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Big News from Chattavore!

August 1, 2017

Philip went and bought a craft beer store, Sigler's Craft Beer & Cigars in East Brainerd!

Okay, so this doesn’t directly involve the blog…not yet anyway…but something has been in the works for a while and here it is:

Philip went and bought a craft beer store.
Philip went and bought a craft beer store, Sigler's Craft Beer & Cigars in East Brainerd!
Yep, that’s right. He’s been working at Sigler’s Craft Beer & Cigars for a year and some change now and he and some partners officially took over the store yesterday.

At the moment we are mildly freaking out. Business ownership is a huge step. I mean, this blog is a business but, you know, no inventory or overhead or any of that mess. So, we’re probably going to lay low on the restaurant posts for a little bit. I mean, I will still do some but just maybe not one a week for a while. You know, for money-saving and all. Also because time, which is something that Philip doesn’t have a lot of right now (I promise you some budget-friendly meal posts, though!).
Philip went and bought a craft beer store, Sigler's Craft Beer & Cigars in East Brainerd!
If you’re in Chattanooga or nearby, or even if you just drive through Chattanooga sometime, we’d love it if you’d stop by Sigler’s and see Philip (or Phil, ahem…I just can’t get used to that. I will never call him Phil. Amen and amen.
Philip went and bought a craft beer store, Sigler's Craft Beer & Cigars in East Brainerd!
So…Sigler’s Craft Beer & Cigars is a tasting room and retail bottle shop. You can stop by for a flight or a pint and pick up some bottles while you’re there. They also (obviously) sell cigars if you’re so inclined. They’re not really “closing” per se, but they’ll be having their grand “re-opening” on August 18 with a tap takeover by Reformation Brewery, so you should stop in and see them!
Philip went and bought a craft beer store, Sigler's Craft Beer & Cigars in East Brainerd!
Sigler’s Craft Beer and Cigars is located at 1309 Panorama Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37421. They are open Sunday 12-5, Monday – Thursday 12-8, and Friday – Saturday 10-8. You can call them at (423) 485-3271.  And be sure to follow them on Facebook and Instagram. Philip does lots of videos, so you can see more of this crazy guy I married!
Philip went and bought a craft beer store, Sigler's Craft Beer & Cigars in East Brainerd!

Filed Under: Bars, Breweries, & Pubs, Brainerd/East Ridge, By Location, By Type, Restaurants Tagged With: bars/pubs, East Brainerd restaurants By Mary // Chattavore 12 Comments

Greg’s Sandwich Works

February 27, 2017

Greg's Sandwich Works is a great restaurant in the Brainerd/East Brainerd area serving sandwiches, hot dogs, salads, baked potatoes, and more! | restaurant review from Chattavore.com

Greg’s Sandwich Works is a great restaurant in the Brainerd/East Brainerd area serving sandwiches, hot dogs, salads, baked potatoes, and more!

Sometimes finding a place to go on Saturday afternoons gets taxing. Philip usually doesn’t get home from work until around 3:30 and I never knew how many things close at 4 p.m. on Saturdays! I’m sure I have complained about this before. Have I complained about this before? He loves his job and for that I am happy, but I miss the old days when he didn’t work on Saturdays and we could go wherever, whenever we wanted.

Anyway…last weekend I really wanted to go to Greg’s Sandwich Works, which is located in the location formerly known as GollyWhoppers. I was honestly shocked when GollyWhoppers closed…it seemed like a pretty popular place and it had been around for a long time. Not too long after, though, the former manager (Greg, in case you were wondering?) decided to open his own sandwich shop there.

It wasn’t in the cards for us to go Saturday, because (you guessed it) they close at 4 every day (except Sundays, when they are closed). It’s definitely more of a lunch-type place, so I get it. Luckily for us, it was a long weekend, so we decided to wait until Monday to head over there. We had a late lunch, around 1:30. There were several tables occupied but it wasn’t super-crowded, which I attributed to the fact that (a) it was past “lunch hour”; and (b) it was a holiday.

The menu here is very similar to the menu from GollyWhoppers – Greg clearly knows that there is no point in messing with what has proven to work. A popular item on the GollyWhoppers menu was the taco salad, and Greg has recreated it as the “Fiesta Salad”. Shredded lettuce gets topped with seasoned ground beef, salsa, shredded cheese, sour cream, red onions, pickled jalapeños, and black olives, served with a side of tortilla chips ($6.99). If you like, you can ask them to crush the chips up for you so that you can scoop the chips up with your fork. I, however, like to use my chips to scoop up my salad. I asked for my salad without jalapeños, and if I had not skipped right over the mention of onions I would have nixed those too, but that’s okay – they were chopped pretty large so they were easy to pick out. The salad was very tasty, with a great taco flavor to the meat and a nice contrast between the warm meat and the cold salads and toppings.

Philip decided to go with the Italian sandwich – ham, salami, provolone cheese, tomato, onion, Italian dressing, salt, pepper, oregano, and Parmesan cheese ($6.49). The sandwich is served warm on your choice of bread. Philip is a sucker for a good Italian sandwich (surprisingly, one of his favorites is at – are you sitting down? Chuck E. Cheese’s. He grew to love them when we worked there, and we still go there from time to time so he can order them even though we know that the kitchen staff hates making sandwiches. Sorry, guys.) and this was a great Italian sandwich. The flavors just work together so well, and the bread was just fantastic. I loved that it was served warm so the cheese got a little melty and the flavors a little more pronounced (cold dulls flavors a little bit).

While we were eating, Greg made the rounds bussing tables and talking to customers. He stopped to talk to me about the whole chips versus crushed chips approach on the taco salad. He obviously enjoys interacting with the customers and he and his staff are doing a great job serving delicious sandwiches, salads, etc. My only disappointment was that they did not have the selection of cookies and bars that GollyWhoppers had (Greg’s does have cookies and bars, just not as many varieties as GollyWhoppers always had available to tempt me).

If you’re looking for a great lunch spot in East Brainerd, you have to give Greg’s Sandwich Works a try!

Greg’s Sandwich Works is located at 6336 East Brainerd Road, Chattanooga, TN 37411. They are open Monday – Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. You can call Greg’s Sandwich Works at (423) 551-8634. For more information, you can check out Greg’s Sandwich Works’ website and menu as well as their Facebook page.

Filed Under: Brainerd/East Ridge, By Location, By Type, Delis, Sandwiches, Burgers, & Hot Dogs, East Brainerd, Restaurants Tagged With: Brainerd restaurants, East Brainerd restaurants, sandwich/burger/hot dog restaurants By Mary // Chattavore 2 Comments

Kabob-Ster

February 8, 2017

Kabob-ster is a quick service Middle Eastern/Mediterranean restaurant in East Brainerd, Tennessee, near Hamilton Place Mall. | Restaurant review from Chattavore.com

Kabob-ster is a quick service Middle Eastern/Mediterranean restaurant in East Brainerd, Tennessee, near Hamilton Place Mall.

Sometimes Sundays can be a little bit of a wash for me as far as cooking goes. Hey, it’s the weekend. All I want to do is park myself on the couch and read cookbooks and have food delivered to my house. Alas, my delivery options are pizza (good, but I don’t want pizza all the time) or Dinner Delivered, and I can’t hang with those delivery charges.

Anyway, last Sunday I didn’t plan lunch. I knew what we were having for dinner (this soup from The Cookie Rookie but lunch hadn’t even crossed my mind. We wanted to head to McKay’s to look at books, so since we were going to be on that side of town we decided to check out Kabob-Ster. Kabob-Ster has been on my list for a while, but their location is a little bit prohibitive because we despise Gunbarrel traffic.

Sunday afternoon turned out to be a pretty good time to head out there. It was about 1:30 by the time we got there, which meant that any threat of a “church crowd” had passed. There were several tables occupied but no one in line to order food, so we headed up to place our order. I think they may have been playing catch-up from a little bit of a lunch rush because it did take a bit for our food to come out, but not an annoyingly long time. They also have call-ahead ordering and a drive-thru if you aren’t feeling a wait.

I am a bit of a falafel fanatic, so I decided to go for the falafel plate, with five pieces of falafel and tahini dipping sauce, hummus and pita wedges, and tabbouleh salad. I thought that the falafel was delicious – very crunchy, well-seasoned, and flavorful, and the sauce was a nice cool, creamy foil to the crispy, hot falafel. The hummus was smooth and creamy as well…so much more creamy than I can ever coax my hummus into being. I must work on this. The tabbouleh was good, with a great balance between the vegetable and herbal elements and the bulgur – too often tabbouleh is too much bulgur and not enough of the other stuff. My only complaint was that the pita was a little bit dry, but it got the job (of shoveling hummus into my face) done.
Kabob-ster is a quick service Middle Eastern/Mediterranean restaurant in East Brainerd, Tennessee, near Hamilton Place Mall. | Restaurant review from Chattavore.com
Philip decided to go for the beef shawarma wrap, and honestly, even though my falafel was delicious, I was feeling a little bit jelly of that wrap. It had thinly shaved beef cooked shawarma style with tahini sauce, onions, tomatoes, and pickles. The wrap was grilled and a little bit crispy, and everything was extremely flavorful.
Kabob-ster is a quick service Middle Eastern/Mediterranean restaurant in East Brainerd, Tennessee, near Hamilton Place Mall. | Restaurant review from Chattavore.com
We decided to get some baklava to take home – traditional baklava with walnuts, pistachio baklava, and cashew baklava. I didn’t remember to take pictures of them, but they were relatively inexpensive – about $1.50 apiece. They were all tasty but the traditional walnut baklava was our favorite.

Location notwithstanding, Kabob-ster was a great place for lunch (and if you make a right turn out of the parking lot, then the location really isn’t a big deal). We enjoyed the food and couldn’t complain about the price of $16.28 (8.95 for the falafel plate and $5.95 for Philip’s wrap with no side, plus water to drink).

If you like Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food, give Kabob-ster a try!

Kabob-ster is located at 1408 Gunbarrel Road, Suite 111, Chattanooga, TN 37421. They are open Monday – Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday – Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. You can call Kabob-ster at (423) 475-5370. For more information, you can check out Kabob-ster’s website, kabob-ster.com or find Kabob-ster on Facebook.
Kabob-ster is a quick service Middle Eastern/Mediterranean restaurant in East Brainerd, Tennessee, near Hamilton Place Mall. | Restaurant review from Chattavore.com

Filed Under: By Location, East Brainerd, Restaurants Tagged With: East Brainerd restaurants, Mediterranean restaurants By Mary // Chattavore 1 Comment

Champy’s Chicken East Brainerd

November 16, 2016

The East Brainerd location of Champy's Chicken serves up the same fried chicken & Mississippi Delta favorites of their other locations in a fun atmosphere. | Restaurant Review from Chattavore.com

The East Brainerd location of Champy’s Chicken serves up the same fried chicken & Mississippi Delta favorites of their other locations in a fun atmosphere.
The East Brainerd location of Champy's Chicken serves up the same fried chicken & Mississippi Delta favorites of their other locations in a fun atmosphere. | Restaurant Review from Chattavore.com
Champy’s Chicken has been around in the downtown Chattanooga area for quite some time, and it’s been a few years since I wrote about that location. Located near the campus of UTC, it’s a pretty popular spot, and no doubt people in the East Brainerd area were pretty excited when another location opened on Lee Highway.

Philip and I decided to check out the new Champy’s Chicken on a Saturday afternoon around 4:00 p.m. It was pretty crowded, but we only waited about ten minutes for a table – not too bad considering that there were multiple large parties waiting to be seated.

The Champy’s Chicken East Brainerd location is just as “dive-y” as the downtown location, with lots of graffiti on the wall and defaced dollar bills stuck everywhere (shhhh, don’t tell the Treasury). There are indoor and outdoor seating areas, both filled with people from all walks of life. We were seated inside and our server, Katz, brought our waters to us while we checked out the menu.

When I did my original review of the downtown Chattanooga Champy’s, they didn’t serve fried pickles but rather fried pickled green tomatoes. They no longer serve the fried pickled green tomatoes, but they do serve fried pickles and fried green tomatoes. We decided to try out the fried pickles, which are spears coated in a batter similar (maybe the same as?) their fried chicken coating and served with ranch dressing for dipping. Now, you guys know that fried pickles are my favorite, but I prefer chips to spears. My main reasons for this are that you can eat the whole chip at once and not lose the batter, and you’re much less likely to burn the roof of your mouth on pickle chips. The fried pickle spears were good, though. Unlike the pickle spears served at many restaurants, these were hand-breaded. They were fried crispy and golden, and the coating was crunchy and a little spicy.
The East Brainerd location of Champy's Chicken serves up the same fried chicken & Mississippi Delta favorites of their other locations in a fun atmosphere. | Restaurant Review from Chattavore.com
It has been a long time since I ordered chicken tenders and fries at a restaurant, but I decided to check out Champy’s Chicken’s version of chicken tenders. Their chicken tenders basket includes 4 breaded and fried chicken breast tenders and French fries, served with Champy’s sauce. The chicken was crispy, and like the pickles, a little bit spicy. The fries, while I’m pretty sure were frozen, were still pretty good and had a little bit of a smoky seasoning on them. Champy’s sauce was similar to Chick-Fil-A sauce, like a combination of honey mustard and barbecue sauce. The chicken tenders were huge, so I only ate two and took the other two home (we ate them on biscuits for breakfast the next day).
The East Brainerd location of Champy's Chicken serves up the same fried chicken & Mississippi Delta favorites of their other locations in a fun atmosphere. | Restaurant Review from Chattavore.com
Philip decided to go for the Mississippi Delta Farm-Raised Catfish plate, which was several pieces of cornmeal-breaded catfish fried till crisp and lightly golden, with fries, coleslaw, hush puppies, and tartar sauce. The catfish was tasty, a little spicy, albeit kind of “fishy” (I know it sounds ironic to say that fish is fishy, but you know what I mean) – I think of catfish as a kind of fishy fish, though. Philip liked the coleslaw but it was, well, coleslaw. I ate the hush puppies, and they were very good – spicy with jalapeno and just a little bit sweet.
The East Brainerd location of Champy's Chicken serves up the same fried chicken & Mississippi Delta favorites of their other locations in a fun atmosphere. | Restaurant Review from Chattavore.com
Our server was very friendly, and the service was quick. Do they serve the best fried chicken in town? Probably not (I have yet to make it to Lamar’s, which is rumored to serve the best). It’s not the cheapest, either – our pre-tip total including the fried pickles (which were a bit pricey in the $9 range), the chicken tenders basket, the catfish, and a beer was $40.36. But the food is good, and the atmosphere is fun and good for everyone from families to college students.

For tasty fried chicken and a great atmosphere, check out Champy’s Chicken East Brainerd.

Champy’s Chicken East Brainerd is located at 6925 Lee Highway, Chattanooga, TN 37421. They are open Sunday – Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. and Friday – Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. You can call them at 423-803-2800. You can find more information about Champy’s Chicken on their website or on their Facebook page.
The East Brainerd location of Champy's Chicken serves up the same fried chicken & Mississippi Delta favorites of their other locations in a fun atmosphere. | Restaurant Review from Chattavore.com

Filed Under: By Location, By Type, East Brainerd, Restaurants, Southern & Barbecue Tagged With: East Brainerd restaurants, Southern cooking restaurants By Mary // Chattavore Leave a Comment

Bones Smokehouse

November 2, 2016

Bones Smokehouse is a popular barbecue restaurant in East Brainerd that recently reopened after a lengthy hiatus due to road construction. | restaurant review from Chattavore.com

Bones Smokehouse is a popular barbecue restaurant in East Brainerd that recently reopened after a lengthy hiatus due to road construction.
Bones Smokehouse is a popular barbecue restaurant in East Brainerd that recently reopened after a lengthy hiatus due to road construction. | restaurant review from Chattavore.com
When Bones Smokehouse closed forever ago due to the road construction on East Brainerd Road, I thought they were closing for remodeling. Then one day I drove by and the building was gone. “Well, that’s one way to remodel,” I thought. I later learned that they had decided to close until they could find a different location, but when ages passed and they never resurfaced, I resigned myself to the fact that Bones Smokehouse was gone forever.

Then, something miraculous occurred. Back in August, it popped up in my newsfeed that Bones Smokehouse would be reopening in September. Taking up the space that used to be occupied by the oft-in-the-news Fanatics Sports Bar, Bones reopened to fill the space in East Brainerd’s heart that they’d left a good while back.

As I try to do, I waited a little bit before going…to let the initial crowds die down as well as to let them work out the kinks. We started to go there the weekend before, but they were encouraging people to come for the Tennessee-Alabama game and we were nervous of crowds…so we went to Teriyaki House instead. Finally, the next weekend I met Philip when he got off from work and we headed over.

At 3:00 in the afternoon, there were several tables occupied but the place was not crowded by a long shot. We were seated immediately and our server came over to get our drink orders. I didn’t even have to look at the menu to know that I wanted an order of their fried pickles ($4.95), which I consider to be among the best in Chattanooga (they’re in good company, as my other favorites are at Public House with the pimento cheese). The fried pickles came out quickly, served with tiger sauce, a mayo and horseradish based sauce that’s like Arby’s Horsey sauce but better. I love that they serve pickle chips, not spears (chips are much less dangerous to the roof of your mouth, and they hold together better since you eat them in one bite), and they are hand-breaded with cornmeal. They’re fried to a light crisp and not overly greasy. I’d missed them so.
Bones Smokehouse is a popular barbecue restaurant in East Brainerd that recently reopened after a lengthy hiatus due to road construction. | restaurant review from Chattavore.com
It took me a while to decide what to order. I was torn between going classic (pulled pork sandwich) or a little off the beaten path (pulled pork tacos or enchiladas). I decided that since Philip had the tacos the first time we went to Bones Smokehouse (scroll down to see that review) that I would get something different. I never order chicken at barbecue joints, so I decided to be a little rebellious and do just that. I settled on the pulled smoked chicken with fried okra and french fries ($9.95), also served with a cornbread muffin (garlic toast was also an option). The sides were decent, though I’m fairly certain that both were just frozen standards. The cornbread muffin was pretty good, albeit sweet, which is not my preference. I was not thrilled with the whipped spread in place of butter (why why why do restaurants do this?). The chicken was nice and smoky, though (I did wish that they used dark meat or at least a combination of white and dark meat, since white meat gets dry so easily). I found myself wishing for pork, because it’s just better suited for smoking since it has more fat and stays more moist. I liked the chicken, though, and thought it would have been delicious as chicken salad. I liked all of the sauces (except for the hot, which I did not attempt); however, my favorite was the tiger sauce that was served with the pickles. It reminded me a lot of Alabama white sauce, which is customarily served with smoked chicken.
Bones Smokehouse is a popular barbecue restaurant in East Brainerd that recently reopened after a lengthy hiatus due to road construction. | restaurant review from Chattavore.com
Bones Smokehouse is a popular barbecue restaurant in East Brainerd that recently reopened after a lengthy hiatus due to road construction. | restaurant review from Chattavore.com
Philip decided to go for the special, which was a blackened prime rib sandwich ($8.95). Bones Smokehouse serves smoked prime rib every Friday night, so I suppose they had leftovers that they wanted to use up. It was served on a bun with lettuce and tomato, and our server also brought him a cup of tiger sauce. We were surprised to see a large slice of prime rib on the bun instead of more “shaved” slices, which is what we were expecting. Prime rib, you guys, is a perfect medium for smoking, texture wise (I am sure that some purists would turn their nose up at the idea of putting a prime side of beef in a smoker, but seriously, it works). The amount of fat in the cut makes it super tender and moist, and it was so flavorful and smoky. When I tried it, I was concerned that since it was a pretty thick slice of meat that it would be difficult to bite through, but it was extremely tender and easy to bite into. The tiger sauce was a perfect complement (we always eat our prime rib with a little prepared horseradish).
Bones Smokehouse is a popular barbecue restaurant in East Brainerd that recently reopened after a lengthy hiatus due to road construction. | restaurant review from Chattavore.com
Pre-tip, our total (for my pulled chicken plate, Philip’s sandwich, fried pickles, and a craft beer) was $32.05. Maybe a little pricier than some people would expect for barbecue, but Bones Smokehouse has lots of items on their menu that you would expect at a barbecue restaurant. They know their way around a smoker, and they also know their way around some fried pickles.

I for one am glad that Bones Smokehouse is back in business!

Bones Smokehouse is now located at 7601 East Brainerd Road, Chattanooga, TN 37421. They are open Monday – Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. You can call Bones Smokehouse at (423) 710-3382. Bones Smokehouse does not have a website, but you can find more information on the Bones Smokehouse Facebook page.
Bones Smokehouse is a popular barbecue restaurant in East Brainerd that recently reopened after a lengthy hiatus due to road construction. | restaurant review from Chattavore.com
Original Post:

Someone give me a cookie. I have managed to only throw in the towel and go out to eat ONE TIME on a weeknight since school started back last week! That’s an achievement, my friends. I wouldn’t have even done that if it hadn’t been for the fact that I HAD TO go to Hobby Lobby Monday night for teacher things….in this case, ribbon for my word wall. My tooth-achingly adorable word wall. But anyway, I’ll stop talking about teacher things and move on to Bones.

Needless to say, after two weeks of marathon kid-wrangling (I have a fantastic little class this year, by the way) I was way exhausted and last night I was really, really looking forward to having someone else cook for me (though Philip did make pizza for me the other night when I had open house!). I had to go to the School Box for this really fantastically life changing tape called “mauvelous” tape (teachers or anyone who wants to hang paper on a wall, check it out) so East Brainerd was an easy choice for today’s review, especially with the Southern Brewer’s Festival taking place downtown and rendering it a no-Chattavore zone because I canNOT risk getting caught in a crowd. There’s a Chinese place that Philip frequently visits with a friend who lives on that end of town, but it’s cash-only so I suggested that we ease on down the road a bit and visit Bones Smokehouse, since we never have cash and also a friend had mentioned to me that Bones Smokehouse had fantastic fried pickles.

A very friendly host greeted us at the door and immediately took us to a booth. Our server, Hilary, took our drink order and left us to check out the menu for a minute. It didn’t take us long to settle on our orders, but they do have an interesting menu for a barbecue restaurant. The appetizers section includes the standards (wings, queso, Brunswick stew, which is a must-have at a BBQ joint) but also a barbecue chicken pizza, a “smokehouse quesadilla”, and, of course, the fried pickles. They have the usual sandwiches but also some more interesting sandwich options like “The Big Pig” with sausage, pulled pork, and bacon, and an overloaded hot dog. The salad menu is definitely more expansive than most barbecue restaurants, and they offer a “favorites” menu that includes several things you probably wouldn’t expect to find in a barbecue restaurant: chicken pot pie, enchiladas, vegetable lasagna, and open-faced roast beef sandwich. They also offer catering options.

Obviously I had to try the fried pickles. It seems that most of the fried pickles that I encounter these days are spears, which I don’t mind from a flavor standpoint but from a mouth-burning standpoint they definitely hold the heat longer triggering more roof-of-the-mouth injuries. Chips are much safer and in the end you really do probably get more on your plate. These were lightly batter-coated, not to a point that they were “wearing a jacket”-you could still see the pickle. I have had some fried pickles that sent me into sodium overload. These were not among those. Yes, they were salty, because pickles are salty….but they obviously know to be shy with the salt on the coating to compensate. These were great, and the creamy horseradish sauce served on the side was a nice (only slightly spicy and a little bit sweet) departure from the usual ranch dressing dipping sauce. Hooray for fried pickles!

Bones Smokehouse was a popular restaurant in East Brainerd, Tennessee that unfortunately is now closed. Hopefully they'll re-open in the future! | restaurant review from Chattavore.com

While I was intrigued by some of the menu items, I felt like I needed to order the pork-stuffed potato for comparison, since that’s pretty much my standard order at barbecue places. The stuffed potato comes with your choice of meat, cheese, sour cream, butter, bacon, and chives (though the chives were actually green onions….but I like both on my potatoes so I didn’t mind that). It was a salt-crusted potato cut open with the toppings sort of stuffed inside (stuffed potato, hmmmm) unlike that at many restaurants that lay their potatoes all the way open and drown them in ingredients. There’s no sauce…you add your own at the table from a choice of mild, hot, Carolina sweet, or a mustard-based sauce. I tasted the Carolina and the mustard-based sauce before deciding to stick with the standard thick red mild sauce. I found it to have a nice flavor but not overpowering. I would have liked a little more smoke flavor to my pork, but it had a good texture and taste. The potato was big enough to fill me up but not so huge that I couldn’t finish it. It was on par with the better pork stuffed potatoes I’ve had in town.

Bones Smokehouse was a popular restaurant in East Brainerd, Tennessee that unfortunately is now closed. Hopefully they'll re-open in the future! | restaurant review from Chattavore.com

Philip decided to order the pork tacos: “tender mojo seasoned pulled pork in a soft flour tortilla with smoked corn salsa, jack & cheddar cheese, red pepper aioli, and shredded lettuce, served with red beans and rice. The menu is actually incorrect-the tortillas were not soft. They were freshly fried to a nice crispy texture, which I found to be an impressive touch. The pork had a great flavor and all of the elements really worked well together. The star of the plate from Philip’s perspective, though, were the red beans and rice, which contained (at least from my observation) onions, peppers, corn, and tomatoes. He was entranced by the smell and had me smell them too, prompting Hilary to check on us to make sure everything was okay, then he kept raving about how great they tasted. He said they “taste like Totino’s pizza, but in a good way”. Total compliment because we love Totino’s pizza (though we don’t eat them any more because sub-prime meat, ick). A very interesting menu item indeed and a hit for us.

Bones Smokehouse was a popular restaurant in East Brainerd, Tennessee that unfortunately is now closed. Hopefully they'll re-open in the future! | restaurant review from Chattavore.com

We liked the atmosphere Bone’s Smokehouse…it felt like, well, a barbecue restaurant. Everything was wood, the ceilings weren’t too high, it was darkish but not gloomy. Hilary was amazingly friendly and I had to make sure to get her name so I could mention her here. She did a great job. The service was quick but not so much that we were concerned about how the food was being prepared. The prices were good-almost exactly $20 before tip. Since East Brainerd feels like the other side of the world to us, it is unlikely that we will ever become regulars, but we would like to go back sometime-perhaps to try the Friday night smoked prime rib advertised on the marquee-that sounds truly interesting. It’s kind of out of the way (for me, anyway) but it’s been around for a while (since 1999).

Check out Bones Smokehouse!

Note: Due to the road-widening project on East Brainerd Road, Bones Smokehouse closed and the building was torn down in the fall of 2014. Rumors have circulated that they were seeking another location, but this has not happened yet (updated July 2016).

Bones Smokehouse is located at 9012 East Brainerd Road, Chattanooga, TN 37421. They are open Monday-Thursday, 11-9 and Friday-Saturday, 11-10 (closed Sundays). You can call them at 423-894-2663. Check out their website, www.bonessmokehousechattanooga.com. You can like them on Facebook though it appears that page is not active and you will have more luck with this page, which is set up like a personal page (you have to send a friend request).

Bone's Smokehouse on Urbanspoon

Bone's Smokehouse on Foodio54

I also wanted to take a moment to address a comment that I received yesterday on my Elemental post from last week. The comment was in very clear violation of my comments policy (found on my disclosures/privacy policy-I’ll list the details below, though) so I deleted it; however, I figure it’s a good time to do a little recap of my review policies.

The reader basically stated (in a very crude way) that he did not respect my reviews because I only write positive reviews. I spent a lot of time in my earlier days as a blogger trying to decide if I wanted to include negative reviews. In the end, I decided that (a) I am a blogger, not a critic; (b) I don’t want to write anything that could potentially damage someone’s business; and (c) not everyone shares my tastes; it up to you guys to decide your feelings about a restaurant. If you are a regular reader of my restaurant posts, you know that I will point out if there is a problem with an experience but as long as my overall experience was positive I’ll still write about it and be nice. The weekends that you don’t see a post (that happens occasionally)? I probably had a bad experience. I’ve chosen quite a few times not to write about a restaurant. You can read more about my decision to be positive here.

Finally, my comments policy. My disclosures/privacy policy includes this statement:

“If you don’t agree with me about a restaurant review, feel free to share your opinion on Urbanspoon, Yelp!, or one of the many other travel and restaurant sites on the internet. However, any unnecessarily negative opinions posted in my comments section (I will accept constructive and nicely worded criticism) will be deleted (you can read more about my policy of positive-only reviews here). You are welcome to post your opinions on other posts, but if you attack other readers or myself, your comments will be removed. I reserve the right to decide what does and doesn’t belong on my blog.”

And you as readers reserve the right to disagree with me…and if you don’t like my blog overall, well, you reserve the right not to read it. But I certainly appreciate those of you who do!

Filed Under: By Location, By Type, East Brainerd, Restaurants, Southern & Barbecue Tagged With: barbecue restaurants, CLOSED restaurants, East Brainerd restaurants By Mary // Chattavore 5 Comments

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About Chattavore

Hi, I'm Mary! Welcome to Chattavore, a destination for people who want to feed themselves and their families well every day! Life can be crazy, which means that getting dinner on the table can be a challenge (more often than not!) and my mission is to take all your favorite recipes and figure out how to serve them on a Tuesday.

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