So I was reading the tie-in book for Guy Fieri’s Food Network TV series Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and I told myself, “Self, you totally need to eat at some of these places.” A few months after that, in the summer of ’09, Marie and I started talking about where we’d like to go for our honeymoon and we settled on a big old road trip. As I’m recounting in my first-of-each-month honeymoon flashbacks, this trip started in Charlotte, wound its way up to Montreal and finished, ten days later, in one of our favorite towns, Knoxville, where we met up with the children after they spent two weeks’ summer vacation with their mom. There, we settled in for supper at one of three Triple-D restaurants that were featured on Fieri’s show and book which we were able to visit on our trip. Continue reading “Pizza Palace, Knoxville TN”
Category: tennessee
The French Market Crêperie, Knoxville TN
Oh, heck, I might have created a monster here.
This past Saturday, Marie and I returned to Knoxville, one of our favorite cities, for a few hours to pick up my son for the Christmas break. We’d planned to leave my daughter in the care of her aunt and cousins, go have a couple of meals and shop and have a good time, and then collect both kids after lunch. So that left us looking for a very good breakfast for the two of us after starting the day at the very early hour of five. I kind of figured that making Marie wake that early for a Knoxville-and-back road trip was going to require penance in the form of an awesome meal. Continue reading “The French Market Crêperie, Knoxville TN”
Loveless Cafe, Nashville TN
Apart from waking at three in the morning feeling pretty awful, I really enjoyed the trip that Marie and I took to Nashville a couple of weeks ago. We got to visit some friends and meet some of their buddies at a party, and see the last vestiges of fall color, and the hotel where we stayed was not at all bad. I guess one other downside was that I neglected to consider that we might have done better to check the Tennessee Titans’ schedule, and not book a hotel that was on the other side of the Adelphia or, what the heck’s it called now, LP Field, from our lunch plans. Continue reading “Loveless Cafe, Nashville TN”
Jack in the Box, Nashville TN
I have readers in other states who no doubt are raising an eyebrow to see a junky fast food place like this show up in their RSS reader. Hear me out, though. In the Atlanta area, Jack in the Box is a complete novelty, because this chain has very oddly chosen a curious path in its coast-to-coast expansion. Somehow, and I’m not sure this was an accident, they’ve hopped right over the entire I-75 corridor. Ubiquitous in California and the southwest, they expanded as far east as Murfreesboro, and then there’s not a thing until you get to the Carolinas. Our friend Samantha suggests that the nearest to us is in Anderson. They haven’t touched anyplace in Virginia or points north, nor Florida. It’s very weird. Continue reading “Jack in the Box, Nashville TN”
Pied Piper Eatery, Nashville TN
I am running a little bit behind in sharing stories from our most recent road trip; we just had so much going on and enjoyed so many small, fun meals that we developed a little backlog of entries. Anyway, the road took us to Owensboro and back, with an overnight stay in one of our favorite cities, Nashville. This town, of course, has no shortage of very, very good restaurants. Since I made some friends here more than a decade ago, I’ve had some really great meals in their company. In the summer of last year, some our friends introduced us to Pied Piper Eatery in the Inglewood neighborhood northeast of downtown. It’s the sister restaurant of the long-running, much-loved Pied Piper Creamery, and is owned by family members, though they try not to cannibalize ice cream sales at the Creamery too much by only offering one or two flavors at a time. Continue reading “Pied Piper Eatery, Nashville TN”
Petro’s Chili and Chips, Knoxville TN
As I was saying, I’ve written here before about loving the idea of regional specialties, and recipes that you just can’t find all over the country. I also love small regional chains that you can’t find at home. In this respect, Knoxville is one of my absolute favorite places to spot small-market fast food, particularly on a stretch of Kingston Pike where Papermill Road dead-ends. Continue reading “Petro’s Chili and Chips, Knoxville TN”
Nixon’s Deli, Knoxville TN
I’ve written here before about loving the idea of regional specialties, and recipes that you just can’t find all over the country. I’m starting to see that some of these, you have to look a little to find. For example, there’s Knoxville, a terrific city that I have visited better than a dozen times. Continue reading “Nixon’s Deli, Knoxville TN”
Marie, Let's Eat! 