Road Tips

Blackhorse Pub & Brewery - Knoxville, TN

We had come out of the North Carolina side of the Great Smoky Mountains on our vacation there last year and were headed to Nashville, TN for a couple of days.  We got near Knoxville around lunch time and decided we'd stop for a bite to eat.  The only problem is that we really didn't know where to go to.  My wife suggested that we look up to see if there were any brewpubs in the city.  A quick search showed that there was a place called the Blackhorse Pub & Brewery on the west side of Knoxville.  We put the address into the GPS and within no time we pulled up to the Blackhorse Pub.  

The history of the Blackhorse Pub dates back to the early 90's when Army veteran Jeff Robinson and his wife, Sherri, opened a small brewpub called Franklin St. Pub in Clarksville, TN not far from where he was stationed as a helicopter pilot at Fort Campbell.  In 1995, the space next door opened up and they knocked down the wall and reopened as the Blackhorse Pub and Brewery.  

Sherry Robinson had grown up in Knoxville and the couple had met at the University of Tennessee before Jeff went into the Army.  They saw a need for a brew pub in Knoxville and they opened up a second location in the Western Plaza shopping complex in 1998.  

Exactly 17 years ago today, a freak January tornado hit Clarksville with winds of over 200 miles an hour.  It tore the roof off the Blackhorse Pub and effectively shut down that business.  Because most of their attention was focused on getting the original location reopened after the storm, the Robinson's could not concentrate on the Knoxville location like they wanted.  When their lease came up 4 years after they opened, they decided to relinquish the spot to another restaurant that wanted to move in.  

The corner spot that housed the Knoxville location for Blackhorse Pub then became sort of a bad luck charm for restaurants.  Since the Robinson's left in 2002, no less than four restaurants came and went in the location.  The Robinson's always regretted leaving Knoxville and when the Sequoyah Grill closed in 2012, a friend of Jeff Robinson sent him the newspaper article on the closing and include a note that said that he could "fix his mistake" that they made by leaving Knoxville 10 years prior.  

The biggest worry the Robinson's had was that people would come back into the original location, take a look around and say that it was the "same old brewpub".  To counter that mentality, the Robinson's gutted the place and came up with a completely new floor plan.  They also built a functioning grain bin in front of the place as sort of their beacon to people trying to find the place.  Because of larger tank capacities in Knoxville, they decided to focus more of the brewing there, hoping to become a regional brewery.  (They began to offer their beers in bottles in 2014.  And they continue to brew beer in Clarksville.)  

The second incarnation of the Blackhorse Pub and Brewery in Knoxville was a huge success.  In fact, they may have already outgrown the spot as they have been making noise that they need more room for their brewing operation.  The company that owns the shopping center the Blackhorse Pub is located in doesn't really want them to expand with more fermenting tanks on the spot.   While they won't confirm that they're looking for a new spot that will allow them expand their beer production in Knoxville, word is that the Robinson's are truly looking for options.  

The Blackhorse Pub and Brewery is located on Kingston Pike in west Knoxville.  (see map)  As I said, it's part of the Western Plaza shopping center and you can't really see it in the street.  We knew we were in the area and pulled into the shopping center's parking lot and just drove around for a bit.  Back in the NE corner of the complex, we saw the large silver grain silo with the Blackhorse Pub logo on it.  

Walking in to the place, we found a very nice bar area.  It had a lower ceiling with a copper color to it, a nice back bar area and Edison lights hung from the front of the bar ceiling over the bar, itself.  It was a nice place to belly up to.  

The brew pub had a nice outdoor seating area with wire table and chairs, a couple of step-up decks with small trees providing a bit of shade in the area.  It had been raining off and on during our trip into Knoxville and it was too damp to open up the patio for lunch.  

We took a seat at a table next to a wall of windows that looked out into the patio.  We were given menus by the hostess and our server, Erin, stopped by shortly after that to check in with us.  I got one of their pale ale's they brew on site, while Cindy got the White India Pale Ale.  We exchanged drinks when we got the beers and we both agreed that the White IPA was the better of the two.  When it was time to get a second beer, I signed up for one of those.  

The menu at Blackhorse Pub was similar to what one would find at other brew pubs.  They had sandwiches and salads, shareable appetizer plates, flatbread and specialty pizzas.  They had a handful of burgers on the menu, and the special that day for lunch was the classic burger basket with fries for $6.00.  

I was looking at either getting a reuben sandwich or the prime rib sandwich until I looked over on the other side of the menu and saw that they had fish tacos.  It featured three tacos filled with grilled mahi mahi, topped with a cabbage and tomato slaw, and finished with a Cajun tartar sauce.  I had to have those.  To my surprise it came with a black been and sweet corn mixture with rice.  I would much rather have black beans than refried beans any day of the week.  

Cindy went with the burger special, but she didn't want the fries to go with them.  Erin told her that she could pick any of the other sides - such as sweet potato fries, onion rings, broccoli with almonds - for a $2.00 upcharge.  Cindy got the mac & cheese.  That turned out to be an excellent choice.  

Cindy's burger was cooked a perfect medium with a hint of pink in the middle.  It was topped with a slice of American cheese, and came with tomato slices and leaves of lettuce. The bun was light and spongy.  She said it was a great burger.  I was sort of jealous that she got the burger. 

But it turned out that the fish tacos were very good on their own.  The grilled mahi was not fishy smelling at all, the cabbage slaw was fresh and crispy, and the taco shells were sort of crispy, yet pliable.  I added some of the black beans, corn and rice to the tacos and ate them like that.  As good as Cindy's burger looked, I couldn't complain about the fish tacos in the least.  

The mac & cheese, however, was the winner on her plate.  It looked like it had three different types of cheese mixed in with the macaroni noodles.  She gave me a bit and I have to say the mac & cheese was simply outstanding.   The mac & cheese would have been a great lunch just by itself.

We're glad we found the Blackhorse Pub in Knoxville.  Actually, it was sort of tough to find if you've never been there before, but once we did go in to the place we were more than happy with our meals, the quality of the beer and the level of service we received.  It would have been nice to sit outside on the patio, but the damp day sort of put a kibosh on that.  Still, the ambiance of the place was comfortable.  Good beer, good food, good service - we were more than happy with our visit to the Blackhorse Pub.   

Uptown Pho - Chicago

During our Asian cultural and culinary tour in Chicago last fall, our guide, Judith Dunbar Hines from Walk Chicago Tours took us to an authentic Vietnamese restaurant.  (Click here to read about the tour.)  Now, my wife and I had never had Vietnamese food before and one of the reasons we wanted to take the tour with her was to learn more about Southeast Asian cuisine.  With a number of Vietnamese restaurants up and down Argyle Street, she picked Uptown Pho for our first foray into Vietnamese food, primarily because it's so well known for their diverse menu.  

Uptown Pho is located at 1010 W. Argyle, near Lake Michigan and between Foster Ave. and Lawrence Ave. (see map)  There was a lot of construction going on up and down Argyle when we were there and the only way into the restaurant was a makeshift gangplank to get into the building.

Uptown Pho is not very big, but it had sort of an elegant and cozy feeling to the place.  There was a small bar in the back corner and a number of four-seater tables throughout the place.  Even though there were five of us for lunch, we took a large eight-seater in the middle of the restaurant, mainly because we were going to be sharing food family-style.  

The first thing we learned was the correct pronunciation of "pho".  The Vietnamese pronunciation is "fuh", but it's been sort of Americanized to the phonetic "foe", which is also acceptable in some Vietnamese circles.  Even our friends Jay and Pam, who went on the tour with us and are very much familiar with Southeast Asian cuisine, pronounced it "foe".  

We were at the mercy of Judith to order for us.  She sets up the menu in advance with the restaurant depending upon how many people she has on the tour.  We ordered up drinks and I really didn't know what to get.  Someone ordered some bubble tea that was available in different flavors, another ordered some Da Chanh - fresh squeezed lemonade.  I almost went with that until Cindy saw that they had a drink called Ca Phe Sua Da - a Vietnamese iced-espresso served with condensed milk.  I got one of those.  I'm telling you, it was so packed with caffeine and sugar that I was crawling out of my skin up to an hour after I had the last drink.  

They began to bring out food once we sat down.  The first thing they sat down on the table was a Banh Mi Thit Nuong - basically a Vietnamese sandwich with a seasoned grilled pork and fresh greens on a baguette.  Judith held up a cut of the sandwich for me to take a cross-section picture of it.   The bread was fresh with a crunchy outer shell, but moist and chewy inside.  The seasoned pork had a bit of spiciness to it and was great on the bread.  

Because Vietnam was under French rule until 1954, many Vietnamese foods have a decidedly French influence.  That's why they have baguette breads and something else that was rather interesting - something called Banh Xeo, or Vietnamese crepes.  

They're basically made from rice flour and water with turmeric powder, sizzling and popping when the batter is poured onto a hot griddle.  The term Banh Xeo literally means "sizzling cake" in Vietnamese.  The Banh Xeo is then stuffed with pork or shrimp along with diced green onions and bean sprouts.  We had the shrimp Banh Xeo and it was very good.  Even Jay, who thought he'd had a firm grasp on many Vietnamese foods, was not familiar with Banh Xeo and he thought it was killer.  He added Hoisin and Sriracha sauce to the Banh Xeo to give it more of a flavorful boost, not that it really needed it in the first place.  

Another item that was on the table was the Lotus Stem Salad or Goi Ngo Sen.  Judith had shown us lotus stems at the Thai grocery store we had gone to earlier in the day and told us to remember that because we'd be having some later in the day.   It's made with daikon - which is basically a long white radish-type root vegetable - and pickled carrots.  Shrimp and/or pork is added to the salad.  We just had shrimp in the salad.  

Once we got those items out of the way, our server brought us out a huge bowl of pho.  This was Pho Tai Bo Vien - rice noodles with meatballs and sliced eye round steak.  Now, this is what I've been wanting to try, but didn't know anything about it, let alone how to order it.  

The pho featured a light broth filled with chopped onions and fresh herbs.  The eye round steak was tender and flavorful, but the winner of the dish were the excellent meat balls in the pho.  

Jay was very familiar with pho and he showed me that by putting a couple drops of Sriracha and some hoisin sauce in with the pho really gave it a wonderful overall flavor.  By the end of the day, I was wondering why on earth I'd never even thought about putting hoisin sauce on ANY type of Asian food.  Hell, I seriously considered getting some to try on just regular ol' steak that I cook on the grill.  

We weren't quite done at Uptown Pho, although I was pretty stuffed.  Judith whipped out a box full of Asian pastries that she had bought down the street at the Chiu Quon Bakery just before we went to Uptown Pho.  I tried a bite of a couple of things, but I was so full from what we had just eaten that I wasn't really able to enjoy anything that she brought in.  We've been on two cultural and culinary tours with Judith (we're going to do another one focusing on Indian foods next spring) and the one thing that you won't do on one of her tours is go away hungry.  She's acknowledged to us since then that maybe she feeds people too much food.  No, Jude!  Make your people walk away so stuffed that they'll remember the whole experience!  

For our first experience at a Vietnamese restaurant, I don't think we could have gone wrong with the food and experience at Uptown Pho.  We've since been to a couple Vietnamese restaurant fully knowing what to order and feeling confident as to what we like.  From the crepes to the banh mi sandwich and ending up with the steak and meatball pho, the food at Uptown Pho was a great education for a couple of Vietnamese food novices.  Thankfully we had a guide to help us through the maze of foods that were completely unknown to us.  But I'm sure the staff at Uptown Pho would help you navigate your way through their diverse menu if you stop in.  

Greenbrier Restaurant - Gatlinburg, TN

While on our vacation last fall in the Great Smoky Mountains (click here to see the entry on that visit), we stayed in Gatlinburg, TN.  While we didn't care much for Gatlinburg, we did happen to find a couple places that served us some pretty good meals.  One of them was a little out-of-the-way supper club by the name of the Greenbrier Restaurant.  I call it a supper club mainly because it was similar to supper clubs that you'd find in the Upper Midwest.  We decided to give the Greenbrier a try the last night we were in Gatlinburg.  

In the late 1930's, a lady by the name of Blanche Moffet built and opened the little cabin lodge and named it the Greenbrier Lodge.  Ms. Moffet catered to hunters, vacationers and other travelers, but also did a good business as a boarding house for people working in the area.  The present day lounge area was once two rooms where married couples slept.  (When you see a picture of the lounge area later in this post, you'll wonder how there could have been two rooms in there at one point.)  Upstairs where Ms. Moffet slept and it was also the sleeping quarters for single women who stayed at the Greenbrier.  Single men slept in bunk beds on the downstairs level.  

Ms. Moffet fed her guests breakfast in the morning and then they either went off to work, off to hunt, or would lounge around the lodge on a sun deck overlooking the wooded area around the lodge.  Later on, Blanche Moffet built the first concrete in-ground pool in Gatlinburg for her guests.  

One of the more frequent guests at the Greenbrier were the young actors and actresses who went to the University of Tennessee in nearby Knoxville.  In the mid-50's until the mid-70's, many of these actors and actresses stayed at the Greenbrier Lodge while performing at the Hunter Hills Theater in Gatlinburg.  The amphitheater was one of the first in the Southeast and hosted plays, musicals and ballets during the summer months.  

In 1980, Blanche Moffet sold the Greenbrier to Dean and Barbara Hadden.  With the help of their six children, the Hadden's turned the property into a restaurant and the family ran it for over 21 years before leasing it out just before Dean Hadden passed away in 1991.  The people who leased the restaurant only ran it for a few months before closing the place down.  In 1993, Barbara Hadden - with the help of her son, David, and his wife, Becky - reopened the restaurant.  David and Becky continue to run the Greenbrier Restaurant today with the help of their son, Jordan.  

For fans of the paranormal, it's said that the Greenbrier is haunted.  There have been reports that over the years workers at the Greenbrier have seen the ghost of a lady by the name of Lydia who was spurned at the alter by her fiancee.  She had supposedly stayed at the Greenbrier the night before the wedding, got dressed into her wedding gown the next day and went into town to get married.  After waiting for her husband-to-be at the church for a number of hours, she went back to the Greenbrier.  Consumed with anger and anguish, she went to a second floor landing, tossed a rope up over the rafters and hung herself.  She was buried in an unmarked grave not far from the lodge.

Local lore has it that the man who left her at the alter was killed days later in the mountains surrounding the area by a mountain lion.  But it was a caretaker at the lodge who was said to be rustled from his sleep at night in the weeks after Lydia's death with a mournful cry of a woman repeating, "Mark my grave.  Mark my grave...", over and over.  After a number of nights of this, the caretaker finally went down to where the body was supposedly buried and placed a makeshift gravestone.  The mournful cries at night went away after that.  But workers at the Greenbrier Lodge and subsequently at the Greenbrier Restaurant have reported seeing an apparition of a young woman from time to time.  The interesting thing about all this is that the Greenbrier seems to embrace the legend that it's haunted and even hands out pamphlets regarding the ghost of Lydia.  

The Greenbrier is off the beaten path located at the end of a winding hilly road off of Highway 321 heading east out of Gatlinburg. (see map)  There was a long parking lot in front of the place and we walked in around 7:30 that particular evening.  The first room you see is the main entry way to what was the old lodge.  What looks like the original fireplace sits on one wall with a bearskin rug hanging above it.  A hostess came out to greet us and we told her that we didn't have reservations, but wondered if we could get in.  "We don't take reservations," she said almost cheerfully.  "We can get you in, though." 

We were seated in the dining area that was built by the Hadden's on what was the former sun deck to the Greenbrier Lodge.  It was long and narrow with large floor to ceiling windows looking out into the woods.  It was getting dark and you really couldn't see much of anything out the windows after the sun goes down.  But we were told that it wasn't unusual to see a black bear roaming around outside the dining room, sometimes even coming up to the windows on the end to look inside.  

We were given menus and our server for the evening, Dena, came over to greet us and take our drinks order. I asked her what kind of beers they had to offer and she couldn't remember what they had on tap that particular evening.  "They change them from time to time," she said.  "I'll have to go check."  

I told her not to worry, I wanted to go see what they had on tap in the lounge.  The lounge was just around the corner from where we were seated in the dining area and I went in to take a quick gander at what they had. 

I encountered a small room with a small bar - it sat, maybe, five people - with a like number of taps behind the bar.  Now, remember what I said earlier about the lounge formerly being two rooms where married couples slept at the old Greenbrier Lodge.  I took this picture literally with my back up against the wall in the lounge.  It was not a big area.  It's sort of difficult to imagine this being two rooms at one point in time.  I found that they had a White India Pale Ale from the Big River Brewery out of Chattanooga.  I asked for a sample and decided that I liked it enough to order it up.  Cindy got a glass of house chardonnay from the value-oriented Rex Goliath winery from Central California.  The rest of the wine list at the Greenbrier was pretty basic.  

The main entrees at the Greenbrier are prime rib, steaks, a pork ribeye, seafood and fish dinners.  They also have a stuffed pork chop, fettuccine Alfredo, and a stuffed tilapia dish.  They also feature something on the menu each night called the Chef's Choice.  That evening it was a grilled swordfish filet lightly dusted with Cajun seasonings.  That caught Cindy's attention and she ended up ordering that.

One of their signature items at the Greenbrier Restaurant is the Chicken Vera Cruz - Dena said they were famous for that dish.  They take a chicken breast and stuff it with a crabmeat dressing, bake it in the oven and top it with provolone cheese.  I normally don't get chicken all that much in restaurants, but I'd had so much beef lately that I was sort of getting burnt out on it.  (I know!  As much as I like beef, sometimes I get tired of it.)  Dena talked me into the Chicken Vera Cruz. 

Before we got our meals we got salads.  Cindy got a dinner salad with a vinaigrette dressing and I got a simple salad with creamy blue cheese. They were fine - nothing fancy.  

Cindy's swordfish filet - she pointed out that it was shaped like a heart (awwww....) - had some Cajun seasoning on the top and she ordered mixed vegetables to go along with it.  It was light and flaky without a hint of any fishy taste.  She let me have a bite of the fish and it was very good.  

My Chicken Vera Cruz was something to see.  It was a thick chicken breast to begin with, but stuffed with the crabmeat dressing made it even bigger.  It was thickly-covered in provolone cheese.  I knew this was going to be a pretty rich meal.  And Dena didn't steer me wrong - the Chicken Vera Cruz was outstanding.  I also got a twice baked potato with my meal, but I don't think I took a bite of that.  The Chicken Vera Cruz was delicious, rich tasting, and very filling.  

After dinner, Dena tried to entice us into some dessert.  Cindy noticed that they had key lime pie on the dessert menu.  She asked Dena if they made it in house.  "We do," she replied.  "But we put it in the freezer so it will keep."  We decided to give it a try.  It wasn't bad, wasn't great.  We've definitely had better.  But it was a nice ending to a good meal.  

The Greenbrier Restaurant is more comfortable and cozy than fancy and elegant, and that's exactly what we were looking for in a restaurant that evening.  The food was above average and the service was efficient and friendly.   I thoroughly enjoyed my Chicken Vera Cruz while my wife was more than satisfied with the Cajun-seasoned swordfish that was the Chef's Choice that evening.  This was a good find on our trip to Gatlinburg.  It's definitely off the beaten path and well worth the trouble to find the place.  

TAVA - Morton Grove, IL

I can't tell you how many people who have found out that Indian food is my "go-to" comfort food have told me about TAVA, an Indian restaurant on Dempster St. in the Chicago suburb of Morton Grove.  I have a dealer down the road who told me that the place is just outstanding.  An audio sales rep friend of mine swears that TAVA has the best Indian food he's ever had.  Another friend of mine said that he eats there at least twice a month.  "It's that good," he told me.  With all these glowing reports on TAVA, I had to give it a try.  

Now, I had been by TAVA many times since it opened in September of 2011.  It's located in a strip mall on the NE corner of Dempster St. and Harlem Ave. in Morton Grove.  (see map)   The owner of TAVA, Mahesh Sharma, started out as an electrical engineer.  But his love for cooking made him abandon that career for a new career working in kitchens at hotels in downtown Chicago.  

Living in Morton Grove, Sharma realized that there wasn't a good Indian restaurant in the immediate area.  He wanted to give back to the community by putting in his own Indian eatery, complete with upscale drinks, housemade curry dishes, and a menu that used the freshest ingredients.  No foods are ever frozen before they're made at TAVA and real charcoal is used in the tandoor oven.  Sharma named his restaurant after a tavah (or tawah) - a large disc-shaped cast iron griddle used to cook traditional South Asian foods.  Continued use of the tavah puts a seasoned zest into the metal.  

I had just finished up a long day of calls around the Chicago area and realized that I was about a 10 minute drive from TAVA.  I scurried around some back roads to get to the restaurant just before 8 p.m.  As soon as I opened the door that wonderful Indian spice smell from the food filled the air.  The classy looking restaurant isn't large and is very dimly lit.  There's a small bar area as you come into the restaurant that featured a large number of liquor bottles.  The dining area was off to the left side from the bar and it's center piece was an elegant gas fire place along the wall.

I was taken to a small table along a wall that featured banquette seating and given a menu.  The pictures I took of the inside of the restaurant didn't turn out because it was so dark in the room.  (Above photos courtesy of Yelp.)  I had to use the flashlight app on my phone just to be able to read the menu at TAVA.   A server came over with some crisp papadum bread and some chutney.  They had a mint chutney that was surprisingly spicy.  I normally don't find mint chutney to be that spicy at many Indian restaurants, but this one definitely had a kick.  

They have an extensive menu at TAVA with a number of chicken, lamb, seafood, and vegetarian dishes - they even have goat meat on the menu - and many of the entrees are gluten free.  And if you want spicy food at TAVA, they've got a number of entrees to choose from.  They have an potato cube and grilled onion appetizer that features something they call a "tangy volcano habanero chili pepper sauce" with apple cider.  Yow!  

Now, I had no idea that they were known for their great curry dishes at TAVA, so it was a complete shot in the dark when I ordered up some of their lamb curry.  I also got some garlic naan to go along with it.  And I got a large Kingfisher beer to go along with everything.  

The lamb curry came out with a generous portion of steamed rice.  The curry had a slight spicy taste and the lamb was tender and very flavorful.  They signified on the menu that the curry was spicy, but it was far from what I would call as spicy.  The garlic naan was fantastic - really full of garlic and very forward in taste.  Dipping it into the curry sauce, it just heightened the taste of the garlic in the naan bread.  It was a lot of food and I put a significant dent into all of it.  It was that good.  

Given the amount of glowing reports on TAVA before I went there, my expectations were very high.  And I certainly wasn't disappointed.  The lamb curry was exceptional, the garlic naan was some of the best I've ever had, and the amount of food I got for the price was an excellent value.  The only quibble I would have about TAVA would be the choppy service.  But I've learned that happens at most of the good Indian restaurants.  You just have to go with the flow and hope to get their attention if you need anything.  While I'm far from an Indian food connoisseur, I know what I like and the food I had at TAVA was some of the best Indian food I've ever had.   (Picture courtesy Chicago Reader.)  

Hanabi - Brentwood, TN

During our vacation last fall, we stayed out in Brentwood, TN - a nice upscale area of Nashville.  We contemplated going into the city to get something to eat, but we checked with the front desk to see if they had a list of area restaurants.  They did, but it was sparse and a couple of the places on the list we had already tried on visits before.  We did spy a sushi place on the list - Hanabi - and decided to head over there for dinner.  

Hanabi was close to the hotel, but sort of difficult to find.  It was back in an office park area in a small strip mall way off the beaten path.  (see map)  We passed by it once because it was sort of hidden back in a corner.  But we were able to find it and we walked in around 7:00 p.m.

We were greeted by Helen, who identified herself as the owner of the restaurant.  She said that Hanabi had been open for 9 years.  I asked her what Hanabi meant and she said, "Fireworks!  It's the Japanese term for fireworks!"  Ah!  The stuff you learn when you just ask.  The dining area was nice and had contemporary light wood tables and chairs.  

We asked her if we could sit at the sushi bar in the back of the restaurant and she said it was no problem.  Helen gave us a couple of menus to look through.  Cindy ordered up some green tea and I got an Asahi beer.  Later on she got a glass of the house chardonnay.    

Even though they have a kitchen and featured cooked entrees, we were there for the sushi.  The first thing we ordered up is a spicy tuna roll and something that we saw on the sushi menu called the "Parthenon" roll.  Nashville has a replica of the famed Greek ancient temple with a 42-foot tall statue of the Greek goddess Athena inside.  (We went there the next day.)  

The Parthenon was a maki roll with a layer of tuna, white tuna, salmon and yellow tail with rice in between.  We watched the sushi chef make the Parthenon roll.  It was an elaborate production of the sushi chef putting the yellow tail and white tuna on the roll of rice, covering that with another layer of rice before topping it off with the salmon and the regular tuna.  It took him awhile to make it, but it was worth the wait.  

The spicy tuna roll was flavorful with a hint of spiciness to the taste.  But the Parthenon roll was simply outstanding.  I could have ordered up another one just to have all the taste sensations going into it.  The sushi was fresh without a hint of fishy taste.  This was a great start to the dinner.

The sushi chefs knew we were going to spend some money and one of them handed over a barbecued tuna appetizer - for free.  It was seared rare and sliced into three pieces.  It was topped with freshly chopped green onions.  The barbecued tuna was just wonderful.

We ordered up more sushi after that and got six pieces of the smoked salmon.  The smoked salmon had a great smoky taste to it, but it was very salty.  I would have gotten more of the smoked salmon had it not been so salty.  It was some of the saltiest smoked salmon I'd ever had.  

We had ordered up four pieces of the tuna at the same time we ordered the smoked salmon.  Curiously, they made the tuna separate from the smoked salmon sushi.  But that was fine as we found out that the tuna was simply great.  With great texture and a wonderful taste, the tuna was also outstanding.  We wished we would have ordered more of the tuna instead of the smoked salmon.

I was still sort of hungry and I decided to order more of the great tuna sushi and get a couple pieces of the yellow tail.  Yellow tail can be sort of fishy in taste, but the yellow tail they served at Hanabi - as I initially found with the Parthenon roll - was fresh and flavorful.  Cindy just had a couple more pieces of the tuna while I finished off the other two pieces and the two pieces of the yellow tail.  

After we finished, the sushi chef handed over a small bowl with orange slices.  That was a new concept to us. He said it was to refresh the palate after the soy sauce and wasabi.  I like orange juice and the taste of orange flavor, but I'm not too big on just eating a plain ol' orange slice.  But it was an interesting taste after the saltiness of the soy sauce and the spiciness of the wasabi.  

Cindy was thinking about getting ice cream after that and we ventured down the road to downtown Franklin, TN and found a Kilwins ice cream shop.  We've been to a couple Kilwins before up in Michigan, but didn't know they were found outside of the state of Michigan.  Little did I know as there are over 100 Kilwins locations in 20 states!  We got some ice cream and strolled along the main street of the quaint downtown area in Franklin, two owls at night enjoying their ice cream and doing some window shopping.  (Hoo! Hoo!) 

The sushi at Hanabi was very good.  Save for the very salty smoked salmon, all the sushi we had was fresh, savory and delicious.  The Parthenon roll was outstanding and the barbecued tuna was a pleasant surprise.  Helen checked in on us from time to time to make sure we were happy with our sushi.  Our visit to Hanabi was a nice experience.  It's a little tough to find, but it's worth the effort if you're looking for sushi in the southern suburbs of Nashville.   

Avila's - Dallas, TX

They held the annual CEDIA Expo in Dallas in October of last year - later than usual due to scheduling conflicts.  Our company had initially decided not to attend the Expo because of the lateness in the calendar year for the show.  When my boss tried to get his deposit back for the booth space that we reserved, the CEDIA people said, "Uh, no.  We don't give refunds on deposits."  Being a smart businessman, he decided to not just give the CEDIA people money for nothing, but to find a smaller booth than what we usually get and go ahead with a skeleton crew to man the show.  I arrived early in Dallas and met up with our company's marketing guy who was also coming in early from Montreal to help set up the booth that he designed for us.  We had time for lunch and I asked what he was up for.  He said, "Let's get some Tex-Mex, but not the kind of 'Tex-Mex' they have in Montreal."  With some help from one of the valet guys at our hotel, we were directed to a place called Avila's north and east of downtown Dallas.  

I grew up with a family by the name of Avila and they pronounced their name as "ah-VEE-la".  I have a friend in the Quad Cities with the last name of Avila and he pronounces it as "AH-vee-la".  The Avila family that owns the restaurant in Dallas pronounces it as "ah-vee-LA" - at least that's how the lady who I asked at the restaurant as to how they pronounced the name.  Avila's in Dallas has been open for 30 years and has a somewhat interesting story, complete with family drama.

Anita Martinez was a hair dresser and had a shop next to her father's Mexican grocery store on McKinnon Street in Dallas.  But she also was a cook, making delicious Mexican foods for her family, friends and clients.  When someone she knew was sick, she'd make food and deliver it to their homes.  

Anita Martinez met Octavio Avila toward the end of World War II and they eventually married in 1946.  The couple moved to a house on Maple Ave. near the Oak Lawn neighborhood to start a family.  The Avila's eventually had four children - two boys and two girls.  While Octavio ran a shoe repair business, Anita continued her hairdressing career by having a small shop in the front of the duplex that the family owned.  She sometimes got paid by her clients in the form of groceries that she used to help feed her family.  

As their family grew, Octavio and Anita had always hoped to work in the same building.  When a spot opened up next Octavio's shoe repair shop, Anita thought about moving her salon there.  But then she realized - what if something were to happen to Octavio and she had to take over the business?  She didn't know the first thing about shoe repair.  And Octavio was no hair dresser, either, if something were to happen to her.  The two decided to close their respective businesses - Anita had been a hair dresser for over 30 years - and with absolutely no prior experience in the restaurant business they turned both sides of the duplex they owned - including Anita's small two room hair salon - into a restaurant in January of 1986.  

It was Anita and Octavio who were working in the restaurant - the other children were grown and gone from the nest.  But younger son Ricardo - also known as Ricky - came back to help with the restaurant in 1987.  He quickly became the face of the place and was fully running the restaurant for his mother after Octavio Avila passed away in 2005.  In 2009, Avila's was featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives with Ricky making his mother's special brisket tacos and pork tamales.  Suddenly, business began to boom after the episode was aired on the Food Network.  

And this is where the family drama ensued.  

Sometime just before or just after the "Triple D" episode ran, Ricky Avila secretly filed papers that showed him as the owner of the restaurant.  Once Anita Avila and her other children found that Ricky had filed the paper work, they filed a lawsuit in January of 2010 to re-assert Anita as the owner of the restaurant.  A full-fledged legal war to oust Ricky from the family restaurant was now underway.  

In February of 2010, Ricky had decided to take a vacation to Hawaii with his girlfriend to get away from all the legal proceedings.  It would have been the first vacation he'd had in 20 years.  When he got off the flight in Los Angeles, he had an urgent message to contact his lawyer in Dallas.  It appeared that his mother and siblings were in the midst of taking control of the restaurant.  Anita Avila was not in good health, but she still owned the building that housed the restaurant.  Her older son, Octavio, Jr., had gone into the restaurant and fired much of the staff.  

When Ricky came back, he filed a restraining order to keep his family members from taking over the restaurant.  He said he had been planning either a renovation of the restaurant, or even a full-scale move to a new location.  One night, Ricky went in with some helpers and they completely gutted the restaurant, even putting a hole in the wall where the Diners, Drive-ins and Dives plaque was hung.  They took out everything, furniture, fixtures and even the walk-in cooler in the kitchen.  

Once Octavio, Jr. got back into the gutted building, he decided to rebuild the restaurant, but not before more lawsuits and countersuits flew back and forth between family members.  Octavio, Jr. was in building trades and he built out the new Anita's, while his sister Anna Maria Martinez came in to run the kitchen using the same recipes her mom had given her over the years.  They reopened in April of 2010.

Ricky Avila eventually opened a new restaurant - Ricky Avila's Mextopia - also in April of 2010, not too far from the Avila's location.  However, for a myriad of reasons it didn't last more than a couple three years before he eventually closed up the restaurant in January of 2013 and eventually moved to Hawaii with his girlfriend to run a bed and breakfast on the big island.   

Anita Avila passed away in early January of 2014 at the age of 91.  Anna Marie Martinez continues to run the restaurant today.  

We found Avila's on Maple Avenue, about a 10 minute drive from our hotel.  (see map)  There's some parking off to the side of the building and more available in a lot next door.  We got there around 12:30 in the midst of the lunch rush.  We got what was the last table in the small front room with the corrugated metal bar front.  Our server, Anna, came over with a couple of menus for us to look through.  I got a margarita while my co-worker, Mitch, got a Negra Modelo beer.  

The other side of the restaurant featured a larger dining area.  Letters spelling out "Buen Provecho" - the Spanish equivalent of "Bon Appetit" - were attached to the wall.  

The first thing we got on the table were a basket of fresh chips and some salsa.   Now, the salsa had a major kick to it.  It was spicy, but not so much that you couldn't get the fresh tomato flavor of the salsa.  The chips had a nice crispness to them.  

While Anita Avila grew up in Texas, her husband had family roots in Mexico.  She learned to make many traditional Mexican foods that her husband grew up with, but turned them into her own with a Texas twist.  The Avila family is famous for their tamales, brisket tacos, enchiladas, and grilled entrees such as a grilled marinated steak or chicken breast, and fajitas.  

I had to try a little bit of everything.  I was really interested in getting a beef-filled chile relleno, but I went with a couple of brisket enchiladas topped with the tomatillo sauce.  A side of Mexican rice and beans came with the enchiladas.  And they weren't refried beans, which I don't care for all that much.  

I also had to try the beef brisket taco while I was there.  It came with a side of fresh guacamole and a very fresh pico de gallo mix.  The tortillas were made fresh in Avila's kitchen.   

Mitch went with the Triple D Special - a brisket gordita, a pork tamale, and a bean and beef soup.  He really didn't know what to get because - well, as he said Tex-Mex in Montreal is completely different from Tex-Mex in Dallas.  It, too, came with a side of rice and beans.  

I have to say that the brisket enchiladas were spectacular.  The beef was moist and tender.  With the cheese and tomatillo sauce on top, there were a lot of great taste sensations going on all at once.  They weren't big, but they were excellent.  

The brisket taco was equally excellent.  Once again, the brisket was moist, tender and flavorful.  I had a couple of bites of the brisket taco to see how the seasoned beef tasted before I doctored it up with some of the fresh guacamole, pico de gallo, rice and beans.  There was a lot of stuff going on, taste wise, with the taco after that.  

And now, let me talk about the beans - they were out of this world.  These were whole beans in a broth that had a slight spicy taste to them.  I would crawl back to Avila's just for the beans, they were that good.  I'd never had Mexican beans that tasted that fresh and that good.  

Now, Mitch wasn't sure at first that he liked his lunch.  He'd never had a gordita before and he had never had a tamale.  I had to show him that you had to take off the corn husk before eating the tamale.  The beef and bean soup looked like it was basically the beans they had on the side with ground beef mixed in.  While he was eating, he didn't seem to enjoy the meal all that much.  Had I known that he REALLY didn't know what Tex-Mex food really was, I would have helped him figure out what he wanted for lunch.  

As we were leaving, I went out front to take a picture of the front of the small restaurant.  There's an outdoor patio area and off to the side were a line of cactus.  I tried to squeeze around a table and promptly ran my left side into a cactus.  Oh my GOD!!!  I was pulling little needles out of my side for the next four hours.  It doesn't take much for them to jump off the cactus and into your skin under your shirt.

I double checked with Mitch to make sure that he liked what he got.  He had a few moments to decipher what he had and he said, "Yeah, I liked it.  I thought it was interesting."  I wasn't certain that he was saying that to make me feel better about our choice for lunch.   

While I felt bad that Mitch didn't appear to like his lunch while he was eating, he's since assured me that he's had time to figure that he really liked what he had to eat that day.   I have to say that my lunch at Avila's was simply outstanding.  It was one of the more interesting and great tasting Mexican restaurants I've ever visited. Everything was so fresh and authentic, so much unlike chain restaurants that "American-ize" Mexican food most of the time.  The brisket enchiladas and the brisket tacos were tremendous.  I love little family restaurants like Avila's and even with the turmoil that ensued a few years back, this  was one of the best Mexican meals I've ever had.  CEDIA will be back in Dallas in September and I will definitely be going back to Avila's - even if it's just for the beans!

The District Tap - Indianapolis

There's a building that sits along E 82nd Ave. in Indianapolis near the Keystone Fashion Mall that I've driven past many times on my trips out to Indianapolis.  I remember it was a music venue for awhile, then it became a restaurant - one that I was planning on trying.  However, when I went there in the Fall of 2013, the place was closed up.  This past summer, I noticed that a new restaurant had opened in the spot.  After a morning meeting with a dealer in Indianapolis not long ago, I decided to stop in at The District Tap before heading up to Fort Wayne.  

The building that houses The District Tap has had a checkered history in keeping businesses in the place.  For a number of years it was a Discovery Zone children's entertainment center.  In 2005, it became the Music Mill, a music venue that featured primarily smaller national acts.  The recession in 2008 hurt the owners of the Music Mill and they were forced to close the following year.  The venue was bought by another set of investors later in 2009 and reopened, but by the end of the year it had closed for good. 

The place that I wanted to go to - Brownstone Beer Co. - opened in 2011 and appeared to be doing pretty well.  I went there one night and the place was packed.  It was going to be a long wait for a table or even a seat at the bar and I didn't want to wait.  So, when I decided to go back when I was in the area in October of 2013, I was surprised to see that the place was closed.  It closed in August of 2013.  

In 2014, Kurt Cohen - the owner of Arni's, a pizza restaurant with two locations in Indianapolis - got together with Bob Kort and Michael Cranfill to take over the space for a new restaurant concept.  Kort was the owner of an Indianapolis area building company - Kort Builders - that specializes in build outs of restaurants and retail spaces, while Cranfill was a senior associate for Sitehawk Retail Real Estate, a company that specializes in finding retail and restaurant locations for clients.  With Cohen and Kort as the co-owners and Cranfill as the proprietor, The District Tap opened in October of 2014.  

It wasn't far from my dealer to The District Tap on E. 82nd St.  (see map)  I had to be in Fort Wayne around 4 p.m. for a meeting and it was around 1:30 when I got into The District Tap.  When the owners took over the old Brownstone Beer Company, they found that the interior really didn't need much revamping.  They wanted a place that was welcoming and comfortable - sort of like a neighborhood bar/gastropub type of feeling.  While the footprint of The District Tap is pretty big, it does have a sort of pub type of feeling to the place.  

There was a gaming area in the back with nice pool tables and some very elegant walnut shuffleboard tables. The stone work in the gaming area and an arch accented a TDT signifying the logo for The District Tap.  This was a very nice place.  

They also had a nice outdoor patio on the front side of the place.  The large doors opening to the outside were open on a nice fall afternoon, but it was a little too cool to be sitting outside, even in the sun.  

I took a seat at the bar area and got a menu from Scotty who was working as a bartender that day.  They have 60 beers on tap at The District Tap and the beers were available in 14 or 20 ounce glasses.  I got a 14 ounce glass of the Railsplitter IPA from the Triton Brewery located not far away on the northeast side of Indianapolis.   

The food on the menu at The District Tap is a bit more upscale compared to other places.  But the whole place felt a little upscale for a gastropub-type establishment.  The had a number of gourmet-style burgers on the menu, all made with a mixture of brisket, chuck and short rib beef, ground in house.  The Good Egg burger featured a burger topped with cherrywood smoked bacon, an egg over-easy, American cheese, tater tots, tomato jam, lettuce and onion.  I almost got that.

Then I noticed that they had some sandwiches, wraps and salads on the menu.  Nothing tripped my trigger until I took a look at the various salads they had to offer.  They had a steak with blue cheese crumbles salad that they finished with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing.  It sounded pretty good.   That is, until I saw that they had some gourmet mac and cheese pots.  The Smokey Mac featured gouda cheese, cherrywood-smoked bacon and a chipotle barbecue sauce.  The Mac Daddy Mac had pulled pork, cherrywood-smoked bacon, cheddar cheese and roasted red peppers.  But the one that tripped my trigger was the Cajun Mac - andouille sausage, shrimp, roasted jalapeños, Cajun spices and spicy Parmesan cheese.  I was just about ready to order that from Scotty until I saw something else that made me change my mind.  

I ended up ordering the grilled mahi mahi street tacos.  If you're a regular reader of Road Tips, you know I'm a sucker for fish tacos.  They grilled a mahi mahi filet and cut it into chunks and placed it in three flour tortillas.  They topped the tacos with cole slaw, sliced avocado, pepper jack cheese and a mango salsa.  A big bowl of Spanish rice came on the side.  I threw some of the rice on top of the tacos before I dug in.

The first bite told me that the mahi mahi was, well, a little fishy in taste.  It wasn't that bad, but it was noticeable enough.  The toppings that went with the tacos - including the Spanish rice - helped with the overall taste.  On their own, the mahi mahi would have been too fishy.  With the other toppings, it was barely noticeable.  They were good tacos and pretty good sized.  

Looking back, I wish I would have tried either the Cajun mac or one of the gourmet in-house-ground burgers at The District Tap.  The mahi mahi tacos were all right - a little fishy - but not that bad.  And there was a lot of stuff in the tacos.  Two would have been plenty, three was almost too many.  Overall, the experience at The District Tap was pleasant, they had a lot of beers on tap to choose from and the service was fine.  The menu is interesting enough to entice me to go back to The District Tap at some point.  This is a place that may just stay awhile in what has been sort of a jinxed building for sometime.  

Rotier's - Nashville, TN

When we were in Nashville as part of our vacation last fall, I wanted to take my wife to the Parthenon - a replica of the ancient Greek temple that was originally built in 1897 for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition.  I had been there once with a colleague when we were in Nashville for a trade show a few years back, but we had never gone into the place to see the 42-foot high statue of the Greek Goddess Athena.  But before we got there, we passed an interestingly looking restaurant on Elliston Place near Vanderbilt University that piqued my interest with a stone front and "Steak" and "Sea Food" neon signs in the front windows.  After wandering through the Parthenon, we headed back over to Rotier's Restaurant to get some lunch.  (see map)  

I knew absolutely nothing about Rotier's but found out that the place has been a favorite hang-out for locals since 1945.  A who's-who of Nashville celebrities and Vanderbilt students have passed through their doors for the burgers and home-style cooking Rotier's is famous before.  A third generation of the Rotier (pronounced  ro-TEAR, as tear drop) family now run the restaurant that was started by John and Evelyn Rotier just after World War II.  The Rotier's bought a little tavern on Elliston Place - the former Al's Tavern.  Al's Tavern was a gambling den and had a number of pinball machines.  But it was also only one of three places at the time on the west side of Nashville that served food.   To keep the business going after they first bought the place, Evelyn would work the day shift while John would work the evening shift.  

Once gambling machines were outlawed in Tennessee, the Rotier's expanded the restaurant and the food they served.  They became known as a "meat and three" place - "meat and three" is a Tennessee expression for meat and vegetables.  They continued to serve their burgers, but homemade comfort food items were added to the menu.

The spunky Evelyn Rotier was the task-master of the place, correcting the diction of an employee or of a viewpoint of a customer, hiring and firing grill cooks, and not putting up with any guff from mouthy customers.  But at the same time, she would be the first to give out a free meal to needy people or playfully dote on the babies that customers would bring in.  She spoke her mind and was loved and feared at the same time by her regular customers.  

The Rotier's three children - John, Jr., Margaret and Charles - all worked in the restaurant for their parents.  John Rotier, Sr. passed away in 1981 and Evelyn kept on working in the restaurant until she retired in 1996.  Evelyn passed the restaurant along to her three children to run, but John, Jr. passed away just after Christmas in 1999.  Margaret - now Margaret Crouse, and Charles Rotier continued to run the place and today are helped out by their children Jacob Crouse and Charlie Rotier, Jr.  And even though she wasn't working at the restaurant any longer, for a number of years Evelyn Rotier would still stop in from time to time to check on things and get caught up with gossip from regular customers.  She passed away in 2014 at the age of 94.  

A heavy rain storm had come up when we were in the Parthenon and we had to wait to get out to our car.  Once that passed around 1:30 in the afternoon, we drove over to Rotier's and found a parking spot out front.  We walked in and were greeted by Margaret Crouse seated at the cash register near the bar, just like her mother did for years and years.  She told us we could sit in a booth in the bar area up front.  The booth was, well, it was old.  And it was also sort of tight.  These were booths designed for very skinny people, not for a big guy like me.  Still, I was able to fit in with not a lot of discomfort.

This was an old school bar.  Not very big, but cozy and welcoming enough.  The bar seated, maybe 8 patrons.  Vintage beer signs, American flags, old pictures and bits of kitsch were on display throughout the bar area.  Up front by the front door, a vintage Galaga video game stood like a sentinel.  (I tell people I flunked a summer college course one year because I decided to play Galaga at the Airliner in Iowa City instead of going to class.)

The dining area in the back was equally small and cozy.  There were tables back there that would have been a little more comfortable to sit in rather than the booth, but we were fine where we were.  More vintage beer signs, mirrored signs and pictures hung on the wood paneled walls in the back dining area.  

We were given menus by one of the servers.  She was a young lady, I'm guessing late 20's, early 30's.  She had a slight Southern drawl and kind of a sassy, yet playful demeanor.  We ordered up a couple of the Yazoo Brewing Company's pale ale, brewed locally in Nashville.  

By the signs in their windows, you'd think there would be a lot of steaks or seafood on Rotier's menu.  There isn't.  There's a 10 ounce New York strip steak and a hamburger steak on the menu, as well as a fried fish platter and a fried shrimp dinner.  Sandwiches included an open faced hot beef sandwich, a classic BLT, and a corned beef or turkey reuben.  

Their signature burger is a burger on French bread.  I ordered one of those topped with a housemade pimento cheese.  Housemade potato chips came with my burger.  The French bread was a little too much bread to go with the burger.  The burger, itself, was thick and juicy with a good flavor.  The French bread - too much of it - didn't really do anything to enhance the taste for me.  

Cindy got the grilled cheeseburger on rye.  Instead of the housemade chips, she got the onion rings that came with a housemade remoulade sauce.  I wish I would have gotten that instead.  The burger was grilled, then placed on rye bread with cheddar cheese and they grilled the bread.  The burger came with a fresh leaf of lettuce, a sliced tomato and a sliced onion.  Cindy thought the burger was delicious.  

But the thing that really stood out for us was the housemade remoulade sauce.  She let me try a couple of the very good onion rings with the sauce.  It had a spicy bite that wasn't overpowering as much as it was sort of refreshing.  I could tell there was fresh horseradish in the sauce as it gave me sort of a head rush when I first took a bite of an onion ring with the sauce on it.  We were trying to figure out what was in it and Cindy flagged down our server.  "We don't want to take any secrets, but we're trying to figure out what is in this delicious sauce," she said.

The waitress told us, "Oh, I just made it today!"  

I said, "Oh, it's very good.  Some of the best remoulade I've ever had."  

She thanked me and said, "It's nothing really special.  I just start out with Miracle Whip because it's easier to mix stuff in.  Then I add fresh horseradish, then Worcestershire sauce, garlic, cayenne pepper, white pepper and some Creole mustard just to add some color to it."  I have to note, she never did give us specific measurements, so if we wanted to make it at home we'd have to do it by taste.  

While the French bread burger was unique, I wish I would have gotten what my wife got - the grilled cheeseburger on rye.  (They also have classic-style cheeseburgers at Rotier's.)  It was just too much bread for me and it masked the good taste of the burger.  The remoulade sauce was a big hit with us, it went tremendously well with the good onion rings they served.  The service was prompt and efficient, our waitress was fun to talk with.  As we paid, we spoke briefly with Margaret Crouse as she pointed out the significance of some of the artifacts and pictures on display around the bar area.  Rotier's Restaurant was a pleasant find, one that I wasn't really looking for, but very glad I did. 

(Update 2021 - Rotier's closed in early 2021 as the new owners of their 90-year-old building did not renew the lease and demolished the building for future development.)  

Sun Wah BBQ - Chicago

During our Asian cultural and culinary tour of the Argyle Street area in Chicago last fall (click here to see that entry), our guide - Judith Dunbar-Hines - took us to a Chinese barbecue place that specialized in roasted barbecued duck.  It was actually a "breakfast" for us at 10:30 at the start of our tour.  After meeting up at the corner of N. Broadway and Argyle, we walked down the street to Sun Wah BBQ.  (see map)

When we got to Sun Wah BBQ, Judith told us a story of how the founder of the restaurant, Eric Cheng, came from China to the U.S. to open his restaurant.  Getting there was a harrowing experience.  Cheng grew up in southeastern China near Hong Kong and as a student he was sent to work on a collective farm.  Fearing that he would be sentenced to working on the farm the rest of his life, Cheng and a friend decided to make a run for the freedom of Hong Kong and beyond.  

The two set out on a journey that promised them freedom at the end.  However, the two came to a mountainous region.  Over the mountains was Hong Kong.  Or they could go around the mountain, but it would mean a long swim through a shark-infested channel.  It was there where Cheng and his friend split up - the friend went up the mountain while Cheng took off toward the channel to swim.  It took him 8 hours of being in the water - sometimes clinging onto a discarded tire - before he made it to Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, Cheng worked in some restaurants, cooking many foods that he was taught to make by his father.  It was in Hong Kong when he started to learn the art of Chinese barbecued duck.  He ended up marrying a Hong Kong girl, Lynda, and his biggest hope was to eventually move to the U.S. to have his own restaurant there.  

In the mid-70's, the Cheng's moved to New York City and Eric found work in a Chinese restaurant.  When Lynda gave birth to the couple's first child (a daughter, Kelly), Cheng asked his boss for time off to help his wife.  When the boss refused, Cheng quit on the spot.  

Cheng eventually did open his own restaurant and named it "Sun Wah", which means "New China" in Mandarin.  It was a small space - only nine feet wide - but to Cheng it was a huge space for him.  After a few years in business at this location, the landlord tried to raise his rent.  Knowing that he couldn't sustain his business by raising prices for such a small space, he decided to look elsewhere to put a new restaurant.

Elsewhere was Chicago.  He knew people in Chicago and he took his family - now with three kids - to the Windy City to start a new life.  Lynda was pregnant with her fourth child and Eric knew he needed to get some income going until he was able to start his restaurant.  

He walked into a Chinese restaurant in the Argyle neighborhood of Chicago and told someone that he was a barbecue master and he was looking for a job.  The person called for the owner to come out from the back and when he did, Eric couldn't believe his eyes.  It was his friend - the same guy with whom he ran away from the collective farm years before, and who went up the mountain while Eric went around the mountain and swam to freedom.  It was an unbelievable reunion.  

With the help of the Asian American Business Association, Cheng was able to finally open his Sun Wah BBQ on Argyle Street in 1987.  It was much larger than his place in New York City - about 1500 square feet.  But the restaurant immediately became popular with all different types of people for his barbecued entrees, especially the barbecued duck.  

In 2009, an old auto repair shop around the corner on Broadway became available and the Cheng's jumped on the chance to grow their business.  Eric Cheng was in his late 50's and three of his children - Kelly, Mike (fresh out of a 3-year stint in the U.S. Army), and Laura (who took culinary classes before joining the restaurant) - were now involved in the business.  Only Cindy Cheng, who is a marketing executive, was not involved in the business.  They moved to their present space on N. Broadway in October of 2009 giving the family nearly three times the space they had at their old Argyle Street location.  

Today, Eric and Lynda Cheng are effectively retired from the business.  Kelly - being the oldest child - is the de facto "face" of the restaurant, Mike is learning to become a Chinese barbecue master with help from his father, and Laura is the one who runs the kitchen.  I understand the family arguments in the kitchen between siblings can be highly entertaining to the staff and patrons alike.   

Along with Cindy's good friend from Indianapolis, Pam, and her husband, Jay, we got into Sun Wah BBQ around 10:45 a.m.  Jay and Pam are much more in-tune with authentic Asian cuisine, we were not.  That's one of the big reasons why we wanted to take the Argyle tour with Judith.  The five of us took a seat in the main dining area.  I understand there is an upstairs part to Sun Wah where they hold private dinners and receptions.  

Judith didn't even bother with a menu.  She had pre-ordered the food for us, knowing exactly what to get.  This flustered our server who was out of sorts with the procedure.  Judith explained to us that we were there a little early and the two Cheng sisters - Kelly and Laura - weren't there to handle the order.  But once the waiter figured it out, everything was fine.  

There is a lot to choose on the menu if we had gone in that direction.  They had pork, chicken and duck barbecue specialties.  You could get them plain or over rice.  They also had traditional Hong Kong-style lo mein on the menu, as well as beef, pork, and chicken entrees.  They also had an abundance of seafood entrees including Chilean sea bass, steamed white fish, sweet & sour shrimp, a blue crabs in a black bean sauce.  

Mike Cheng came up with something that is one of the more popular items at Sun Wah - Mike's Chicken - which consists of a roasted chicken with a combination of spices and a honey-glaze sauce, then fried until the skin is a deep brown color.   And they're also famous for the table-side carved Beijing duck dinners at Sun Wah.  They estimate on weekends that they serve a Beijing duck about once every five minutes.  

The most interesting thing about Mike's Chicken or the Beijing duck at Sun Wah BBQ - they aren't even on the menu.  And you have to make plans well in advance to get Mike's Chicken, usually when you make a reservation for dinner.  

They do a thriving "to-go" business at Sun Wah BBQ.  Duck, pork and chicken meat by the pound is available.  The carry-out menu offers many of the same things that people can have in the restaurant.  Already at 10:45 in the morning there were people coming in to get barbecued duck.  

There are two kitchens at Sun Wah BBQ.  The back kitchen is full of woks, ovens and stoves, while the front kitchen is where they smoke and cure their meats.   This is the kind of place where they hang the ducks in the front window after they have been barbecued - head, neck and all.  It's quite the process to barbecue the ducks.  After the internal organs have been removed and the duck has been seasoned, the lower opening of the duck gets sewn up to keep the juices from escaping.  The duck is dipped into a mixture of boiling water, vinegar and more seasonings.  The duck then gets hung for several hours in a well-ventaliated area before it's hung in a smoker for several more hours.  Once the duck is finished, the lower opening is cut open and the dark brown-skinned duck is hung in the window up front on display until it's served.   

Chinese-style barbecued duck is prepared from whole ducks in which the neck and head are left intact. The internal organs of the duck are removed and the lower opening is sewed or pinned closed to hold in the juices and seasoning. Air is pumped underneath the duck‟s skin to separate the skin and flesh, allowing the fat to render out during roasting. The duck is seasoned and then dipped in or basted with a boiling water mixture containing vinegar and other ingredients. The duck is hung to dry for several hours in a well ventilated space or in front of electric fans. The whole duck is then roasted suspended in an oven until the skin is golden brown and crispy. Once the duck is finished roasting, bungs or pins are removed from the lower opening of the duck and the final product is hung on display until served. 

The first thing we got was some seafood congee.  Judith explained to us that food doesn't get wasted in Asia.  "There's no such thing as leftovers," she said. "They simply recycle any additional food from the previous evening into breakfast the next day."  Congee is basically a porridge that is made with any combination of things - oats, cornmeal, buckwheat or rice - then foods from the previous evening are added to the broth along with chopped onions, ginger, salt and some good ol' Monosodium Glutamate - or MSG.  (I usually don't like MSG on my Chinese food and ask - when I can - that my dish is made without it.)  

The porridge looks creamy, but then Judith told us something that I didn't know - most Asians are lactose intolerant.  Their diet makes it so they can't process dairy items.  So the cooking process for the porridge - or "jook" as it's known in China - is somewhat of a painstaking procedure.  Sun Wah BBQ's congee recipe is one that is followed to the letter by the Cheng siblings.  Eric Cheng impressed upon his children the importance of how the rice is cooked and how to properly make the porridge.  Sun Wah gently simmers the "jook" for three hours and only three hours before they deem it ready to serve.  

From there you can add whatever to the porridge.  Judith had ordered up the seafood congee for us - filets of white fish chopped and added to the porridge.  The fish was fresh and the overall taste was very good.  The rice was almost fluffy in its consistency.  One of the more popular congee's at Sun Wah BBQ is the pork and egg congee.  The pork is smoked (they smoke whole hogs at Sun Wah) and the egg they used in the congee is preserved - cured with smoked ash.  I understand the combination of the fresh smoked pork and the cured egg in the congee is an unbelievable taste sensation.  

The other thing that I was introduced to is Hoisin sauce.  Now, I've seen Hoisin sauce on the table at many Chinese or Thai restaurants in the past, but I've never had it before.  At Sun Wah BBQ, Laura and Kelly Cheng make their own.  "It's out of this world," Judith described to us before we put some into the seafood congee.  Jay was very familiar with hoisin sauce and he said that he'd never had hoisin so good before.  I tried it and - to me - it was a combination of the thick, soy/teriyaki taste with a hint of garlic in it and kind of sweet at the same time.  I instantly liked it and wondered out loud why I had never tried hoisin sauce before.  

From there, we got one of their roasted duck breasts cut into strips.  They came with fresh shredded carrots, pickled radish strips and steamed buns - also known as gwa bao.  (The waiter, when we first got there, was thoroughly confused when Judith asked for five of the buns.  But, as I said, once he figured out what she was trying to do for us, he knew exactly what to bring.)  

Judith showed us how to split open the bun, take a slice of the roasted duck breast and top it off with the pickled veggie strips.  It was absolutely heavenly.  The duck was moist and tender and - OH! - so flavorful with the combination of spices on the skin of the duck.  I'm usually not big on duck, but this was fantastic.  The soft steamed bun was pliable and chewy and held together very well with the duck, the shredded carrots and the pickled radish strips.  Jay put a little of the housemade Hoisin sauce on his and I followed suit.  It made the taste even better.  I didn't know how this small meal could have been topped.  

We had to continue on to other stops of our Asian cultural and culinary tour, and I immediately told my wife that I wanted to go back to Sun Wah BBQ at some other time.  There were many interesting things on the menu that would make me want to go back at some time.  This thoroughly authentic Chinese food, as in "artisan" Chinese cuisine.  I can very easily see why you would need a reservation to the place - especially on weekends.  The seafood congee and the roasted duck in the steam buns were just heavenly.  But they have so many interesting items on the menu that you could probably go 20 times and not have the same thing once.  Once again, our guide turned us onto a phenomenal restaurant that we would have had no idea was this good.  Words alone can't express how much we enjoyed our first visit to Sun Wah BBQ.  It definitely won't be our last.  

Kirchhoff's Bakery and Deli/Etcetera2 (Squared) Coffee Shop - Paducah, KY

One morning when we were walking along the streets of downtown Paducah, we came across a coffee shop and we decided to go in and get a couple espressos.  It turned out the coffee shop - Etcetera2 (Squared) - was attached to a somewhat historic bakery - Kirchhoff's Bakery and Deli.  We had espresso and a couple pastries in the morning, then went back later on and had a couple of sandwiches for lunch.  

Kirchhoff's Bakery has a history that stretches back to the early 1870's.  Franz Kirchhoff had immigrated to the U.S. from Prussia and ended up in the river town of Paducah.  Along with his young bride, Hannah, they opened a store that sold food stuff and dry goods to travelers up and down the Ohio River.  In 1873, they decided to open a bakery offering fresh breads to the travelers and townsfolk.  The Kirchhoff's used an Old World-style wood-fired oven to bake breads using family recipes that were handed down through generations.  They lived above the bakery and when the boats whistles would sound along the river bank, Franz would haul his fresh baked bread down to the boat landing and sell them directly off his cart.  

Franz and Hannah's son, Frank, would eventually take over the bakery and it grew in both size and in reputation for having some of the best baked goods in the region.  Frank's son, Louis, then took over the business becoming the third generation of the family to run the place.  In 1952, a devastating fire gutted the bakery.  It was at that time that Louis Kirchhoff decided to walk away from the business.  With the help of co-workers, Kirchhoff's Bakery was rebuilt and reopened.  However, in 1957 the bakery was sold to a regional baking company and the business was eventually shut down.  The building where the bakery used to be was used as warehouse space for a number of years after that.  

After Louis Kirchhoff, Sr. sold the place, Louis, Jr. took a decidedly different path than baking - he graduated from Vanderbilt with a degree in engineering. Out of college, he worked for a couple of Paducah area companies before starting his own civil engineering consulting firm.  In 1996, Louis, Jr's son, Reece, informed him that the old Kirchhoff's Bakery building was now in the hands of the City of Paducah.  Along with Reece's sister, Ginny, the two talked their father into buying the building and rehabbing it in hopes of resurrecting the bakery.  Ginny Kirchhoff, fresh out of college, went to Sullivan University in Louisville to get her professional baking degree.  After extensive remodeling, the Kirchhoff's reopened the bakery in 1997.  Ginny Kirchhoff was 23 years old - the same age her great-great grandfather was when he originally opened the bakery.  

One of their first employees was Josh Ryan, a young man just out of high school.  He had some restaurant experience, but knew little to nothing about baking.  Ryan did a little bit of everything - he was the de facto carpenter, plumber, painter, lifter, sifter, and mechanic, all the while learning the art of baking under Ginny Kirchhoff.  He eventually became the chief baker at Kirchhoff's and became a partner in the business with the Kirchhoff's.  

Kirchhoff's Bakery and Deli is located in the Market House Square area of downtown Paducah.  (see map)  But it was the quaint little coffee shop that adjoins the bakery - Etcetera2 - that brought us into the businesses that one Saturday morning.  

Allen Rhodes, Jr. moved to Paducah during his junior year of high school in 1966 after his father, Allen Rhodes, Sr., had purchased a local Ford automobile dealership.  The younger Rhodes later graduated from Southern Methodist with a degree in marketing and moved back to Paducah to help his father with the car dealership.  One of the first things Allen, Jr. did was convince his father to look into getting the franchise rights to sell Honda cars which had started to gain a foothold across the nation in the early 70's.  After that, Allen Rhodes, Jr. convinced his father to pursue BMW for a franchise.  

Becoming a Chrysler and eventually a Hyundai dealer, the Rhodes worked side by side for 26 years before selling their dealerships (Chrysler/Hyundai and BMW/Honda) to employees.  Allen Rhodes, Jr.'s wife, Johanna, was a teacher at the same high school that Rhodes graduated from - Tilghman High School.  She convinced her husband to come to work at the school as sort of an "everyman" filling in where he was needed.  

Rhodes loved that job, but after 10 years he wanted to do something else.  Seeing a need for a little coffee shop in the LowerTown Arts District of Paducah, the Rhodes family (along with their daughter, Jean) opened Etcetera Coffee House on N. 6th St. in 2006 (see map)  They featured organic and free trade coffees and teas, as well as bagels, yogurts and oatmeal on their limited food menu.  Allen and Johanna Rhodes eventually moved above the coffee shop.  (Allen Rhodes, Jr. is also a city commissioner (councilman) and mayor Pro-Tem for the city of Paducah.)  

In 2010, the Rhodes' were approached by Josh Ryan and Ginny Kirchhoff-Elmore to have a second location as part of the bakery's in-house coffee bar.  Two weeks later - after extensive renovations to the building - Etcetera2 (Squared) opened for business.  

Actually, Etcetera2 is in the back of what is a clothing boutique next to Kirchhoff's Bakery.  I don't know if Cindy wandered in because of the clothes or because she wanted an espresso.  But we ended up getting a couple of the Cubano espressos - the beans were pressed with sugar.  They were excellent. 

After getting our Cubano espressos, we went over through the opening in the wall to Kirchhoff's Bakery.  There we found a case full of all different types of pastries, cookies, cupcakes and rolls.  In a refrigerated case along the wall, they had a number of artisan cheeses to choose from.  By this time in the morning (around 10:30) they had run out of cinnamon rolls, much to my dismay, and they were also out of lemon bars.  But they had an orange/raspberry scone that Cindy wanted and I ended up getting a surprisingly good piece of flaky and delicious baklava.  

In the bakery, they had a couple racks of fresh baked breads near a prep area for orders.  The smell of the fresh bread was absolutely fabulous.  If it weren't for the distance (six hours between Paducah and home), and the fact that we were leaving the next day, we would have gotten a loaf of bread to take home.    

After finishing our espresso and treats, we took some time walking along Paducah's historic riverfront.  Looking across the Ohio River is Illinois.  Just to the right in the panoramic shot above is the mouth of the Tennessee River.  Beyond that is a large port that specializes in tugboat repairs.  It was a cool, yet comfortable morning along the river and we lingered for a moment to take in the sights.

There's a long flood wall that protects Paducah from the Ohio River.  (They had water marks on downtown buildings from previous floods that were well above our heads.)  They have a number of murals depicting the history and events of Paducah over the years.  It was similar to a flood wall mural we saw in Portsmouth, OH on a trip we took up the Ohio River a number of years ago. 

After doing some shopping and hanging out around the downtown area, we ended up going back to Kirchhoff's to get a sandwich.  When we were there earlier, we sat in their dining area having our espresso and eating the scone and baklava.  We got to looking at the menu that they had for their deli and thought that it would be nice to come back and try a sandwich.  

They had a myriad of sandwiches to choose from at Kirchhoff's Deli.   They had both grilled deli sandwiches that included a grilled pimento cheese (made in house) and bacon sandwich, a tuna melt that sounded good, and a Cuban-sandwich that they said they made with their version of Cuban bread.  I was leaning in that direction.  

For classic deli sandwiches, they had selections such as a New York style corned beef and Swiss sandwich on housemade Jewish rye bread, a medium-rare roast beef sandwich with Swiss cheese on the Jewish rye bread, and a classic BLT served on Kirchhoff's famous "Big Boy" bread.  (The picture above right is the logo for their "Big Boy" bread.)

When we went up to the counter to order and Cindy ordered a quarter of a muffuletta sandwich.  The guy behind the counter said that they were out of the Italian round bread they make the muffulettas out of and wanted to know if it was OK that they make it with their sliced French bread.  Cindy said that would be fine.  She got a small side of their pasta salad to go with her sandwich.  

When it was my turn to order, I asked the guy if the Cuban bread they had was truly the sweet tasting Cuban bread.  He said, "Well, no.  It's really not.  It's basically the same French bread that we're going to make her sandwich out of."  I quickly changed directions and went with the classic New Yorker - the corned beef and Swiss on Jewish rye topped with sliced red onions and a dijon mustard.  

And I'm glad I got it.  First of all, the Jewish rye bread was just outstanding.  It was piled high with corned beef and although I was a bit worried that the sliced red onions and dijon mustard would overpower the taste of the sandwich.  But with the great flavor from the bread and the excellent corned beef they used, it turned out the onions and mustard were a great compliment to the sandwich.  This was a very good sandwich for 6 bucks and change.   

Cindy's pseudo-muffuletta sandwich was pretty much the same thing as having one, only on lightly grilled sliced French bread.  It was piled high with ham and salami topped with provolone cheese and an olive salad.  She has had muffulettas before and she said that even with the French bread instead of the Italian round bread this was a good sandwich.  And to top it off it was only $5 bucks.  This was a very good value - a lot of food for the money, that's for sure.  

First of all, we have to let you know that we really enjoyed the Cuban espresso from Etcetera2.  It was so good that before we left Paducah the next morning we went to the original Etcetera in Lowertown to get a couple more to help boost us down the road toward home.  Both places were great little coffee houses.  

But the experience at Kirchhoff's Bakery and Deli was very nice.  Between the baked goods, the fresh breads and the excellent deli sandwiches, the people of Paducah have to count themselves lucky that the fifth generation of Kirchhoff's - as well as Josh Ryan - are keeping the family's baking legacy alive.  The sandwiches we had were a great value and they tasted very good.  For a lunch on a whim, Kirchhoff's Bakery and Deli was a great choice and one that we didn't regret.   

Frontier Cafe - Grinnell, IA

We were back in Central Iowa late this past summer and the hotel we were staying at had a pretty mediocre selection of breakfast items.  I knew of a place over in Grinnell that I'd seen on previous visits there, a place called the Frontier Cafe.  I suggested we stop in there on our way back to the Quad Cities and my wife had no problem with that at all.  

The Frontier Cafe is located on Main Street in downtown Grinnell.  (see map)  When we were paying our tab at the front counter, a man who appeared to be the owner told me that they opened in 2011.  I asked him what the building had housed before and he said that before it was the Frontier Cafe it was a Mexican restaurant for a very short time.  Before that, it was a fiber optics company.  And before that, it was a longtime hardware store.  

When he told me that, it immediately triggered a memory of a night some 35 years ago when I saw guy on a motorcycle - who shouldn't have been on a motorcycle mainly because he was drunk and it was only the second time he'd ridden the bike - crash through the front window of the hardware store wiping out the Weber grill display.  Of course, it didn't help that my buddy was egging the guy on to "get on it".  The guy let out a big "Yahoooo!", jammed on the throttle, then proceeded to lose control and plow into the plate glass window.  He wasn't seriously injured and he fled the scene.  But he was arrested at the hospital later on in the early morning hours when he had to go in and get stitched up from hitting the glass. It was one of those surreal things where you stop for a moment and say, "Did that just really happen?" It continues to be one of my all-time favorite stories to tell of a night of fun and debauchery in my youth. 

Well, then again, I guess you had to be there...

The interior of the Frontier Cafe is pretty basic.  It features a number of booths throughout the place with a couple three tables for larger groups. Antique-style lights hang from what appears to be the original tin ceiling.  We were seated in a booth in the middle part of the restaurant near the kitchen and given menus to look over.

The menu at the Frontier Cafe isn't anything fancy or extensive.  It's your basic breakfasts - omelets, skillets, pancakes, waffles, etc.  It's primarily a good ol' American Heartland breakfast.  

Because of that we didn't get too complicated in our orders.  Cindy ordered the gyro skillet with egg whites.  It was a pretty large breakfast with a pile of egg whites on a bed of gyro meat mixed in with hash browns and grilled onions.  She said it was "good", good enough for what she wanted for breakfast that day.  There was no way that she was going to be able to finish everything she had on her plate.  

I went with a sausage, mushroom, American cheese omelet with a side of corned beef hash.  The omelet was good sized - the length of it was as wide as the plate it was served on - with an abundant amount of sausage and sliced mushrooms inside with the cheese.  The corned beef hash was your basic canned variety, somewhat salty and a nice sized portion for what I got.  My breakfast, too, was pretty good - not earthshakingly good, but, once again, good enough.  And there was a lot of it.  

The food at the Frontier Cafe was a good value.  It's wasn't great, but it was far from bad.  The service was good and quick.  The restaurant was comfortable, but not fancy at all.  This was a good ol' Midwestern breakfast place where you get a lot of food for the money you pay.  If you're looking for a good and quick sit-down breakfast in the Grinnell area with a lot of food, I can wholeheartedly recommend the Frontier Cafe. 

Patti's 1880's Settlement - Grand Rivers, KY

My wife and I were...  hmmm....  somewhere last summer and we were in a small shop talking with the proprietor.  Somehow, Paducah, KY came up and he said that he was from Paducah.  We told him that we liked Paducah and that we were planning on going back to try a couple of restaurants that we thought looked interesting on our first visit to the downtown area.  He said, "Oh, you guys have to go to Patti's.  The food there is SOOOO good!"  

Then the day we left to go on vacation, we stopped into our favorite little coffee house near our house to get a couple espressos for the trip.  The girl behind the counter was asking us where we were going on vacation and we mentioned that we were going to eventually spend a couple of nights in Paducah, KY.  "Paducah?!  I grew up not far from there!  Every Easter I go back home to see my family and we have lunch at Patti's.  It is SOOOOO good!"  We did a little research and found out that the place they were talking about was Patti's 1880's Settlement in Grand Rivers, KY, about a 30 minute drive from Paducah.  With two glowing reviews like that, we felt we really needed to give the place a try.  

How Patti's got started is a bit of a story.  Patti grew up in Chicago and her family moved to Tucson, AZ for health reasons.  During World War II, Patti visited a Veterans Administration hospital with some friends and met Bill Tullar, an Naval Air Corps pilot who developed tuberculosis while flying blimps during the war.  The couple soon married and after the war Bill started in the insurance industry.  The Tullars lived in numerous places - California, Hawaii, Arizona and even Germany - before they ended up in Florida.  Things weren't going well in the insurance game and Bill was forced to take a government job as an investigator for the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA).  

Bill Tullar was in Western Kentucky assessing flood damage and he ended up visiting Grand Rivers - a small town (with a population of about 350 people) on the north end of a strip of land known as "The Land Between the Lakes" situated between Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake.  He immediately fell in love with the area.  He loved the area so much that he asked Patti to come up to see the place.  She, too, fell in love with Grand Rivers.  

In 1975, the Tullars - now with three grown sons and a daughter - decided to buy a small six-unit motel in Grand Rivers.  They bought Newcomb's Modern Cabins - which were far from modern at the time - for $19,000.  Everyone in the Grand Rivers area laughed at the Florida couple for buying the dying business.  

While Bill Tullar still worked for FEMA, Patti Tullar ran the motel.  The Tullars rented the rooms for $11.55 a night, but much of the time she didn't have a lot to do.  She looked forward to the trips she took to shuttle motel patrons to and from the local airport.  Bored out of her mind, she thought about opening a little restaurant in what was basically the living room of the home quarters the Tullars built after they bought the motel.  

In 1977, she asked her oldest son, Chip, and his life partner, Michael Lee Grimes, to move from Los Angeles to Grand Rivers to help out with her restaurant.  The living room of their living quarters eventually became a little 20 seat burger/ice cream shop by the name of Hamburger Patti's Ice Cream Parlor.   The upstairs bathroom that was the Tullar's private bathroom was the one that customers used when they needed to use the facilities.  As the restaurant business began to grow, the Tullars eventually knocked out some of the room's walls to expand them into dining areas.  

Pictured right - Patti and Bill Tullar

While the restaurant still wasn't able to support the whole family, Bill, Chip and Michael Lee Grimes all worked separate jobs to help supplement the family's income.  Once the restaurant got going, the Tullar's son Michael moved from California to Kentucky to run the kitchen and be sort of the "jack-of-all-trades".  Bill quit his job with FEMA to concentrate on the family business.

The restaurant soon became known as Patti's 1880 Restaurant.  With Michael's carpentry skills, they eventually built a new kitchen.  Feeling that their father was being left out, the Tullar boys built another restaurant on the other side of the kitchen and called it Mr. Bill's.  This was more of a barbecue and steak house, catering more to tour buses and large groups.  However, as Patti's 1880 Restaurant became more famous, it eventually took over Mr. Bill's.  

In the early 90's the restaurant became known as Miss Patti's 1880 Settlement when they brought in old cabins from Illinois and Kentucky and turned them into gift shops.   From there, Patti's 1880 Settlement evolved into what it is today - still a number of gift shops, a walking garden with babbling brooks and fountains, a remote-control model boat area, and a miniature golf course.  Antiques that Patti collected from the area are on display throughout the restaurant.  Stained glass windows from old churches are on display, as well.  

After Patti died of Lou Gehrig's Disease in 1998, Bill Tullar passed away from lung disease in 2000.  To honor their parents memory, the Tullar children erected a chapel with a memorial to their parents on the property.  They also now run a hotel at the Grand Rivers exit on Interstate 24 - Patti's Inn and Suites.  And for years at Christmas time, the restaurant is decorated with over 500,000 lights all throughout the complex.  Today, Patti's 1880 Settlement serves over 300,000 people annually in their restaurant.  

We had made reservations the day before on our way from Nashville.  Since Grand Rivers was close to Interstate 24 on the way to Paducah, we decided to stop into the small town to check out what Patti's 1880 Settlement was all about.  It was a bit difficult to find - it's sort of off the main drag into Grand Rivers and you had to double back once you got to the "business district" of the small town.  (see map)  We eventually found it and drove past the complex a couple of times looking at what appeared to be a tourist trap.  Cindy said, "Maybe we ought to stop in a have a drink to see what the place is all about.  We can always cancel our reservation if it's too touristy."  

I thought about the two people who raved about Patti's and I said, "Aw, let's just have dinner here tomorrow night.  It should be all right." 

We had reservations for 7:30 p.m. and we got there right at 7:30.  It was tough to tell, but it didn't seem like Patti's was overly busy as we were able to find ample parking in the lots outside the building.  We went in and told the hostess we were there. She said that it would be a short wait for our table.  She invited us to sit in the heavily decorated area around the front counter, or we could go into the gift shop off to the side to look around.  

Like most places that have gift shops, they more than probably made us wait before they seated us - even if a table was available.  It was the type of gift shop that we didn't care for.  Call us snobs - maybe.  But it was kind of schlocky and touristy.  We looked around for a bit, but ended back up toward the front counter.  When we came back, they immediately seated us in one of the many dining rooms in the place.

If they do lights at Christmas, we wondered what it would be like.  It was early September and the dining room was already festooned with a lot of lights and greenery.  We were seated at a corner table in the small dining area and given menus.

Our server for the evening, Katie, came over to greet us.  I asked what beers they had available and she said, "I'm sorry, sir.  We don't have alcoholic beverages.  We're a dry county here."  Cindy sort of smirked at me when she said that, knowing full well that if we'd stopped the night before to check the place out we would have found out that we couldn't have gotten a drink.  Oh well, we were there.  No beer or wine with our meal.  Not a deal breaker - or at least I wasn't going to make it a deal breaker.  

Patti's 1880 Settlement is famous for their 2-inch thick pork chops.  By this time of the evening - sort of wanting a cold beer - I wasn't really looking for anything else.  They had steaks, seafood, pasta entrees, chicken dishes and prime rib.  The prime rib almost made me turn that direction, but I thought I'd go for one of their signature dishes.

Katie brought out another one of their signature items - their flower pot bread.  It was served in a small flower pot and came with regular butter and an excellent strawberry-infused butter.  The bread was hot and we were able to tear off chunks of it rather easily.  

I ordered the 2" pork chop and Cindy went with the Steak Oscar.  Before the entrees showed up, we both got the spinach salad with the hot bacon dressing.  It was a good salad and a good start to the meal.

Cindy's Steak Oscar featured filet medallions that came with three grilled jumbo shrimp, grilled asparagus, sautéed mushrooms and a béarnaise sauce drizzled over the top of it all.  She got some grilled vegetables to go along with the steak.  She proclaimed the steak to be tender and very good.  The béarnaise sauce was rich and delicious.  

The pork chop was as thick as advertised.  I sort of wondered how they were able to cook them this way and I guessed that they probably grilled them lightly, then put them in the oven to bake them to full temperature.  

My guess when I first looked at the pork chop was that it would be woefully overcooked.  It wasn't.  It was very easy to cut in to, it was juicy and full of great grilled pork flavor.  I sort of wondered how they were able to cook them this way and I guessed that they probably grilled them lightly, then put them in the oven to bake them to full temperature.  I got steak fries to go along with the pork chop and they were overcooked, hard and very tasteless.  But that was all right - I was much more interested in trying to finish the pork chop.  

As we were eating our dinners, I noticed that a number of the wait staff was congregating in our dining room.  Suddenly, one of them announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a couple here who is celebrating their wedding anniversary.  So, if you could please join me by singing 'Let Me Call You Sweetheart' to honor them this evening."  And, on cue, everyone - and I mean EVERYONE - in the room started to sing "Let Me Call You Sweetheart".  Well, everyone except for Cindy and me - we didn't know the lyrics.  There were probably a dozen servers in the room, along with possibly 16 other diners - all of whom were singing the song.  Only Cindy and me, as well as the anniversary couple, weren't singing.  Cindy and I just sort of looked at one another in amused amazement.  

After dinner, we walked around the place a bit.  The dining rooms were connected in sort of a flowing fashion. It looked like the building design was one of "Hey! Let's put in an opening here!"  Below left is the dining room next to where we ate and it featured a huge backlit stained glass window.  Antique pictures hung from the wall.  Below right is a small private dining room that we found up front.  It, too, had a small backlit stained glass window in the wall.  The room featured one table and looked like it seated 10 people.  

We went outside and walked around the outside garden area for a bit.  It was dark and none of the picture that I took came out very well.   The path was a labyrinth past babbling brooks, fountains and the small gift shops that were closed for the evening.  Even with the shops closed, the garden area was still a popular place with the patrons.  

Having the big pork chop at Patti's 1880 Settlement was sort of a treat.  It actually tasted pretty good after I was worried that it would be overcooked.  My wife felt her Steak Oscar was also very good.  Was it a great meal?  No, I wouldn't say that.  But it was good enough where people that grew up going to Patti's - such as those who  told us that we had to try the place -  would really enjoy the place time and time again.  It was a pretty good value - not having any alcohol helped keep our bill down.  And the service was fine.  Sure, Patti's is worth a visit.  We're glad we did it, but I don't think we'd go out of our way to go back again.  (Photo courtesy Trip Advisor)