Geek Food Critic

It’s funny what becoming a parent has done to our eating out habits. My wife and I have always eaten out, probably too much by the standards of many. That changed drastically right after our son was born, mainly because we were too tired to try to go out to eat and it was easier to just bring something home or fix something quick at home. But once our son was a few months old and had proven himself to be a mostly happy little boy, we settled back into our habit of eating out more often than not. Just not at all of the same places, as for quite a while we were pretty self-conscious about the rare but inevitable crying. Having been the couple without kids for so long who looked askance at whining children in a restaurant and wished they were elsewhere, I especially did not want to receive those looks. As the veteran parent of a toddler now, I mostly don’t care about those looks.

Our eating out habits have changed, though, and I find that we eat at many places I would have ignored years ago, for reasons I wouldn’t have understood or cared about then. We like places where kids eat free or at a reduced price, and especially places with kids menus that include foods we know for sure our son will eat.

One such place is Steak ’n Shake. We normally eat there on Sundays after church because kids eat free on Sundays (more about that later) and because it is somewhat on the way home from church. Steak n Shake presents itself as a 50’s style diner and its main dish is the “steak burger” with extremely thin crispy french fries. They also serve a large variety of milkshakes. While they aren’t my favorite milkshakes, their peanut butter banana milkshake is pretty good.

The steakburger patties are fairly small, so instead of the original double, I usually go for the triple with pepper jack cheese. Is it the best hamburger in town? No way. But it’s isn’t bad, and it’s cheap and typically served with a smile. My son usually gets a hot dog (no bun) and a side of mac & cheese. They used to have a side of mandarin oranges and he loved them, but they stopped carrying them.

The service at Steak n Shake is pretty good. Some of the servers are better than others, but none are what I’d call bad. In fact, the only thing I could say I’m dissatisfied with at Steak n Shake is the fact that, even though they promote Sunday as a day kids eat free, for the last year, every time we get our check, there’s a charge for my son’s meal. When I take it to the register to pay, I point it out and they take it off, citing a possible computer glitch. I make sure we get the deal, but I can’t help but wonder how many people don’t check their receipts.

Steak n Shake is a fairly regular stop for us and as will be for at least as long as our son can eat there for free, and probably after.

Barbeque.

That’s not a typo or mistake. I typed “barbeque” up there and left it on a line all by itself because it’s that important, that special to me.

Barbeque. At its most basic level, it’s about eating slow-cooked and smoked meat. No other food makes me feel more alive, more hungry, then more sated, and along the way more primitive, than barbeque. If I ever lost my mind and decided to move back to the surface of the Sun that is Texas, it would be for want of the barbeque I enjoyed while I was stationed there.

Sweet P’s Barbeque and Soul House is where I go for good barbeque in Knoxville. There are other places to get barbeque, and they’re all moderately tolerable, but compared to Sweet P’s, well… that’s why we drive out of our way to eat there. Sweet P’s is crazy popular, and if you’re going on the weekend, it’s best to plan on being there no later than 5PM unless you just enjoy standing in line and eating at the picnic tables outside. I hate lines and prefer air conditioning, so we arrive early.

Tonight we finally figured out the perfect combination of food to order for the three of us - my wife, our son, and myself. We ordered a pound of brisket, a pint of mac & cheese, and individual sides of cole slaw and potato salad. Rather than the random collections of this or that we normally order (with me always ordering brisket), my wife and son finally realized that simple brisket is the best of all of the good meats available at Sweet P’s.

Here’s a picture of a pound of Sweet P’s brisket.

And here’s a picture of the meal I put together tonight. Brisket, mac & cheese, slaw. The only thing that could have made this meal better was some Magners on draft over ice.

Aside from the amazing barbeque, Sweet P’s is a pretty basic place. The service at Sweet P’s is simple and friendly. You order your food cafeteria style, pay, get your own drinks, then sit down and eat. Sweet P’s name contains “and Soul House” but we never managed to catch the live music before our son was born and likely will not get the chance until he is a bit older. I heard a buddy of mine from Nashville came up this way not too long ago, possibly to play, so I hope we can find a way to catch the show there sooner rather than later.

I can’t recommend Sweet P’s highly enough. If you live in East Tennessee or are even just passing through, and you like good barbeque, pay them a visit.

Thursday is $5 Cheeseburger Special day at Blackhorse, so my coworker and I had lunch there today. Friday is Bacon Cheeseburger Soup day, so my family will be having dinner there yet again. I’m a creature of habits and patterns.

Blackhorse is one of my new favorite restaurants. I like it for lunch, I like it for dinner, and until just last week, I loved it for its high gravity hard cider (10.5%) even though, due to Tennessee’s insane liquor laws, Blackhorse could not sell to me in a growler to take home and enjoy. Unfortunately, last week they ran out of the cider and aren’t I don’t know when or if it’s coming back. Until then, I’ll have to be content with the food.

So what’s good at Blackhorse? Plenty. It’s burgers are great, although at $9–10 each, a tad pricey, which is why I prefer to grab one on Thursday for lunch. The Diablo is my favorite, because both the jalapeno and red onion relish and the peppercorn bacon pack a serious kick. The Cletus is great as well, with the combination of fried green tomatos and pimento cheese being quite tasty.

The Bacon Cheeseburger soup is amazing, and sometimes I just order a bowl of it with a side of mac & cheese (also great) or onion rings (great). Their pizzas are very good, especially the Heart Attack. They do a lunch special on either Tuesday or Wednesday with a personal sized pizza and salad for $8. On the appetizer front, the Beer Cheese Dip is very good, as are the Soft Pretzels.

Is there anything at Blackhorse I don’t like? Yes. The Chicken Nachos are terrible - we ordered them once and I’d say they had about 1/3 the amount of cheese they needed for the number of chips, and were otherwise boring. I ordered the Cajun Pasta and it was bland. Bland Cajun food is like unsweet tea - what’s the point?

One more thing I don’t like at Blackhorse - not getting a female server. The female servers, every single one that we’ve had, for lunch or dinner, has been great. And it isn’t just because I bring my adorable 2 year-old with me for dinner - they’re awesome at lunch as well. The male servers aren’t bad per se, they’re just nowhere near as good as the ladies - not even close. No offense, dudes, but simple things like keeping my drink refilled and remembering we asked for an extra spoon for the cute kid sitting next to my wife - those things matter, and they affect your tip.

But I can deal with a few of the dishes not being to my liking. And I’m not shy about asking to be seated in a section handled by one of the female servers. Other than that, I love Blackhorse Pub & Brewery,

One other purely personal note about Blackhorse. We’re a geek family, and one of the things we do on the weekend is dress in matching or complimentary superhero t-shirts. One Saturday after an afternoon at the Zoo, we walked into Blackhorse as the Green Lantern family. The hostess took one look at us and said, “You guys are the most awesome family I’ve ever seen.” Just another reason I keep going back.

I like Mexican food. I like it so much, I’m willing to settle for the mediocre Mexican food I can find in Knoxville. That’s what I did tonight - settle. Although I was also mildly surprised by a random special item on a whiteboard menu at El Mezcal Mexican Restaurant.

When I say the food at El Mezcal is mediocre, I don’t mean it’s bad, because it isn’t. The food at Taco Bell is bad. The food at Shoney’s is bad. The food at El Mezcal isn’t great, but it isn’t terrible and it’s reasonably inexpensive. We eat there when we have a hankering for Mexican food and don’t feel like dealing with the crowd and noise at Chuy’s (where the food is only slightly less mediocre, and more expensive). We decided to eat there tonight mainly because our regular Wednesday spot, a delightful taco shop named Oscar’s, wasn’t an option due to heavy traffic on the Strip and a lack of parking.

El Mezcal is like every other $10 or less per plate Mexican restaurant you may have tried. Chips and salsa, bean dip, fajitas with overdone tomatoes, oversize margaritas for the college kids, and thankfully, friendly staff. They’re especially friendly to us - a benefit of having a cute toddler at the table.

Tonight my wife ordered her usual - chicken fajitas to split with The Boy. I noticed the special of the day was Nachos Supremos, so I figured why not try something other than my usual - chicken chimichanga. I wish I hadn’t, as the nachos were a scattered mess of ground beef, which El Mezcal does not do well, shredded chicken, and a half pound of shredded lettuce over some chips, beans, cheese, and sour cream. I picked at my dish and left most of it uneaten, but I didn’t go hungry as my wife shared some of her fajitas with me.

I also ordered an unsual item I’d seen listed on the specials whiteboard - taco calimari. To be honest, I didn’t expect to get the best calimari in the world at a cheap Mexican restaurant in a land-locked state, but ordering it was worth it just to hear the “eww” from my wife. She and I have a 20 year old running joke about calimari, so I figured what the Hell. To my surprise, the calamari taco was pretty OK. Not great, but better than mediocre. It was fried, of course, and covered in enough pico de gallo to render the taste mostly moot, but the texture wasn’t super rubbery like most bad calamari. So I’d consider the meal a draw for me, and maybe more than that because our server was very attentive and kept new glasses of Diet Coke appearing whenever I came close to finishing mine.

I can’t give El Mezcal a strong endorsement, but you can do a lot worse for inexpensive Mexican in Knoxville.

One of my favorite lunch spots in Knoxville is Long’s Drug Store in Bearden. It’s close enough to campus for a quick lunch, and inexpensive enough that I don’t feel bad about ditching whatever I may have brought to the office that day when I get a hankering for a burger and tater tots.

Long’s has been around for quite a while, having opened in 1956. It’s a combination pharmacy, convenience store, and lunch counter. Long’s reminds me of a drug store I used to visit after school when I was in the seventh grade, and if it had a comic book rack, the similarity would be perfect. It’s extremely popular, so whether I’m eating there with my wife or a coworker, to avoid the rush and an inevitable wait, I shoot for an early lunch - arriving no later than 11:30.

While I typically order a bacon double cheeseburger, Long’s also makes a mean bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on toast. Either go well with tater tots. I believe they serve onion rings and maybe fries as well, but I don’t know why I would order either with expertly done tater tots available. If flavored sodas are your thing, you can get a fresh-made cherry Coke as well. Service is friendly if a bit slow at times, especially once the lunch crowd arrives in full.

The real star of the show at Long’s, however, and the reason we sometimes stop by after dinner at night, are the hand-dipped milkshakes. I’m sure they serve several flavors, but we always order the chocolate peanut butter. These are hands down the best milkshakes in Knoxville and some of the best I’ve ever had. Milk, chocholate ice cream, and peanut butter, mixed to a thick, creamy perfection. You know it’s a good milkshake when you can drink it through a straw, but only with a decent bit of work, or eat it with a spoon.

Give Long’s a shot for the decent cheeseburgers and tots, and come back for the milkshakes.

I don’t like to write negative reviews of restaurants - but I’m trying to write a post per day and we tried a new (to Knoxville) place last night and it was a mostly negative experience, so I’m going to be open about it.

Carolina Ale House recently opened a new location here in Knoxville. It’s fairly close to our house, so after a typically crummy Monday, we decided to give it a try after calling and finding out they were not running a wait at 5:30 after picking up our son from daycare. That a brand new restaurant in Knoxville wasn’t running a wait within a week or two of opening during dinnertime is unusual, and maybe should have tipped us off. Although to be fair, CAH (they fondly use this abbreviation on their menus) was packed when we arrived - but there were still quite a few open tables.

Upon seeing the menus, we realized we would have been better off coming on a Tuesday instead of a Monday, as Tuesday night is “kids eat for 99 cents” night. Lesson one learned. Still, we ordered our toddler the mac & cheese meal with fruit as a side, with chocolate milk. He approved of the chocolate milk, some of the fruit, and didn’t care for the mac & cheese. He loves mac & cheese, so I tried it and didn’t blame him for not liking it - the penne pasta was fine, but the cheese itself was bland and more of a cheese soup than cheese sauce.

My wife ordered a Diet Coke and I scanned the menu for cider. While CAH’s beer selection seemed impressive, or at least large, they only had three ciders on the menu - two Woodchuck variants in bottles and Angry Orchard on tap. Standard restaurant fare and a little disappointing for a place calling itself an ale house. Crispin, Original Sin, or especially Magners would have made me happier. To her credit, our server performed a convincing up-sell, noting for just a dollar fifty more, I could have a 22oz mug instead of the regular mug. I said sure. The 22oz overly sweet Angry Orchard was the highlight of the meal for me.

We began with an appetizer - the CAH Onion Strings. These weren’t bad, although they were served with an enormous side of ranch - 3 oz or more, and most of it went to waste. I wouldn’t order this again as it was what I think of as onion straws - mostly too thin to be satisfying, and by the time we got to the bottom of the bowl, too damp and greasy.

Rather than order two entrees, my wife and I decided to share the fish and chips and the appetizer sampler called the Picky Platter Combo. The PPC was composed of jumbo chicken wings, chicken tenders, Frickles (fried pickles), and mozzarella sticks. A brief comment about each member of the PPC:

<li>Jumbo Chicken Wings: Terrible.  Mostly dry wings dumped into a few ounces of sauce at one side of the platter, which of course spread onto the other food.  Frickles plus chicken wing sauce = suck.</li>
<li>Chicken Tenders: Not bad. If I'd gotten a plate full of these as an entree I wouldn't have hated them, but nor would I have ordered them again.</li>
<li>Frickles: Terrible.  My wife and I love fried pickles, but these were just off.  Having several of them soaked in wing sauce didn't help.</li>
<li>Mozzarrella sticks: Meh.  Standard mass-produced frozen mozzarella.  Boring and something I'd never order by itself unless they were hand dipped and fried.</li>

So the PPC was a serious let down.

The fish and chips were decent. 3 somewhat small pieces of fish, especially for the price. We went with fries and slaw as the sides and the fries were pretty good. The slaw was bad - too vinegary.

We hoped to salvage what was a poor meal by ordering dessert, with my wife letting me know she’d already decided what she’d want earlier - the Mud Pie. I read the description of the desserts and decided to go with it as well, mainly because I figured the Turtle Caramel Cheesecake would be as bad as every other cheesecake from a box. Since what I’m about to say about this dish will reference the description, let me quote it here.

CAH Mud Pie Hold on to your napkins!! It's a rich dark fudge brownie topped with vanilla ice cream & drizzled with caramel sauce & chocolate syrup. $5.49

Brownie, vanilla ice cream, drizzled with caramel sauce and chocolate syrup. Hard to screw that up, right? And indeed it would have been, if that’s what we’d been served. The brownie was OK. Ice cream is ice cream. Caramel and chocolate sauce - check. But both of our desserts were drowned in what someone must have thought was a decorative amount of cinnamon. And not just a sprinkling of cinnamon. A LOT of cinnamon. So much that one bite of the mud pie was so overwhelming it caused me to catch my breath and have trouble breathing.

We should have sent it back, but by that point we had a toddler who was losing his patience and we knew we had just a few minutes of peace left, so we asked for the check and left.

We eat at new restaurants quite often, and sometimes it is hard to get everything right during the first few weeks - we get that. We’ve often given a new place a second chance after six months or a year if it survives, and sometimes we’re pleasantly surprised. We hope to be surprised by the Carolina Ale House in Knoxville in the Spring of 2015. But I can’t recommend it for now.

It’s been way too long since my last post, and I think one reason for the gap is that, while I always have ideas for posts here at GFC, I never have (or make) the time to do what I really like to do - write a long, detailed review.  So I’m trying something different.  Here’s a quick review of a delightful new (to me) place to which I was introduced by a coworker this week.

I tried the Buttermilk Sky Pie Shop in Bearden this week.  In fact, after being taken there by a coworker during lunch, I returned with my wife and son after dinner that evening.  It was that good.

They sell pies, both 4” individual and 9” full-sized versions.  They also sell biscuits, although I didn’t sample any.  I may swing by on the way to the office one morning to pick up a batch of biscuits for breakfast for the office at some point, based on the quality of the pies alone.

The pies seem a tad pricey, but only a tad, and I didn’t mind at all given how good they were.  In fact, one peevish reviewer on Urbanspoon commented on the price being way too high and I think that’s nuts.  Do they cost more than buying something from the grocery store? Probably.  But they’re no more expensive than dessert at a decent restaurant, and less expensive than many.  4” pies are $4.25 each, 4 for $16, or a dozen for $42.  9” pies are $26.

At lunch, I had the Key Lime and my coworker had the Peanut Butter & Chocolate.  The Key Lime was delicious and likely what I’ll get from now on as it is my favorite kind of pie.  When I returned that evening with my family, we all had Peanut Butter & Chocolate.  It was very good, if not quite as awesome to my taste buds as the Key Lime.  Pics below.

If you’re looking for a delightful fresh-made dessert, I don’t think you can go wrong with Buttermilk Sky Pie Shop.

 Well, it's settled.  My wife and I have a new favorite restaurant in Knoxville, and we're already eating there often enough that the servers recognize us and our baby boy.  Sergeant Pepperoni's is located in the same shopping center as Long's Drugstore on Kingston Pike and, lucky for me, close enough to work for lunch, and close enough to being on the way home that is has become our go-to place for a quick, inexpensive dinner.  You can check out the restaurant's website to see a copy of the menu, as well as the address and directions.

My wife tried Sergeant Pepperoni's for the first time when I was out of town for work.  She texted me a picture of her pizza that night and told me she really wanted me to try it, so when I flew home a couple days later we stopped there for dinner on the way home.  That first night was awesome enough that I knew we'd be coming back often.  S.P. serves a thin crust pizza, and with all due respect to my former favorite pizza place, Little Joe's, Sergeant Pepperoni's pizza is the best in Knoxville.  The crust is excellent, the ingredients are fresh, and the combination is delicious.  I believe we ordered a custom pizza that first night - pepperoni, sausage, green pepper, and onion.  It was great.  When we'd finished out pizza, our server asked if we'd like to try dessert and mentioned they had bread pudding.  I'm a bit of a bread pudding snob, so I said, "Well, is it home-made?  If it is, I'll try it, but if you just buy it from someplace else, I'll pass."  Turns out it was homemade, and it was some of the best bread pudding I've ever had, even if they did smother it in whipped cream for some odd reason.  Rachael ordered the Apple Crisp pictured here and really liked it as well.

We returned to Sergeant Pepperoni's a few nights later and tried the Pop-Eye Pizza, which has garlic, spinach, tomatoes, pepperoni, and bacon.  My taste buds sang a happy song that night.  The pizza was off-the-charts good, both the combination of ingredients and each of them individually.  This was real bacon, not the bacon bits or tiny bacon pieces most places serve, but large chunks of freshly prepared bacon - more like what you'd expect to see on a good sandwich or sitting next to some eggs than on a pizza.  The only reason I was willing to try a different pizza the next time we visited was because it was the Meaty and it had bacon on it as well.  After the pizza we each got a bowl of Cherry Crisp.  My wife said she preferred the Apple Crisp and I preferred the Bread Pudding, but if I'd ordered the Cherry Crisp anywhere else I would have been quite happy.  Here are pictures of the Pop-Eye Pizza and Cherry Crisp.

We swung by Sergeant Pepperoni's tonight and decided to try something different, so we asked our server if the sandwiches were as good as the pizza and he said yes.  He recommended we order the World's Fare (basically a turkey & ham club, with bacon (same awesome bacon), cucumbers (crisp), tomatoes, both Swiss and American cheese, with garlic mayo) and the Pretzeled BLT (pretzeled bread, bacon, tomatoes, and lettuce) and split them, so we did.  I'm so glad we ordered those sandwiches, because now I know I can inject Sergeant Pepperoni's into my work Friday lunch group's rotation.  Both sandwiches were great, and I'd happily order either of them again.  They were also the first and second best $6.00 sandwiches I've ever had - definitely a good value for the money.  We both preferred the BLT, and I'll be having it for lunch soon.  They were out of ice cream today, so we ordered four of their Cinnamon Rolls.  They were quite good, and seemed like a real deal at 50 cents each.

Sergeant Pepperoni's is new to us, and I believe it may still be within its first year here in Knoxville.  If you like pizza, sandwiches, or home-made desserts, you owe it to yourself to give this place a try.  I know you'll love the food, and you'll find the staff friendly and happy to be around as well.

Here are pictures of our sandwiches, the cinnamon rolls, as well as the bread pudding without the whipped cream.

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.