CLOSED restaurants Archives - Page 3 of 8

Great American Burger Company (CLOSED)

September 22, 2013

Unfortunately closed now, Great American Burger Company was a neighborhood burger stand that was located near the lake in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee.

My hometown, Soddy-Daisy, has precious few restaurants. When Great American Burger Company opened in the neighborhood where I grew up and now teach (and where my parents still live) a couple of months back in the former location of another restaurant (whose name I’ve already forgotten) I’ll admit I kind of rolled my eyes. Truth be told, I’d never seen anyone at the former joint-though, to be fair, their hours were such that I really never drove by when they were open. Now I drive by every day on my way to and from work and have noticed quite a few people at this little road-side stand on the road adjacent to “Soddy Lake”(some eating at the picnic tables out front), so I decided that an afternoon when I was staying late for a training was a perfect excuse to give it a try.

It was just after five when I walked up to the window at Great American Burger Company. A very friendly guy opened the window and greeted me. I told him I needed a minute to look at the menu. There was a little chalkboard standing by the window with specials listed, including the Big Papa Burger (with smoked sausage on top), fish tacos, and a fish sandwich. The items on the regular menu board included burgers, a BLT, a fried bologna sandwich, barbecue pork and chicken sandwiches and tacos, deep-fried hot dogs (known as “rippers” because they burst open a little while cooking) with a variety of toppings, and a Philly cheesesteak. There were a few other items but I can’t remember them at the moment.

I decided on a regular cheeseburger (there was also a spicy cheeseburger listed on the menu) with no onions and, declaring that he would have a heart attack at age 40, Philip (on the phone) told me to order him a Big Papa burger. Our burgers were basically the same: large, irregularly shaped burgers (a good sign, showing that they are more than likely hand-patted rather than frozen patties) on store-bought buns with American cheese, mayo, mustard, shredded (not leaf) lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and in Philip’s case onions and a split piece of griddled smoked sausage. Because he has gotten spoiled by sausage from places like Link 41, he wasn’t super-thrilled that it was basically a piece of Hillshire Farms sausage (or something similar) but he said it tasted pretty good on the burger so he got over it. It was a well-seasoned, well-cooked burger that wasn’t overly drenched with condiments. It was a very good burger-not a gourmet burger, just a good old cheeseburger. Sometimes you just want a straight-up good burger. We both ate the whole thing. Don’t judge me. Teaching PreK is hard work, and I am pretty much always hungry.

We decided to try out both the fries and the onion rings. The fries were crinkle-cut, a gigantic bag of them to be exact. They were crispy and well-salted, not mouth-searingly salty but not unsalted like those that you get at some places (I will never for the life of me figure out why so many places are so afraid to salt their fries. I’m sorry, but fried food should be salted when it is fresh out of the oil or the salt will never stick. I understand that some people cannot eat salt, but can’t special orders of unsalted food be made for them????). The onion rings were battered, not breaded, with a slightly sweet taste to the batter. I like my onion rings a little thicker than these were with a more oniony flavor (because while I hate raw onions I do love cooked onions) but they weren’t bad. I’m pretty sure the fries and onion rings were frozen (I have yet to come across a restaurant that serves hand-cut crinkle cut fries) but they were pretty good and I have to admit that frozen crinkle cut fries are kind of a comfort food for me.

When I was growing up, JJ’s, which was on Dayton Pike in the location that is now Shuford’s BBQ, was a mainstay….a place to go for a gigantic burger or a huge bag of crinkle-cut fries so hot they’d burn the roof of your mouth. It wasn’t gourmet cuisine, but it was good. I loved that place. I don’t think I even realized how much until I became an adult. I remember a lot of weekends when I would come home from my college dorm that my mom would ask me what I wanted to eat and I would request JJ’s. When it became “Jan’s” sometime after I got married, I knew the end was near. It lasted a little while but eventually gave way to Shuford’s. I’d be exaggerating if I said I shed a tear, but I was a little sad. The food at Great American Burger Company reminded me a lot of JJ’s so I guess you could say it fills a bit of a void-that great little neighborhood burger stand. Since it’s on my way home from work it seems like a great solution for those nights that I end up working a little later than usual or I just don’t feel like cooking…or for in-service days when I just can’t bring myself to pack a lunch. I would like to give some of their non-burger menu items a try as well. By the way, our total was $14.37.

Great American Burger Company closed several months after this post was written. The owners went on to participate in Food Network’s Great Food Truck Race as Chatty Chicken.

Great American Burger Company was located at 202 Durham Street, Soddy-Daisy, TN 37379. They are open Monday-Friday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. with occasional Saturday hours for special events. You can call them at 423-618-3186. They do not have a website right now, but you can like Great American Burger Co. on Facebook. Soddy-Daisyans (or anyone else who is in the area and looking for a yummy burger!), support your local burger stand!

Also in this area: Shuford’s BBQ

Elemental-August 17, 2013

August 18, 2013

Elemental, now closed, was a restaurant on Chattanooga’s North Shore near Whole Foods. Their former chef Charlie Loomis has now gone on to open FEED Co. Table & Tavern.

Okay, let me tell you guys a story. It is completely unrelated to this post…but it needs to be told. It’s Saturday night as I type this. This afternoon, after spending a couple of hours reading about coding, I installed some ad codes in the HTML of my blog. The first one looked a little wonky but it showed up and worked, just needed some tweaking. So I install the second one, hit save…and boom. My blog = gone. Panic! Panic! Luckily in my research earlier in the day I had been poking around my server so I went into my server files and was able to fix the problem. Good grief.

Okay…moving right along. Today (Saturday) was my birthday! I am now firmly in my “mid-thirties”. Right in the middle to be exact. On our anniversary last month, we went to Easy Bistro but decided to go to Elemental for my birthday. I started waffling a little bit this morning because I had really wanted to try 1885 for a while too but in the end we decided to go to Elemental since we’d been planning that. Hopefully we’ll get to 1885 soon because I’ve heard lots of great things about it!

Anyway, there were not a ton of people in the restaurant when we got there at about 1:00. We were quickly seated by Josh, who turned out to also be our server. Since we had never been there before, he explained the mission of Elemental-to use as many local products as possible-and told us about the list of local farmers and producers on the back of the menu, then brought us water and left us to peruse the menu for a few minutes.

The first thing that struck me about Elemental was the atmosphere…very casual and rustic (I hate to use that word, but it really does fit here) but in a polished way. A Ford tractor adorns the center of the restaurant. There’s lots of wood, beautiful wood tables with succulents in a tiny Mason jar in the center of each. Track lighting illuminates the restaurant and small glass pendant lights with Edison bulbs hang over some of the tables, including ours, where we sat at a hightop table perched on wooden swivel stools as I admired the large metal letters spelling “Elemental” on the gigantic oven hood over the open kitchen. Swoon.

As I mentioned above, the back of the menu offers a list-a very long list-of local producers and farmers from which Elemental procures their goods. Chef Charlie Loomis, who moved here from Asheville to work as the head chef at Greenlife, strives to find goods as close to home as possible. If they cannot be bought locally, he will move to regional producers. This was definitely one of the most impressive lists of local sources that I have seen in my two and a half years blogging about Chattanooga restaurants.

So…food. I really, really wanted to try the boiled peanut hummus, served with marinated olives and housemade crackers. House.Made.Crackers. I had heard that it was amazing. Unfortunately, they were out. Josh suggested a flatbread as a consolation prize, so we decided on a chicken flatbread with basil pesto, marinated tomatoes, and housemade mozzarella. Delicious indeed, with a chewy crust, puffy and blackened in spots but thin and crispy for the most part. The mozzarella was perfect, creamy, just a hint of salt, and chewy, and the red and yellow tomatoes had that amazing ripeness that can only be found in July and August.

The special of the day was a BBQ burger, complete with a fried egg, and I would have ordered that if it hadn’t been for my mom’s promise of grilled burgers for Sunday dinner. I briefly weighed the roasted vegetable sandwich with pimento cheese and aioli against the BLT with Benton’s bacon (!), thick-sliced tomato, iceberg lettuce, basil aioli, and pimento cheese. Chances are that if you are a regular reader you already know which item I chose. Yes, my friends, Benton’s bacon won out. The sandwich was served on a shiny Niedlov’s bun dusted with sesame seeds, and my goodness…they did not skimp on the bacon-that was quite a stack, and Benton’s bacon, well, it’s just some of the best I’ve ever tasted. The tomato was ripe, juicy, and indeed very thickly sliced, then salted and peppered. There wasn’t a ton of pimento cheese under the tomato…just enough to lend the flavor. It was the best restaurant pimento cheese I’ve ever had-made with housemade aioli and Sweetwater Valley cheese, and it was the only pimento cheese that I’ve ever thought was as good as my own. Sorry, I happen to think very highly of my pimento cheese recipe! Iceberg lettuce may seem passé, but the crunch is unrivaled in the lettuce world (ha!) and really, isn’t that the purpose of the L in the BLT? The basil aioli was the final complement, lending just a little bit of herby bite and the bottom of the sandwich. I decided to have the split red potatoes, quite simply just roasted red potatoes with housemade rosemary aoili on the side. Simple and delicious-and I can’t believe I’ve never thought of serving my roasted potatoes with aioli. I think I’ll start!

Philip pretty much immediately decided on the Cloudcrest Farm pulled pork sandwich with a mixed green salad (by the way, the other sides were sweet potato wedges and cooked seasonal greens). The salad included a variety of spicy greens and a few thin beet strips as well as a light vinaigrette. The pulled pork was served on a Niedlov’s bun with a very flavorful, slightly spicy sauce and a lightly mayo-dressed coleslaw that also included beets. The pork was definitely the star of the show, cooked to falling apart tenderness and tasting so….porky. That may sound weird, but the thing about most pork these days is that they are bred to be so lean that they don’t really taste like pork. Local producers tend to use heirloom breeds that have more fat, hence more flavor. The pork at Elemental…doesn’t. Taste. Like. Chicken. This sandwich was perfect.

Unfortunately, I was so full after this meal that I couldn’t even think about dessert. I would have loved to check out the Ollie Pops, which are brown cow-esque confections made by Milk & Honey-vanilla gelato coated in chocolate-or one of Chef Loomis’s own creations. I look forward to going back for dinner and hopefully saving room for dessert this time…though I have heard from more than one person that trying the Sunday brunch is a necessity. We were able to spend a few minutes talking to the chef before we left and he reiterated the importance of elevating the menu by offering simple food from local purveyors. The quality of the food makes his job much easier-when it starts that fresh and amazing, you don’t have to do much to it before you serve it to guests. (***Note: in late August/early September Chef Loomis and Elemental parted ways. Chef Loomis has since moved on to 1885 Grill and Elemental has changed their menu but vowed to continue their mission of serving fresh, local, high-quality food.)

Our total for lunch before tip was about $26…not too bad for a locally-produced, upscale lunch in a beautiful atmosphere. I have to be honest, I’d read mixed review on Urbanspoon…but it appears that most of those were from the earliest days after Elemental’s opening, and I didn’t experience any of the downsides that were mentioned in those reviews. As always, I would encourage you to go and check it out for yourself…I don’t think you’ll be sorry (I wasn’t!).

Elemental is located at 313 Manufacturer’s Road, Chattanooga, TN 37405. They are open Monday-Thursday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. `You can call them at 423-648-9160. Check out their website, elementalrestaurant.com. You can also “like” them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.

Enzo’s Market Café-July 27, 2013

July 28, 2013

Enzo’s Market was a grocery store with a café that was located on Main Street in downtown Chattanooga that is now closed.

I’ve been meaning to make it to Enzo’s for some time now. I’ve been to check out their grocery selection, which I find to be quite nice, with a much greater local selection than their main competition downtown (pretty sure you all know who I’m talking about) with the small hometown grocery feel. The staff of Enzo’s Market has always been very friendly and I have been able to find some items (miso, spring roll wrappers) that I can’t typically find at the big suburban chain where I do most of my grocery shopping.

Of course I have been curious about the café but it’s quite easy to forget a grocery store café when trying to decide where to eat. Today, we had actually planned to eat at another nearby restaurant (to which our friend had a gift card) but we forgot to check the hours and it turns out that they are not open for lunch. Oops. We’d already gotten a space in the Chattanooga Parking Authority garage at the Choo-Choo, so we needed to go somewhere within walking distance. Duh, Enzo’s.

They were still serving breakfast when we got there (they do until 2 p.m. on Saturdays) but I’d already had breakfast food so it didn’t really pique my interest. They have a regular menu (several sandwiches as well as deli samplers and pizzas after 4 p.m.) as well as daily specials. The specials today were “the hangover”-a pancake stuffed with sausage and cheese and topped with a fried egg; “monkey hips”-rice topped with black beans, cheddar, sour cream, and pico de gallo; and a third, a sandwich that I can’t remember for the life of me. They also have premade sushi in their case, deli salads (which can be bought in bulk or on the sampler plate), salads, and two soups of the day (today’s soups were broccoli and white bean & chicken).

While I would typically gravitate toward the burger on the menu, I just had a cheeseburger from Armando’s Thursday night so I wasn’t terribly interested. I could not decide, though, between “the local”-pimento cheese and bacon on multigrain bread-and the “hickory-dickory cluck”-smoked chicken salad on wheat with gruyere. The chicken salad won out. I also decided to order a bowl of soup and chose the broccoli. I liked the soup, which was pureed but I don’t believe it was broccoli-cheese. It did not seem to have a cream base. I am fairly certain that it was vegetables simmered in a broth base and then pureed. I could tell that there were carrots in it in addition to the broccoli. It was pretty good but I do think it could have used just a smidge more salt. I really liked the sandwich, which was nicely toasted (not grilled), with a great smoky flavor to the shredded chicken, which was accented with fresh herbs, celery, and dried cherries. It had slightly more mayonnaise than I usually put in my chicken salad but it was not off-putting. I would definitely order it again or even get some to take home with me…it would be great on crackers. While I was tempted by the green apple Jones Soda in the case and the lovely selection of Pure Sodaworks bottled drinks, I was prudent (ha!) and drank water. Their drink selection is seriously overwhelming!

Philip was eyeing the reuben but in the end the pull of the hangover was too much. He just couldn’t turn down the promise of a pancake filled with pork and cheese. The pancake was gigantic, the sausage housemade, and the cheese plentiful. I tasted a bit of the sausage and it was really, really good…very mild but fresh-tasting. The cheese was nicely melted from the combined heat of the pancake and the sausage, and the egg was perfectly cooked-whites set but yolk good and runny. That’s how it has to be, my friends. That’s how it has to be. His only beef….the syrup. It was pancake syrup, not maple syrup. Sigh. You can’t have it all. Philip decided to have a Natural Brew vanilla cream soda. Seriously, their drink selection was gigantic.

Rachel was contemplating the local but at the last minute decided to have the monkey hips. It was a seriously huge plate of rice topped with a very large serving of black beans, a ton of cheese and pico, and a nice dollop of sour cream. It was basically like the “naked burritos” that so many of the gigantic burrito places serve. I tasted it and found the rice to be well-cooked (though she did say that she got a few slightly chewy grains) and the beans to be nicely seasoned.

As far as desserts go, there are lots of bakery selections in the case: cookies, brownies, cake slices, and so on. There are also cups of Milk & Honey gelato and paletas (popsicles) in a case by the counter. If you walk around the corner, you will also find a freezer full of King of Pops popsicles. We decided, however, to forego dessert here and head to the actual Milk & Honey because I was dying for one of their horchata iced lattes (if you haven’t had one….you must).

One thing….it wasn’t a problem but just something that I noticed. The cashiers both times that we have purchased grocery items have been extremely friendly (but not overly or annoyingly so). The cashiers that were working at the café when we ordered today were not rude or unfriendly per se, but they were not particularly enthusiastic. I went back up later to look at the menu again because I couldn’t remember the name of what I ordered and another female employee that apparently had come in while we were eating greeted me in a very friendly manner and pointed out the specials on the wall. I found the deadpanning of the other two girls interesting. Maybe they were ready to go home? Who knows.

So…at about $27 pre-tax (I’m not sure about the final cost since Rachel was kind enough to treat us), this is definitely a little pricier than your standard grocery store deli food…but then, your standard grocery store deli is not serving a menu that’s thought out like this with specials and so forth. In addition, Enzo’s Café is no more expensive than other comparable market cafés in town (Whole Foods, Earth Fare). It’s not fast food but it doesn’t claim to be. I wouldn’t call it a culinary revelation but I’d definitely eat there again. They have a nice, relaxed atmostphere (which makes them very kid-friendly!) with great indoor and outdoor seating. If you’re on Main Street and need a casual meal (they serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner), definitely give Enzo’s Market a try!

Enzo’s Market closed after a pretty short run. It was followed by Grocery Bar, which unfortunately was also unable to last.

Enzo’s Market and Café is located at 1501 Long Street (next door to Battle Academy), Chattanooga, TN 37408. They have parking for customers in the back. They are open Monday-Saturday, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. You can call Enzo’s at 423-486-9312. You can visit their website: http://enzosmarket.com and peruse their regular menu: http://enzosmarket.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/enzos_menu_website.pdf. You can also like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.

North Chatt Cat-April 20, 2013

April 21, 2013

North Chatt Cat was a dive restaurant/bar (now closed) that was formerly located on Chattanooga’s North Shore near Coolidge Park.

Do you guys have any idea how difficult it is to find a butter dish? When I wrote my biscuit post a few weeks ago I took a picture with my very utilitarian Snapware butter container in it and made the observation that I really needed to get something cuter. I’m thirty-four years old, y’all. I don’t do a lot of entertaining but a 34-year-old woman really should have a presentable butter dish. Anyway, we set out to Mia Cucina yesterday looking for a nice butter dish and came up with nothing. Seriously. In fact, the only one I saw yesterday at all was a crystal one from Belk. A crystal butter dish. A very large crystal butter dish. It looked more like a butter cloche. No thanks. Anyway, I think I’m going to order a Fiesta Ware butter dish. Did you know that Fiesta Ware is made in the USA? I’ve never been a huge fan, probably because I’m not really into the bright colors, but I think I’m going to start building a collection of black & white Fiesta Ware. It shouldn’t be too big of a surprise since we’re all about local food, but we are big on “made in the USA”….better quality and supporting the US economy and job market. I found this website yesterday: http://stillmadeinusa.com/. Fascinating.

Anyway, since we paid for parking downtown we decided that we should just go ahead and eat down there, and since Mia Cucina is right across the street from North Chatt Cat, which is about the only place on the North Shore that we haven’t visited from my “list” it seemed logical to go there. Plus, they have outdoor seating and the weather was glorious. We grabbed the last table on their patio after walking through their indoor seating area which smells like burgers (surprise, surprise, I know!).

There was one server working and she brought us a menu after we sat down. The menu is very simple: sandwiches, extras (like cheese & bacon), sides, non-alcoholic drinks (tea & fountain drinks), and beer. That’s it. There are two prices for each item: a price for those paying with cash and a price for those paying with credit. Cheap beer (PBR, High Life) abounds but they do have a few more, um, “upper crust” varieties like Yuengling and Sam Adams. As far as imports, I saw a guy drinking Red Stripe (which is Jamaican but produced in the U.S. so I guess technically is not an import) before we left, and I think I saw Corona on the menu but I’m not sure. They don’t have a website and the menu from Urbanspoon does not have the beer menu from the back page so I’m not positive.

There are quite a few sandwiches on the menu, including a veggie burger, a black bean burger, a Reuben, and a grilled cheese. There are also chicken fingers on the menu. There are several sandwiches with animal names, like the hound dog, which I am assuming is a hot dog (there’s no description) and the Tweety Bird, which is grilled chicken. Philip decided on the bison burger because if a restaurant has a bison burger he must order it. I decided on the Puddy Cat, a 1/3-lb burger, after considering the 1/2-lb Ally Cat but deciding I did not need to eat a 1/2-lb burger. I also contemplated a BLT but ultimately decided to try the burger. I asked for onion rings ($1.00 up-charge) but unfortunately the fryer was on the fritz. Our server told us we could have chips (chips,fries, or tots are included in the price of the sandwich) or she could take off the side and charge us $1.00 less. We opted for the chips. We each ordered cheese on our burger as well ($0.25 up-charge). (pictured below is the Puddy Cat)

Our burgers came out pretty quickly (within about 10 minutes). Nothing fancy about the presentation: a red burger basket with a piece of parchment. The buns were just a standard, out-of-the bag bun, with iceberg lettuce, a tomato slice, pickle chips, American cheese, mayo, & mustard. Philip also had onions. The chips were just plain old Lay’s…not much to say there. My burger was a fairly thin patty, cooked through and well-seasoned with that classic greasy spoon burger taste (not a bad thing). Not too much mayo or mustard, also a good thing….often places just drench the sandwiches in condiments but these had just the right amount. Philip’s bison burger was much more rare than mine, probably about medium, because bison meat dries out very easily so you cannot overcook it or it isn’t worth eating. (pictured below is the bison burger)

I wouldn’t call these burgers the best in Chattanooga but they were just good old greasy spoon burgers. This place is definitely a dive, but it’s been around for a long time (ten + years, I believe….I’m pretty sure they opened when I worked on the North Shore in college). The food is tasty but not unique. There were some older guys sitting next to us who were obviously regulars, and there were other diners young and old. It’s definitely a mainstay and worth checking out. If you can find a seat on the deck/patio, the views are awesome. We even saw a couple standing at the edge of the deck, looking toward the river, to drink their beers (there were no seats available on the deck, though there were several inside). By the way, our total was about $17.

North Chatt Cat closed in 2015 but has been replaced by another restaurant.

North Chatt Cat was located at 346 Frazier Avenue, Chattanooga, TN 37405 (at the corner of Tremont & Frazier). You can call them at 423-266-9466. They do not have a website, but you can “like” them on Facebook.

Gollywhoppers-April 13, 2013

April 14, 2013

Gollywhoppers was a popular sandwich shop on East Brainerd Road that has closed since this review and been replaced by Greg’s Sandwich Works.

Recently I have been trying so hard to find my own photography “style”. I have a pretty good understanding of how my camera works, lighting, etc….but propping and styling is a weakness. When I look at the photos of food bloggers and food photographers that I really admire, I notice that they seem to have a “signature”…for example, Deb of Smitten Kitchen usually photographs against her charcoalish countertop, Melissa of The Faux Martha against an all-white background (which I’ve been experimenting with), and Heidi of 101 Cookbooks has an unreal white and gray marble countertop that provides an amazing backdrop for the majority of her photo. Well, I have an unattractive laminate countertop that was installed in 1977 and my, um, “backsplash” is a painted wall. I refuse to spend a billion dollars on props and we eat everything that I cook so a lot of my photos are taken in the Corelle stoneware we bought several years back. Keepin’ it real. I want a signature of my own…something that people recognize as Chattavore just like I can immediately spot a Smitten Kitchen photo on Pinterest or wherever else. I think if I can find my own propping/styling….style I can then focus on increasing the quality of my photography.

Anyway, the hunt for a signature style led us to Southeastern Salvage on Saturday in search of tile, wood, textiles, etc. We walked away with a market basket to replace the one that I bought at Target last year that is on its last leg and one of these days one of those milk jars is just going to come bursting out. But anyway….Lee Highway is not really a road where you want to make a left turn not at a light, so we ended up turning back toward Hamilton Place as we left. If you haven’t noticed, there are not an awful lot of local restaurants around HP (I suspect that the rent is too high for most mom & pop operations) so we knew we were going to end up somewhere on Brainerd or East Brainerd Road and finally decided on Gollywhoppers.

Gollywhoppers has been around for a long time (since 1997) but because we don’t spend an awful lot of time in that part of town we’ve never eaten there. They are located in a fairly large strip mall sort of building on East Brainerd Road as it nears Brainerd. When you walk in, there are menus on the table as well as menus by the entrance so you can decide what you want to order before you walk up to the counter if you’re like me and you can’t stand to feel like the cashiers are staring at you while you try to decide what you want to order off the menu over the counter. We sat down at a table to decide what to order.

The menu includes sandwiches, of course-half sandwiches or the Gollywhopper whole sandwiches, each available on French, cracked wheat, rye, or pumpernickel bread, each baked from scratch (they also serve hamburgers and a hot dog that they claim is the best in town). They have baked potatoes, including the super-stuffed potato topped with all sorts of things, including chili and cheese as well as a barbecue stuffed potato. Their salad menu includes a taco salad, a southwest grilled chicken salad, a stuffed tomato, and their salad bar. They serve several soups including soup specials on certain days and chili, of course, which can be made into chili pie, a ubiquitous Southern dish (known in some parts of the country as Frito pie and in other parts “walking tacos”) of corn chips topped with chili, cheese, and onions-theirs also has slaw, sour cream, and jalapeños. They also have a handful of homemade sides: baked beans, slaw, pasta salad, and potato salad. Finally, their dessert menu includes a laundry list of made-from-scratch bars which are showcased in a case by the registers, including red velvet bars, lemon bars, peanut butter swirl bars, Special K bars…..the list goes on. You can purchase a whole (very large) bar for $3.99 or a bite-sized (more manageable for one person) bar for $0.99.

I love a good, messy, overstuffed baked potato so I seriously considered ordering the super-stuffed potato, but I really wanted to try a sandwich so I finally settled on a half pimento cheese sandwich on cracked wheat bread (I thought about French bread but wasn’t sure how “crusty” the French bread would be and pimento cheese doesn’t really pair all that well with crusty bread) with taco soup (served with crackers or cornbread….I decided on cornbread). This is served as a combo that comes with a drink, so I got sweet tea (as did Philip). By the way, when they say “sweet tea”, they mean it. We ended up cutting it with unsweetened and I added a lot of lemon (as I always do). Here’s a fun Chattavore fact…..I used to drink “sweet tea” (as everyone likes to make fun of us Southerners for saying) constantly; it was pretty much the only thing I drank. In 2006 when Philip had a surgery and had to water up to prep for anesthesia I joined him in the water deluge and we’ve never looked back. I haven’t made iced tea in years except for a party….but it’s still an occasional dining out treat if real brewed tea (not nasty Nestea) is available.

The bread is not sliced bread but rather individual rolls. Since the half sandwich is actually served on a full roll the same size that I’d serve if I was making sandwiches on rolls at home, I’m dying to see what the whole sandwich is served on and should have asked but didn’t even think about that till just now. The cracked wheat bread was fresh and soft, obviously not 100% whole wheat but the perfect texture for pimento cheese. Their pimento cheese was not a spread like I made but more drippy with whole shreds of cheese. It was clearly homemade with large chunks of pimento. Quite delicious, and I could have eaten the whole sandwich if I hadn’t forced myself to stop. The taco soup was not like any I’ve had before (the taco soup I make has beans and corn in it, this did not) but quite tasty with lots of tomatoes, ground beef, and shredded pork, shredded cheese, and crushed tortilla chips at the bottom with perfect seasoning. The cornbread was sweet and was pretty good as sweet cornbread goes, but you know I’m a savory cornbread girl. They did get points for serving it with real butter as opposed to “buttery spread”.

Philip decided on the Reuben, which isn’t actually listed on the menu. He was going to order corned beef with whatever on it….as he started ordering he asked the cashier what came on the corned beef sandwich and the guy told him that it was up to him unless he ordered the Reuben…so if you want a Reuben, know it’s available to you. Philip decided on that with rye bread (he was given a choice of rye or pumpernickel) with chips and a drink. They have a wide variety of chips available and Philip decided on jalapeño flavored. He liked the Reuben, saying it was good, not the best he’d had, but good. I tasted it….I’m not really a judge of Reubens because I don’t care much for rye bread (it’s the caraway) but I liked it. The corned beef was tasty, the bread fresh (of course), the cheese a little melty, and the dressing and the sauerkraut brought everything together just like they should on a Reuben. I need to learn to love caraway.

After we ate we were a bit too full to sample any of the bars but I did look at the case just a little wistfully as we walked out. A red velvet bar with cream cheese icing would have ended my day perfectly yesterday but instead I ended up eating Ghirardelli chocolate chips out of the jar from my pantry at 9:30 last night. Oh well. Live and learn. The total for our two combos was about $19. The food was fresh and quick but not too quick, and the service was friendly. There were plenty of people in the store even at almost 2:00 on a Saturday afternoon, so Gollywhoppers has definitely made its mark on the area.

Gollywhoppers closed in late 2014 and has since been replaced by Greg’s Sandwich Works.

Gollywhoppers is located at 6337 East Brainerd Road, Chattanooga, TN 37421. You can reach them at 423-855-2001. You can also “like” them on Facebook and check out their website at http://www.gollywhopperstn.com. They are open Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. They also provide catering with at least 24 hours advanced notice.

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