Geek Food Critic

I heard about a new pizza place opening in Knoxville in an unusual way recently. I was contacted by someone at a PR firm saying she liked my blog and was contacting bloggers and other types of media to announce the grand opening of Blaze Pizza. She invited me to a “sneak peak” lunch event for members of the media a couple days before the grand opening, and said they would like it if I wrote a review of the restaurant. Since the location on North Peters Road is just a few minutes from my house, I would have eaten there soon enough and reviewed it anyway, so I let her know I’d be happy to do so. As it turned out, I was out of town on business the day of the sneak peak, so I wasn’t able to attend. We tried to swing by on opening day, but since that was “free pizza day” there was a line wrapped around the side of the building, and while I’m always up for a new dining experience, standing in a huge line with a toddler waiting for dinner isn’t my idea of fun, so we decided to come back the next night.

When I saw the location of Blaze, on the corner of North Peters and Kingston Pike, I felt a tiny twinge of worry for them. If you’re familiar with the area, you’ll know several restaurants have tried and failed in that location, including OCI West, some crappy Chinese buffet, and a place called Tradewinds. Given how that particular area has been built up recently, with the giant new Kroger Marketplace, as well as several other businesses between North Peters and Cedar Bluff on Kingston Pike, I’m thinking Blaze may have better luck than the previous occupants of this location. Given the ample parking and high visibility from Kingston Pike, it should be a good spot.

Blaze’s model is “Build Your Own Pizza” taken to an extreme. It’s like Subway or Moe’s does Pizza. Each pizza is of the 11 inch personal variety, and whether you select one of the signature pizzas or build your own, a few different Blaze employees along the pizza assembly line ask you if you’d like to customize it at each station. Once we supervised the construction of our pizzas, we were asked if each looked good, and when we gave our approval, it was whisked away to be quick fired in just 180 seconds in an oven that was over 500 degrees.

For our son we ordered a basic pizza with ham and sausage. He ate plenty of it and I had a slice as well, and it was quite good. The crust was thin and crisp, and light enough to not be too filling.

My wife ordered the Meat Eater. It has pepperoni, meatballs, red onions mozzarella, and red sauce. This was the undisputed favorite of the three we ordered, and I’d be happy to eat it again for lunch or dinner.

I ordered the BBQ CHKN (that’s the actual spelling on the menu), and it’s normally made up of grilled chicken, mozzarella, red onion, banana peppers, gorgonzola, with a bbq sauce dribble.  I actually like gorgonzola, but for some reason, when the Blaze employee confirmed that I wanted it, since it was a “blue cheese” - I hesitated, and asked him to substitute goat cheese. Even so, the pizza was good. It isn’t the type of pizza I normally order, but I knew I was going to get to sample the meat eater and the ham & sausage pizza, so I went outside more comfort zone. I’m glad I did, and I could see myself ordering this again if I’m in the mood for a less meat-heavy pizza.

Aside from the “artisanal” pizza as Blaze calls it, the rest of the dining experience is pretty close to what you’d expect at a quick service but still sit down restaurant like a Panera Bread. Self-service fountain drinks, and a shelf with shakers of parmesan cheese, crushed pepper flakes, and oregano. This location has plenty of tables, and a mixture of half-booths, tables and chairs, and high-topped tables with tall stools. We were asked by three different Blaze employees, with one of them clearly being the manager on duty or perhaps the franchise owner, how we liked the pizza. It was a nice level of customer service and solicitation for comments, and I hope it continues.

Blaze makes a good pizza for a good price. Each of our pizzas was $7.65, and our total, with soft drinks, milk,  and tax, came to just over $30. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a good quick meal in West Knoxville.

I’d like to close this review with a disclosure and a teeny tiny contest which, unfortunately, since I’m doing this on the spur of the moment and I’m not experienced in such things, will be limited to folks who live in Knoxville and who are willing to either email me at mike [at] geekfoodcritic.com or leave a comment on the link to this review on Facebook. Blaze sent me two free pizza passes so I could try their pizza at no cost, but they didn’t arrive until after we’d stopped by for dinner. I’m sure nobody believes I’d sell a positive review on my blog for $7.65 x 2, but just in case I’m going to give these passes away to someone else in Knoxville who reads my blog and would like to give Blaze a try. So all you have to do to enter is email me or leave a comment on Facebook saying you’d like a chance to win the passes. You can earn an extra chance by suggesting  a restaurant that I haven’t tried and reviewed yet. I’ll review the comments and emails at noon on Friday, December 5, and assign a number each, then generate a random number within the range of the entries received to select the winner. I’ll contact the winner to get a mailing address and drop the free pizza passes in the mail the next day. Good luck!

This is post 27 in the #NaBloWriMo #vDM30in30 30 Day Blog Challenge

I have other restaurants in the queue to review, but after posting a very brief write-up of breakfast at Bojangles last night, I woke up this morning thinking, “I mentioned that I would normally pick Chick-fil-A over Bojangles, so why not grab some chicken biscuits on the way to work?” So I did, and now I’m going to write about them.

I really like Chick-fil-A’s food, and I continue to be impressed by their employees' friendly attitude. I have no first-hand knowledge of their customer service training program, but it works. Something simple like having every employee respond to “thank you” with “my pleasure” makes an impression on me as a customer. I’ve been impressed on many occasions by the helpfulness of the Chick-fil-A employees, especially when we came in when our son was still using a high chair. A teenager rushing to pick up and carry a high chair to your table is something you just don’t see anywhere else - especially at a fast food restaurant.

So I skipped the interstate and drove down Kingston Pike today to hit the Chick-fil-A in Bearden. Paying and picking up my food was a little odd since I chose the left-hand drive-thru lane, which meant I had to lean over the passenger seat to interact with the employee, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it might be. I ordered a Spicy Chicken Biscuit and the regular Chicken Biscuit, along with a large Diet Coke with light ice.

I ate the Spicy Chicken Biscuit first, because I recalled how surprisingly hot it was the last time I had one. Unfortunately, the one I received today was only moderately spicy. Not sure what went wrong, as, thinking back to my days as a teenager making biscuits at KFC, I’m assuming the breading on these is a mix that’s mass-produced in a central location. I wonder if this particular spicy chicken biscuit had sat under a heat lamp for a while, as both the biscuit and the chicken were a little dry, and more than a little disappointing. That’s part of the trouble with fast food - they have to prepare in bulk in advance, and the less popular stuff doesn’t cycle through as often.

The regular Chicken Biscuit was much better. Both the biscuit and chicken were much more moist, and the biscuit was more flaky and satisfying. I would imagine Chick-fil-A sells a multiple of regular to spicy, so chances are my regular biscuit was much more recently prepared than the spicy. Where the spicy biscuit was disappointing, the regular one was a solid example of why I almost never refuse to eat at Chick-fil-A if someone else suggests it. If I had it to do over again, I’d definitely go with two of regular chicken biscuits. Actually, having entered both of these into MyFitnessPal on my iPhone today,  wouldn’t order two, as they’re 440 calories each, and one was plenty.

The fact that Chick-fil-A posts the calorie count for each item on the menu, not in some card you have to ask for, but right there in bold bright colors on the menu, is something I really like. I can’t speak to the healthiness of Chick-Fil-A’s food in general, but they make it impossible to order an outrageously huge meal without knowing what you’re getting calorie-wise.

I don’t eat at fast food places very often, certainly not on a weekly basis although probably more often than monthly, but when I do, I’m happy to do so at Chick-Fil-A - especially for lunch or dinner, when I get their awesome chicken nuggets (400 calories) that are so good, I don’t even need the honey mustard sauce (40 calories).

This is post 26 in the #NaBloWriMo #vDM30in30 30 Day Blog Challenge

We got moving early enough Sunday morning that we had time to stop for breakfast on the way to church instead of grabbing a granola bar on the way out of our house. We gave our son a choice - waffles at Waffle House, or chicken & biscuits at Bojangles. He picked Bojangles. I’m not a huge fan of fast food, and frankly I’d choose Chick-Fil-A over Bojangles any day of the week … except I don’t have that choice on Sunday.

For our son, we ordered an Egg & Cheese Biscuit combo with “Bo Rounds” and milk to drink. He ate almost all of the biscuit and most of the potato cakes.

My wife ordered the Cajun Filet Biscuit combo with Bo Rounds. Bojangles biscuits are decent. Not great, but not bad either. The cajun-seasoned chicken filet is tasty. The Bo Rounds are good, although they’re a bit too thick in my opinion.

I ordered a Cajun Filet Biscuit and a Gravy Biscuit. I had high hopes for the biscuits and gravy, but those hopes were mostly dashed. The biscuit was decent, but the gravy was bland.

So the food was bland to decent, but some of it was tasty. I don’t make a habit of eating fast food, but it worked out mostly OK that morning. Our son enjoyed getting to pick the place and we got an extra breakfast out during the weekend. I can’t say we’ll be returning to Bojangles anytime soon, but if we’re in the mood for chicken and biscuits again, we’ll give Bojangles another try.

This is post 25 in the #NaBloWriMo #vDM30in30 30 Day Blog Challenge

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