apologized. When I stepped up to the register to order the cinnabread, he waved my card away and said it was on the house since they couldn’t make our favorite pizza. That was, of course, completely unnecessary and completely awesome.

If you’re in Farragut, you should give Snappy Tomato Pizza a try.

This is post 18 in the #NaBloWriMo #vDM30in30 30 Day Blog Challenge

This will be a quick review, and the TL:DR version would be - trust a burger place to do burgers and you’ll likely be satisfied.

We couldn’t decide where to eat after church today, so my wife suggested Back Yard Burgers. Only she didn’t suggest “Back Yard Burgers” - she couldn’t remember the name of the place, so she suggested, “that other hamburger place by the BBQ place.” The other BBQ place being Calhoun’s in West Knoxville. I guess neither were top of mind for us, because it took a couple of minutes of playing “whose on first” before we figured out she meant Back Yard Burgers.

We used to eat at Back Yard Burgers in Bearden, but it seems it was closed at some point, possibly due to competition from a fairly crummy chain known as Cookout. When we walked into the one in West Knoxville today, it took us a couple of minutes to get our bearings because the menu was drastically changed from the last time we’d eaten there.

For our son, we ordered the Hotdog, plain. That’s how it came out - plain. Nothing exciting, but he’s two years old, so he wasn’t looking for exciting. I didn’t taste the hotdog myself, but he ate nearly every bite of it, along with a goodly amount of his mother’s waffle fries, and a couple of crackers that came with my soup, so I’m assuming it tasted as good as a plain hotdog that gets dipped in ketchup (not my idea - don’t blame me) can be. We typically tell restaurants we don’t need the bun because he doesn’t eat it, but we obviously forgot to do that today. The Boy had water to drink.

My wife ordered what used to be the Number 1 combo and what is now called the Classic with cheese. Based on her response to the comments I made about my soup, I’m pretty sure she enjoyed her cheeseburger. I didn’t try the fries but have in the past. As waffle fries go, Back Yard Burgers does them right - I’m just not a big fan. Back Yard Burgers only has Pepsi products, so my wife drank unsweetened tea. As I mentioned before, she shared her waffle fries with our son, and between the two of them, they polished this meal off.

I walked into Back Yard Burgers thinking I would avoid extra carbs, so I ordered the Black Jack Burger (it has Pepper Jack cheese), but I made it a double because I was hungry. Then I noticed a sign showing potato soup, and I suffered from a momentary lapse of both logic and memory, and ordered it as well. The burger was about as good as I remember from times past - better than most fast food burgers, not quite as good as Five Guys, and not even in the same class as In-N-Out Burger. As for the soup, I should have just eaten the burger and been done with it. First, it was insanely hot, which probably means it was heated in a microwave. Second, it was just plain bad. It had so much cheese on it that eating it because an exercise in frustration. The potatoes somehow managed to be hard. I ate too much of it before giving up, and smacked myself mentally for ordering soup at a burger place.

If you’re in West Knoxville or elsewhere and are in the mood for a decent burger, Back Yard Burgers is worth a try. Take my advice, though, and stick to the basics.

This is post 15 in the #NaBloWriMo #vDM30in30 30 Day Blog Challenge

We decided to give La Cabaña a second chance this weekend. We had tried and liked it several months ago, but had a couple of issues that gave us reason to stop going. After checking its Health Department inspection score and seeing it had a 98, we chose it for lunch after church on Sunday.

One thing we loved about La Cabaña when it first opened was the Mac & Cheese on the kids menu. It was obviously homemade, and we once ordered two of them so I could have some as a side. We were disappointed to discover the mac & cheese this time was simple from a box style. Our son didn’t seem to mind, though, and I assume it’s cheaper than what they served in the past.

My wife and I ordered Empanadas and Croquetas. We liked them both, but my wife prefers the empanadas, while I absolutely love the croquetas. I couldn’t recall what they were called when describing them to a friend, so I described them as “deep fried tubes of joy.” I know they have ham and cheese in them, but there has to be more for them to taste this good. The garlic sauce provided with both the empanadas and croquetas is excellent as well.

My wife inquired about another dish we’d love earlier this year called Arepas. These were bread pockets filled with a chicken salad made from shredded chicken and avocado. They were out of this world delicious, but the owner said he only rarely serves them now due to the preparation time required. I pulled this picture of La Cabaña’s Facebook page.

I’m glad we gave La Cabaña another shot. The food is good and not at all like what we normally eat, and the service is friendly. We’ll definitely return.

This is post 10 in the #NaBloWriMo #vDM30in30 30 Day Blog Challenge

We tried a new pizza place last week - Little Nicky’s New York Pizza. We were actually going to eat at a sandwich and ice cream shop next door, but we noticed Little Nicky’s and decided to give it a shot. A “Cash Only” sign was a surprise, and on many nights would have been a deal-breaker, but I’m very glad that I happened to have some cash on me this night.

We started off with a dozen Garlic Knots, as one of the employees told us they were awesome and my wife loves garlic knots.  I’m not a huge fan, but I have to admit, these were very good. They were well-cooked and not doughy as so many garlic knots I’ve had have been. They also weren’t drowning in olive oil, and they were covered with just the right amount of minced garlic. The sauce included with the garlic knots was very good too, and I’m fairly certain it was the same sauce used on the pizzas. One neat thing about the garlic knots is that we had a couple left over that we couldn’t finish after we finished most of our pizza. Three firefighters were eating at the table next to ours and, having just finished a truly enormous calzone, they noticed an employee making garlic knots and asked about them. I offered them the two we had left and they gratefully accepted them and enjoyed them as much as we did.

We ordered an 18" pizza with sausage and meatball as toppings. This pizza, as a whole, was some of the best New York style pizza I’ve had in years, and the best I’ve ever had in Knoxville.

First, the crust was perfect. Thin, just slightly crispy on the outside, soft but not too much so on the inside. I normally don’t eat all the crust on any given slice of pizza, but what I did on every single slice of this pizza was dipping the ends in the sauce from the garlic knots.

The toppings were good, if a slightly mixed bag. The meatballs were amazing, and I look forward to having them on spaghetti at some point. The sausage I think could have been good, but it was sliced oddly - lengthwise down the sausage instead of across. While I still liked the taste of the sausage, it did make for an oddly crisp texture. My wife commented that she felt the sausage was too spicy, but I wasn’t as bothered by it as she. Keep in mind I keep sprinkle a substantial layer of crushed red pepper on my pizza, so I may not be the best judge of whether something is too spicy. Our son finished an entire slice of pizza on his own, which is very unusual. He usually just picks at the toppings, but he ate both crust and toppings this time.

We ordered a pair of cannoli to go. I am not especially fond of cannoli, but my wife loves them. She had the chocolate one and loved it. I had the plain one and liked it as much as I like any cannoli. One thing I can say is that the pastry managed to be crisp and light throughout without getting soggy on the inside from the filling. To me that suggests these cannoli were freshly made. While my wife loved the cannoli, I’m hoping Little Nicky’s branches out at some point and offers a homemade New York cheesecake; that’s one of thing that would have made this extremely good dining experience even better.

We liked Little Nicky’s so much that we decided to give it another shot a couple of days later, planning on trying their pasta and possibly a sandwich. When we arrived, we learned they had a special running for 2 bowls of spaghetti, 2 medium cheese pizzas, and a dozen garlic knots for $20, so that’s what we ordered. The spaghetti was very good. The sauce was a little plain, but I’m sure I could have added meatballs to it. I will next time.  Our son liked the spaghetti and ate about a quarter of one of the large bowls' worth.

We ordered meatball on one pizza and pepperoni on the other. The meatball was as good as it was the first time and the pepperoni was good as well. The pizza themselves weren’t quite as good as the first trip, although it was still very good pizza. This was a Saturday night and they had several orders queued up before us and received a steady stream of orders for pickup after ours, so I think the person making the pizzas that night just took them out of the oven a few minutes too early. The crust wasn’t perfect like it was on the first trip, and I did end up leaving several pieces of crust uneaten. Still, we were pretty satisfied with the meal overall, and are looking forward to eating there again.

Little Nicky’s is still new, and I’ve had both an outstanding and good experience there so far. If you’re in West Knoxville near North Peters Rd looking for good pizza, give them a shot.

This is post 6 in the #NaBloWriMo #vDM30in30 30 Day Blog Challenge

I reviewed Sergeant Pepperoni’s back in June of 2012.  It was a fairly new place in Knoxville then, and we really loved eating there.  They’ve done so well in the meantime that they’ve opened a second restaurant in West Knoxville.  After nearly two and a half years, we still love Sergeant Pepperoni’s, and we eat there every Tuesday night.  I’m writing this post to explain why.

The Food

Our son, who the servers at Sergeant Pepperoni’s have seen grow from a baby we carried around in a car seat to a toddler we have to keep trapped on the inside of our booth, loves the World’s Fair sandwich, which we always order with extra cheese and no chips.  The Boy pics the sandwich apart and eats the meat, cheese, and bread separately. He loves the garlic mayo, and he should, because it’s delicious.

We’ve sampled many other dishes over the last two years at Sgt P’s.  Some of them we work into our rotation, and all of them are good.  The Buffalo Chicken Dip with Crostini is my favorite, and I’d say I get that about half the time these days.  The dip contains melted cheese, buffalo sauce, and chicken, and it’s good enough that some nights I just eat it with a spoon and nibble on the crostini separately.  The baked chicken wings are consistently good as well, although we don’t get them that often because Thursday is 55 cent wing night and we can’t eat at Sgt P’s on Thursday - more on that in a bit.

A few weeks ago, the folks at Sgt P’s were trying something new, experimenting with chili.  Our server pitched it to us and he had me at “bison chili” - I told him I’d take it.  The chili was excellent - better than my mom’s but not quite as good (I’m not stupid) as my wife’s.  I like a lot of meat in my chili, and this bowl didn’t disappoint.  What did disappoint me is the next time I asked about it, I was told they were holding off on the chili until it got a little colder.  My weather app on my iPhone tells me it will be in the 60’s this coming Tuesday, so I guess I’m screwed for another few weeks at least.  I liked that chili, and I am looking forward to eating it again.

You might be wondering at this point why I haven’t mentioned the pizza at a place named Sergeant Pepperoni’s?  To be honest, we haven’t had the pizza in quite a while - not that it isn’t good pizza, but because the sandwiches, wings, buffalo chicken dip, and other items are best in their class in Knoxville, and with a 2 year old whose tastes are hard to predict, we stick with what works.  He loves the World’s Fair sandwich, so we go with sandwiches.

The Service

The food at Sergeant Pepperoni’s is good, and if it weren’t good, we wouldn’t eat there every Tuesday.  But that isn’t why Sgt P’s is the place we eat dinner on Tuesday night. The reason we eat there on Tuesday night is the server who works there on Tuesday is awesome.  Don’t get me wrong - we’ve never gotten bad service at either of the Sergeant Pepperoni’s, but our server, Max, is the reason we eat there every single Tuesday.

Max is great.  He’s friendly, he’s funny, he values his regular customers, and he does something great servers do - he enjoys his work and he makes us enjoy our meal.  Max knows what we drink (Diet Coke most of the time), and until we threw him a few curve balls (Unsweet Tea), he’d have them on our table by the time we sat down.  Now he just confirms we want Diet Coke and brings them right over.  He knows what The Boy wants, including the extra cheese and no chips.  He knows what my wife and I are likely to order, and when we mix it up, he jokes about us breaking the pattern.

So Max is the reason we eat at Sgt P’s on Tuesday evenings.  We eat out a lot, and more restaurants would have reserved slots in our week if they had servers as good as Max.

Give Sergeant Pepperoni’s a Shot

If you live in Knoxville, or if you’re visiting, check out Sgt P’s in Bearden.  If you go on a Tuesday evening, chances are you’ll find me there.  If you’re near the Bearden or UT area, it’s a great place for lunch too.  I still say the BLT is the best sandwich in town, and a still a bargain at $7.50.

This is post 4 in the #NaBloWriMo #vDM30in30 30 Day Blog Challenge

I love fish tacos. Even bolded like that, those words are inadequate to express how I feel about fish tacos.  Fish tacos rank in my top 5 foods, easy, and on most days, I would probably rather have a fish taco than barbecue, pizza, or bacon.

Oscar’s Taco Shop on The Strip is one of the few places that sells fish tacos in Knoxville, and theirs are the best to be had in this sadly landlocked state in which I live.  The fish tacos, the quality of the other dishes we’ve tried, and the friendly service are why Oscar’s is one of only three restaurants in town that own a slot on our weekly eating out schedule.  Wednesday night has been Taco Night for the last several months, mainly because Wednesday was the day we’d visit the Farmers Market at UT Gardens, which is just a couple of minutes from The Strip.

I remember the first time we tried Oscar’s.  It’s located in a crummy spot on the far end of Cumberland Avenue.  I’ve watched businesses and restaurants come and go in this little mini strip mall next to Mellow Mushroom, and everything, given enough time, has failed.  So we walked in and I was thinking, “don’t get too attached - this place won’t last 6 months given the poor parking situation and all ebb and flow of student business.”  They’ve lasted for longer than a year and a half at least, given the date of the earliest reviews I could find, and I hope they never leave.

We started eating at Oscar’s when our son was about a year old, and he’s two and a half now.  I remember being surprised when we first offered him a bite of my fish taco and he gobbled it down, asking for more.  For quite a while his dinner consisted of a fish taco and bits and pieces of whatever his mom was eating, until he graduated to two of his own tacos.  At some point his tastes shifted, however, so these days he shares an order of chicken fajitas with his mom.

Oscar’s Chicken Fajitas are very good.  I usually order them myself as well, unless I’m only in the mood for tacos.  The chicken is well-cooked and never chewy or fatty, and the dish comes with a good mix of peppers, sour cream, guacamole, and pico.  They normally come with rice and beans, but I substitute an extra side of beans for my rice and let my wife and son have my tortillas in an effort to reduce my carb intake.  We’ve recently taken to asking them to leave off the lettuce, which improves the already good dish.  Never really understood the practice of showering everything with shredded lettuce anyway.

Here’s a shot of Oscar’s Fish Tacos.  They’re fairly basic - a piece of fried fish, lettuce, pico, onions, pico, and sour cream wrapped up in a double corn tortilla.  Sometimes they come out just a tad over fried, but even then, they put the competition to shame.  I love these tacos so much I sometimes dream about what it would be like to enter a taco eating competition with them.

I also like Oscar’s Carnitas, or pork tacos.  I used to split my order evenly between them, but these days I mostly stick with the fish.

Some nights we order chips and queso, and the chips are always fresh and warm.  The queso is some of the best queso in town as well, and several steps above what you would expect from a quick service place like Oscar’s.  One thing I can’t stand is watery, thin queso.  Oscar’s queso is thick, warm, and has just enough pepper spice to make it interesting, but not so much that our toddler can’t handle it.

One reason we keep coming back to Oscar’s is the service.  The young woman who takes our order is delightful and the fellows who make the food are friendly as well.  They always seem very happy to see us, miss us on those rare weeks when we can’t make it, and like everyone else we encounter, seem to appreciate how adorable our little boy is.  On Wednesday afternoons, my wife and I typically have a quick iMessage or Google Hangouts exchange that goes like this:

Her: Meet you at Oscar’s? Me:  Yep.

It wouldn’t occur to us to eat elsewhere, and when traffic was super crazy at the beginning of the Fall semester this year and the lot in front of Oscar’s was full, it prevented us from eating there two weeks in a row.  I’m enough of a creature of habit that it was hard to come up with another place to eat, because in my mind, Wednesday = Oscar’s.  I was pretty cranky those nights since I didn’t get my fish tacos too.

I can’t recommend Oscar’s Taco Shop highly enough.  Give it a shot - you’ll like it.  Just don’t take our booth at the front of the restaurant.  My boy likes to watch them make the food from his seat there.

This is post 2 in the #NaBloWriMo #vDM30in30 30 Day Blog Challenge

I’ll tell you all you need to know about Chandler’s Deli in this first sentence - they make hands-down the best fried chicken, and the best macaroni & cheese in Knoxville. If you haven’t eaten there and you’re reading this while they’re open, stop reading and go get some chicken - I’ll wait.

I had lunch and Chandler’s recently with a buddy from work. It’s best to arrive early, and that day there were only a couple of available tables around 11:30. Chandler’s is in an old Taco Bell building, and you order your food cafeteria style. We started off with fried pickles. They were very good - with just the right amount of breading.

I ordered fried chicken, macaronic & cheese, and fried okra. The okra was very good. A couple of guys ahead of me in line were trying to decide on which side to get, and I told them the macaroni & cheese was “drive across the state good.” They took my advice and ordered it. I’m glad I did as well. The real star of this meal, though, was the fried chicken. Chandler’s fried chicken is awesome. It’s juicy and fried just right, and has been every single time I’ve had it.

I’ve only ever tried the fried chicken at Chandler’s. I know they have other main dishes available, but I’m a fan sticking to what I know is awesome. I only let myself eat at Chandler’s once a month or so, because I know if I let it become a habit, I’d be there every week, then multiple times per week, then pretty soon I’d have a heart attack. I’ll say it again - if you haven’t tried Chandler’s fried chicken, you need to.

One of my favorite restaurants in Knoxville is a little burger joint called We’re Cooking All American Grill. We came across it in a shopping center on North Peters road soon after it opened in early 2010 and just fell in love with the place. At first we were simply pleased by the quality of the simple food and the intriguing story of how the Polish immigrant came to America. Over time, we grew more impressed with how hard this guy worked, how well we ran his business, and how consistently good the food was, visit after visit. Once our son was old enough to eat grown-up food, we found another reason to love We’re Cooking - kids eat free there Mon-Wed. If we don’t hit We’re Cooking on Monday night for dinner, we usually make up for it on Saturday for lunch, and some weeks we do both.

For lunch on Saturday, my son got his usual - the kid’s hotdog without the bun, although he got fries this time instead of fruit. I took a picture of it but it was too blurry to post because he couldn’t keep his hands away from it. I’ve had the hotdog before and it’s very good, even if my son does do the unthinkable and eat it with ketchup. At least I’ve convinced him to sometimes go for mayo instead or in addition to the gross red stuff.

My wife ordered the Fourth of a Cow with fries. We’re Cooking sells a single, double, and triple burger, with the other variants being Half of a Cow and Most of a Cow. The burgers are outstanding, so much so that I could eat them every visit, and likely every day, and never grow tired of them until the inevitable heart attack came. I sometimes order my Half without a bun. The fries are a good, if fairly standard, crinkle variety.

I went for my current usual, the Boom Boom Seafood Tacos, although I had them make them fish only by leaving off the shrimp. The seafood is fried, and the fish comes in roughly large shrimp sized chunks. It’s flaky and fresh-tasting, although living in a land-locked state ensures it must have been frozen. I like the boom boom sauce quite a bit, although I believe it is likely just a mix of hot sauce and mayo. I typically avoid the fries because I like to kid myself into believing the onion rings are not as bad for me since they aren’t potatoes.

Today’s visit was just like nearly every other visit - awesome. The food was good. We had to wipe our table off when we sat down but we grabbed a booth literally right after someone was left, so the staff wouldn’t have had time to clean it anyway. Cleaning is something the staff does a lot at We’re Cooking. It’s obvious the owner drills it into his employees - because they’re doing it all the time. That really stands out as fairly unique, especially for a “fast food” restaurant, and it has to contribute to the regular perfect scores We’re Cooking gets on its health inspections. I eat out a lot, and while 90’s aren’t that uncommon for the good places, 100’s are pretty rare, and We’re Cooking gets them quite often.

I can’t say enough good things about We’re Cooking. The food is great. The service is great. The owner isn’t around as often these days as he used to be, but I figure that’s because he’s managing his growing franchise business and actually enjoying the fruit of his many years of hard work. He’s a fascinating guy to talk to, and trust me when I say you won’t find a more pro-America business owner than a Polish immigrant who left Poland to get away from Communism. He never ceases to say something awesome while we’re talking at the register or around the restaurant - offering parenting advice the other day to me when he said my son looked like he was a good boy. I laughed and said, “Well, he’s a good boy sometimes.” He told me boys could only be good some of the time, and the rest of the time, we should just let them be boys. As a former boy myself, I’m OK with that.

If you’re looking for a great burger or a good pair of fish tacos, or just about anything else they have on the menu, give We’re Cooking a shot. You won’t be disappointed.

If you’d like the short version of this review, Hard Knox Pizzeria makes some of the most interesting and delicious pizza I’ve ever had, the service is friendly and fast, and except for one thing, I would work the place into our restaurant rotation. As it stands, however, I have absolutely no intention of eating there again.

My team at work recently celebrated the birthday of one of our coworkers. Given a choice of where to eat, she chose Hard Knox. My primary concern was whether we could fit our whole team at a few tables, so I left a bit early and we managed to put three tables together to make room for everyone. Everyone else arrived and ordered just before the lunch crowd arrived.

I’ll tell you, right off the bat, I was pleased with the service. The young lady who took our order was friendly and cute. I asked her for a recommendation for a good pizza with white sauce, and she gave me one. Once everyone was seated, she even brought out a pepperoni pizza for the group to sample while we waited for our pizzas to be prepared. That’s pretty nice. The pepperoni pizza was very good, albeit not exactly what I’m looking for in a plain pepperoni pizza. What I mean by that is if I’m just getting pepperoni, I’d rather have a deep dish pizza to make it a little more interesting, and Hard Knox pizza is a thin, wood-fired crust. Delicious - just a little on the plain side.

Realizing I wanted something a little more interesting, I happily accepted the young lady’s recommendation for the Great White Hope. Pesto cream sauce, mozzarella, marinated chicken, shaved parmesan, crushed red pepper, and extra virgin olive oil. Sure, it’s what I call “frou-frou” pizza, but it’s delicious. You can tell they use fresh ingredients all the way around. The crust may have been a tad bit too thin towards the center of the pizza, forcing me to eat the first couple of bites with a fork (sorry, Jon Stewart) so the toppings didn’t slide off the too thin crust at the point of the slices. My coworker got the Bonecrusher, but with white sauce. It was very good, but if I had it to do over again (which I won’t), I’d get the Great White Hope.

So if I liked the service and the pizza so much, why do I have no intention of eating there again? Two reasons, and they’re both tied to a choice the owner of Hard Knox made in furnishing the restaurant. I didn’t take this picture of the stools in the restaurant, but it’s close enough for you to get the idea.

If you want to eat in the restaurant, that stool is your only option. I absolutely understand that the owner is going for a boxing theme, both on the menu and with the decor in his shop. I get it. It’s even kinda cute, visually. But it’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. So reason number one - comfort. I’m a big guy, and frankly, I am not comfortable sitting on a little stool while eating my meal. I don’t sit on a stool at work. I don’t sit on a stool at home. Hell, I don’t sit on stools in bars unless they have backs because they’re not comfortable. I was reminded of my only other visit to Hard Knox when I arrived early this time and setup the tables. I made sure I got a seat on the side of the tables with my back to the wall, so I would at least have some back support. That’s exactly how I had to sit after a few minutes during our first visit, only that time, since we were seated at a single table, not a row of them turned sideways, I got to lean against the wall looking like a dufus since my wife was sitting across the table at a 90 degree angle from me, along with our son in his baby carrier.

Which brings me to reason two - we have a two year old. We always ask for a booth when we eat out. Are we in love with booths? Not really. But you know what a booth allows us to do? Put our son on the inside next to his mom so we don’t have to worry about him waxing toddler for 20 seconds and tearing through the restaurant. Even a chair would be better because we could block him in against the wall. But a stool with no back that would let him just swing around and hop right off the back? No way.

Am I making too big a deal of this? Maybe, but I’m just being honest. I don’t care that the guy who owns Hard Knox wants to have stools instead of chairs, for whatever reason. I have tons of places happy to take my money for food, so I’ll continue to choose one in which I can sit comfortably, and also one in which I don’t have to worry about our son sliding off a stool and running around wreaking havoc.

If you’re someone who can sit on a tiny stool while eating your meal and you’re looking for amazing and interesting pizza, I can heartily recommend Hard Knox Pizzeria. If you like to be comfortable while eating, may I suggest Blackhorse just next door? Or if you’re really in the mood for a pizza place, give Sergeant Pepperoni’s a try - it’s just down the street.