Geek Food Critic

Pizza is a complicated, nuanced topic.  Most people I know prefer one style of pizza to another - Chicago deep dish over New York thin crust, for example.  Even so, most of my friends will eat pizza from just about any place in town and I can't do that for one reason - most pizza in Knoxville, and I'd go so far as to say all pizza from chain stores, is crap.  My favorite style of pizza is deep dish, and more specifically, the deep dish pizza you get in Chicago.  The "Chicago style" pizza you can get in Knoxville, be it from Jet's or Pizzeria Uno, is as close to real Chicago pizza as a bald fat guy singing "My Way" at karaoke night is to Frank Sinatra.

So I've given up on getting good deep dish pizza in Knoxville.  I'd almost given up on getting good pizza at all in Knoxville until we discovered a local place called Little Joe's. Located at 13100 Kingston Pike, quite a bit further down that road than we'd ever driven before, Little Joe's quickly became a regular in our restaurant rotation.  They serve a very thin crust pizza, almost but not quite a cracker crust, and it is worth the drive.

We made the trek out to Watt Rd on I-40 after work today and arrived before the typical dinner rush crowd. While I go to Little Joe's for the pizza, I enjoy their pasta as well.  So tonight I ordered a bowl of mostaccioli, or as it is more commonly known, penne in addition to our pizza.  The mostaccioli is served simply with a meat sauce and it is as good as any other pasta I've had in town.  The sauce is excellent, but what continues to impress me is how perfectly al dente the pasta is served.  This is a pizza joint, after all, and they serve a more consistently good bowl of pasta than most higher-priced Italian restaurants I've tried.

In addition to the pasta, my wife and I split a medium pizza, pepperoni and green pepper on her half, pepperoni and Italian sausage on mine.  What I like best about Little Joe's Pizza is the quality of the sauce and toppings.  The sauce is so good that I have yet to leave even a stray end piece of crust on my plate.  The Italian sausage is the best sausage I've ever had on a pizza.

The food at Little Joe's is great, and that alone would keep me coming back.  The owner and staff stand out as some of the friendliest folks in Knoxville.  Something that took me a couple of visits to fully understand is that the staff at Little Joe's aren't just friendly - they're happy.  Not just "happy and friendly servers get better tips" happy, but genuinely walking around with smiles on their faces, joking and cutting up with each other and the customers happy.

A few weeks ago our server, a young woman, saw I was reading a comic book on my iPad and she asked what I was reading.  Trying not to sound too much like an embarrassed kid in the body of a middle aged man, I said, "oh, just a comic book."  So she asked, "I know - which one?"  I told her I was reading Action Comics, basically Superman, and she proceeded to tell me about a graphic novel she was reading, "Y: The Last Man."  When we returned a week or so later, she saw me reading the series she recommended and we discussed it briefly.  Tonight I let her know I'd finished the series and gave her a recommendation of my own, "Locke & Key."  All this to say I can think of plenty of restaurants where we eat and receive good, timely, polite service.  I can only think of one place where I can get awesome pizza and exchange comic book reading suggestions, and that's Little Joe's.

We decided to go out to eat tonight, and I laughed when my wife looked at me and said, "are you thinking what I'm thinking?"  So we ended up at Bearden Hill Fieldhouse for the second night in a row.  Yes, we liked it that much.  While I enjoy eating at our regular spots, having a completely new restaurant to try is something uncommon enough that I was happy to return to try out some different dishes.

We tried a different appetizer tonight, the hummus plate.  It was very good, if a bit pricey at $7.95.  Next time I'll let our server know we don't need the Kalamata olives.  This was obviously fresh-made hummus, easily as good as any I've had at any restaurant in Knoxville, with the possible exception of Holy Land Market.  The pita was great as well - slightly warm and very soft.  I don't know who decided pita served with hummus was supposed to be crispy or tough, or maybe that's just what cheap mass-produced pita tastes like.  The Fieldhouse does both hummus and pita right.  I'd say it was as good as last night's Pickles & Pepper Rings, and I'd gladly order either one depending on my mood.

We had the pizza last night, and as good as it was, neither of us was in the mood for pizza again tonight.  So my wife ordered the Chicken Tenders Basket ($9.95) and I ordered the Deep Fried Cornish Hen ($12.50).  My dish came with  a salad and side, and my wife added a house salad for $3.95 to her entree.

Here's a picture of my caesar salad.  It was very good - not overly drowned in dressing, but also not too little.  My wife's house salad was the same size and while she said it was a good salad, she also said it, "wasn't four dollars worth of salad."  I'd have to agree, although I felt like the size of my salad was fine considering it accompanied my entree and side item for twelve bucks.

My wife enjoyed her chicken tenders.  They were definitely homemade and hand-breaded, not the usual frozen store-bought crap most chain restaurants serve.  The fries passed my "just crunchy enough without being greasy" test.  I was allowed to sample one of the tenders and I thought it was very good - lightly spiced and very juicy.  My wife is a chicken tenders fan, so I see her ordering this dish again.

I struggled over my choice of entree, wondering if I should try the interesting-sounding deep fried cornish hen or the 12 oz Angus ribeye.  In the end, I let price be my guide, as I already knew I wanted to enjoy a bottle of cider with my meal, so I passed on the $23 ribeye.  I'll try it in the future, and based on everything else I've tried so far, I'm sure I'll enjoy it.  But tonight I ordered the deep friend cornish hen, and I have to say that, as far as being a whole cornish hen goes, it was pretty good.  If that sounds like faint praise, I admit I'm not a big fan of working on my food to be able to eat it.  I'm not sure what I expected from a "whole hen" but I was a little surprised to have to essentially tear it apart to eat it.  So I made a little bit of a mess, and ended up getting some very hot grease on my fingers and my shirt.  Still, setting aside my personal issue with ripping my food apart and making a mess, the chicken was awesome.  I tried the skin, and a younger version of me probably would have eaten it all, but 42-year old me pulled most of it off.  The meat was awesome, especially the breast - moist, tender, and just hot enough to steam as I pulled it off the bone.  In fact, if I'd been served just the meat on a plate, I would have walked away calling it some of the best chicken I've ever had.  As it is, I'm calling it some of the best chicken that I've ever had, but like crab and lobster, a little too much work for my tastes.  I'm a little weird about that issue, though, so if you've had cornish hens and you don't blink and pulling legs and wings off, you'll be in for a treat.

As you can see in the picture, I chose Mac & Cheese as my side item.  Yes, I could have gone for a more healthy choice like steamed broccoli or even Tabbouleh, which I love, but come one.  I was ordered a deep fried whole hen - how could I not go for macaroni and cheese.  The mac & cheese was very good.  I could take or leave the cheddar cheese on top, but I know it's common to serve it that way.  I think the macaroni and white cheese could have stood on its own, though, and I may ask for it that way next time.  I'm a mac & cheese snob, and this ranks among my favorites in Knoxville.  Just wish mac & cheese were as healthy as Tabbouleh.  Oh well.

I ordered a bottle of Woodchuck hard cider to accompany my meal.  It paired with the meal well overall, especially with the chicken.  Given that the Fieldhouse boasts 169 bottled beers, however, I'm going to have a chat with the manager next time and suggest they could do so much better than Woodchuck.  There's nothing wrong with Woodchuck, especially once you pour it into a glass and let it breathe, but I think the Fieldhouse would do better to offer something like Strongbow, or Original Sin, or (a guy can hope) Magners.  I can buy Woodchuck at Kroger - that's all I'm saying.

I'll wrap this up by saying I got a chance to do a bit of people-watching tonight, and it was … interesting.  I'd never seen anybody play video golf before, and having done so, I can't imagine doing it myself.  The highlight of my people-watching, though, was watching an older gentleman play the hunting/shooting game.  I've never paid much attention to these types of games - I'd go for Virtual Cop or Time Crisis myself.  But it was fascinating to watch this older guy play this enormous glorified light-gun game, and he certainly looked like he was having a good time.  I like to think I could have done better than him, especially on the bonus/side game that looked from where I was sitting like Duck Hunt but with pumpkins, but who knows - maybe my light-gun glory days are gone, never to return.

We had a great time at the Fieldhouse again tonight.  Service was great, food was great.  Folks behind us were a little chatty, but that's just my inner "get off my lawn" old guy starting to emerge.

We tried a brand new restaurant tonight - Bearden Hill Fieldhouse.  It's billed as a sports-themed restaurant and bar and based on the sheer number of flat panel televisions, I'd say that's an accurate description.  We arrived shortly after 5pm, were greeted with an open door, and seated immediately.  The restaurant/bar has two floors, with at least three pool tables that I saw, as well as a couple of video games - golf and some kind of shooting/hunting game.

The menu listed many items that sounded promising.  Too many, in fact, so we asked our server for recommendations for appetizers.  She recommended the fried pickles & banana pepper rings, which we ordered.  We also opted to try the garlic knots.  The pickles & peppers were outstanding and well worth the price - $6.95.  Fried pickles are a Southern staple, and if that's all this dish had been, it would have compared favorably with offerings from other area restaurants.  The fried banana peppers were different, though, and catapulted this appetizer to a whole new level.  Lightly battered, they weren't greasy at all, and they were tasty on their own, and even better with the provided sauce.  We actually ran out of the sauce and had to ask for a second container - it was that good.

The garlic knots were good, and if we'd ordered just the knots, I would have been happy with the decision.  Next to the pickles & peppers, though, the knots, even at $3.95, didn't compare well.  Still, they were good.  Neither of us cared for the tomato-based sauce, preferring just the knots with a little olive oil and parmesan cheese.  We'll skip these next time, but garlic knots are rare enough in the South as an appetizer that we felt compelled to give them a chance.

We actually had a hard time deciding what to eat for the main meal, as there were so many dishes on the menu that sounded good, especially when our server assured us that everything, including the chicken tenders, was homemade.  Everything from a fried cornish hen to bourbon-glazed salmon, to a fried artichoke sandwich all sounded great.  We asked our server and she told us she'd only had the pizza, burger, and chicken tenders so far, as they'd only opened the previous evening.  We ordered a large "Triple Crown" pizza with wheat crust, which I believe cost $17.50.

Everything about the pizza was excellent.  The wheat crust was delicious, and just a bit sweet.  The crust was so good I did something I almost never do - I ate the ends of the crust.  The toppings - pepperoni, beef, and italian sausage, were all very good.  The sausage was especially tasty, coming in large chunks as you can see below.

The food quality alone would justify a return trip to the Fieldhouse, which makes the attentive and polite service we received a nice bonus.  Our server made sure I had a new glass of Diet Coke before I finished my old glass, and every other server who pitched in to deliver food or extra lemons for my wife was friendly.  Overall a very pleasant dinner out.