sandwich/burger/hot dog restaurants Archives - Page 5 of 11

Zarzour’s Café (Downtown Chattanooga)

May 30, 2015

Zarzour’s Café is a Chattanooga classic. It’s been around since 1918 and serves delicious burgers plus meat and three and desserts!

I have been meaning to go to Zarzour’s Café since I wrote my first burger list in 2013 and a commenter declared my list invalid since I had not tried Zarzour’s, which is the oldest restaurant in Chattanooga, having opened in 1918. The problem is, they are not open on the weekend and they are only open 11-3 on weekdays. Plus, I wasn’t sure if they took credit cards (they do not) and I never have cash so I knew that visiting would take some planning ahead so I wouldn’t get caught without a way to pay. Since I’m off from work right now (woohoo summer break!) this gave me the perfect opportunity to plan ahead. We grabbed some cash and headed downtown.

We got there around 12:45 or 1 and were able to easily find parking on the street (there is a small lot next to the restaurant as well). The place is small (and smells like burgers-that is, glorious-and it was fairly crowded but there were still several tables open. We seated ourselves and perused the menu that was on the table, even though we really didn’t need to. There are a handful of items that are on the menu all the time-burgers and fries and a couple of salads-plus rotating daily specials and desserts. The specials come with two vegetables and tea or you can add a soda for an additional charge.

A server took our drink order then when she returned with our waters she took our order-two cheeseburgers, one all the way and one with no onions, plus fries. A lady (who turned out to be the owner, Shannon) was manning the flat-top griddle and the fryer behind the counter while joking around with customers and dropping a few curse words (so beware-and maybe sit in the back room-if you have ears that are sensitive to that sort of thing…I do not), and it appeared that the two servers were getting the other items from a stove in a small room in the back. Most of the people that came in while we were there ordered burgers but a few did get specials. There were several people that left while we were there who were obviously regulars and were on a first name basis with the staff. I also saw a server helping a man with a cane carry an order to his car. That’s service, guys.

Our orders came out fairly quickly, especially considering that one person was preparing all the burgers and fries. I’ll get the fries out of the way first…they were standard frozen crinkle-cut fries. Pretty good but nothing special as fries go. It doesn’t matter, though, because it’s all about the burger here. One bite and I was hooked….the meat had that crispy quality to it from being browned on the griddle, but the inside was juicy and the whole thing was perfectly seasoned…I’ll give the meat a 4 since it was cooked perfectly but I assume that it is just regular, nothing special about it ground beef. The bread gets a 5…it was a Niedlov’s bun and GAH. It was cooked to a perfect crisp on the flat-top. Toppings are a 3.5 …just the right amount of condiments (mayonnaise and mustard) so it was not dripping and the pickles, lettuce, and tomato were fine. Cheese also a 4-American cheese is just the best for melting but others contribute more to the flavor. As for structural integrity, I’ve got to give it a 5…it was darn greasy but it held together perfectly all the way to the last bite. Size is also a 5…it was not huge and I didn’t feel stuffed after eating it but I was not hungry for several hours after. Overall, this burger gets a 4.4. I feel like it needs a bonus, though, and I’m going to hold onto that for later because this burger was just so darn good (and that crispy bread tho!) that even though a lot of its components were nothing special everything together just worked so perfectly.

So I can’t tell you much about Zarzour’s other than that it’s a popular place with a salty-mouthed owner manning the griddle (which I found hilarious). And it serves amazing burgers.

I’ll have to go back to try out the specials and the desserts because those desserts sounded pretty delicious. But I know that restaurants don’t stick around for nearly 100 years if they aren’t fantastic, so they are definitely doing something right. By the way, our total was $18 even pre-tip (you put your tip in a jar on the counter). So go there!

Zarzour’s Café is located at 1627 Rossville Avenue (not Rossville Blvd.), Chattanooga, TN 37408. They are open Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. You can call them at (423) 266-0424. They do not have a website, but you can like Zarzour’s Café on Facebook.

Purple Daisy Picnic Café (Revisit)

April 6, 2015

Purple Daisy Picnic Café is a popular restaurant near downtown Chattanooga & Lookout Mountain (St. Elmo) that serves great BBQ, Southern food, & burgers!

So, this was not supposed to be a Purple Daisy revisit post. We were actually planning to go to Zarzour’s since I’ve been told that a Chattanooga burger list is invalid if Zarzour’s is not a consideration. I tried to call them to see if they take credit cards (does anyone know the answer to this?) and got no answer…so they either were too busy to answer or they were closed for Good Friday. We decided not to take the chance and instead went to Purple Daisy. I’ve been before, but want to try the burger and the barbecue (I always order the rainbow sandwich).

The place was pretty busy right at noon but we were immediately seated at a table outside. The server took our drink order and I decided to deviate from my usual water and have fruit tea instead. The fruit tea is a blend of tea, juices, and spices. It tastes mostly like tea and pineapple juice…it’s a little tart and a little sweet and very delicious.

Since a burger was my mission, I didn’t have to think about my order at all. I decided on the single ($4.95…there’s a double for $7.95) with Cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickle, mayo, mustard, and ketchup. I decided to get hash brown casserole instead of the chips that come with the burger, because has brown casserole is a non-negotiable when I go to the Purple Daisy. It’s creamy, cheesy, and very flavorful, just like my mom makes it. The burger is charcoal grilled. It was well-cooked and tasted like a burger you’d get at a cookout. I’d rate it a 3 for meat-well-seasoned, cooked through just right, and with a nice grilled flavor. For bread, I’ll give it a 3-standard soft bun like you’d get in the bread aisle of a grocery store. For cheese, a 4…a decent amount of Cheddar, melted on top; for toppings, a 3-just the standard toppings, maybe a little too heavy on the condiments. For structural integrity, I’ll give it a 3 as well. It held together pretty well until I got to the middle, when the ample condiments started sliding around on the lettuce and tomato and it pretty much fell apart. Size? A 4.5…it was a good-sized burger, not so huge that I felt stuffed but definitely not small. Overall burger score: 3.4.

Philip decided to get the pork barbecue tacos with a side of hot slaw (extra-they don’t come with a side). The tacos came on flour tortillas with cheddar cheese, iceberg lettuce, and a little bit of original barbecue sauce plus a small cup of sour cream. The barbecue here is very good-fresh tasting, shredded (not chopped), smoky, and moist. They offer three sauces: original, sweet, and hot. Philip didn’t care for the sweet much but liked the hot and the original. The tacos overall were very tasty, simple enough to allow the flavor of the pork to shine through. The slaw? HOT. Philip isn’t very sensitive to spicy foods and he found the hot slaw very hot, seasoned with cayenne and with chopped jalapeños mixed in. Again, very fresh, very flavorful, but don’t plan on eating all of it unless you are used to eating very spicy food.

I love The Purple Daisy Picnic Café, and apparently a lot of other people do too. The place was full the whole time that we were there and people were coming in and out the whole time. The food at The Purple Daisy is very consistent. The menu is fairly limited-barbecue, burgers, deli sandwiches, hot dogs, salads, and a few other items, plus sides and a couple of desserts (Oreo dirt cake and banana pudding)-allowing them to focus on serving flavorful and fresh food. I highly recommend The Purple Daisy! By the way, our pre-tip total for one drink, a burger, pork tacos, and 2 sides was just under $20.

I highly recommend The Purple Daisy!

The Purple Daisy Picnic Café is located at 4001 St. Elmo Avenue, Chattanooga, TN 37409. They are open Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. and Saturday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. You can call them at 423-822-6477. Check out The Purple Daisy Picnic Café website and like The Purple Daisy Picnic Café on Facebook. You can also follow The Purple Daisy on Twitter.

The Blue Plate Revisit

March 23, 2015

The Blue Plate is a great downtown Chattanooga restaurant near the Tennessee Aquarium that serves great, fresh local food!

I love spring more than words can say. Not quite as much as I love summer, when I live in shorts and tank tops and flip flops and get to pretend that I’m a full-time blogger…but spring is when I feel like I am coming back to life after the winter cold (I despise winter as much as I love summer). It’s been so rainy around here lately, which has put a bit of a damper on my excitement about the warming trend, especially since I spend such a large portion of my day driving.

Anyway, this past Saturday was gorgeous, sunny, not exactly warm, per se, but warm enough that I could wear just a cardigan over my t-shirt and not feel like I was going to freeze. To celebrate, we headed down to the Chattanooga Riverfront. That’s the other thing I love about spring-my city is beautiful all year, but when the warmth returns, it springs into its full glory (Bradford pear trees excluded….my sinuses are killing me. Plus I hate those things after the one that we used to have in our front yard broke in half and fell on top of our house. The damage was minimal but we promptly removed it and replaced it with a perky dwarf magnolia).

We decided to go sit on the patio at The Blue Plate, which I first wrote about in 2012. You guys! That was when Chattavore was still a baby blog. I decided that we needed to go back so I could check out their burger as I get ready to revamp my burger list. You guys might be seeing a lot of burgers and revisits for a while, but normal blog activities will resume once I do my list update. I think I owe a lot of places a second visit anyway…it’s kind of fun to go back and see if things have changed and if so, how!

There wasn’t much thought that went into my order. Double-stack cheeseburger, with two house-blended beef patties, American cheese, toasted local (ahem, Niedlov’s) bun, house spread, and pickles, served with hand cut chips. The chips were good, albeit a little under seasoned. The burger was surprisingly (I’m not sure why surprisingly) delicious. It was a very simple, classic, diner style burger that tasted like it was cooked on a flat-top…a little crusty from the cook on the outside and still very juicy. The American cheese was simple, perfectly melted. I’d give it a 4 for meat (well cooked, well seasoned, very flavorful), a 5 for bread, a 4 for cheese (American wouldn’t be my first choice but works great here), a 4 for toppings (minimal, which I have decided is pretty ideal because it lets the meat shine through; the house spread was a little bit sweet and a little spicy-delicious), a 5 for structural integrity (i.e. because of the minimal toppings, the burger held together very well and the bread didn’t slide around at all), and a 3.5 for size (a little on the small side, but I really didn’t mind because I didn’t feel bad about eating the whole thing!) . Overall, a 4.25 out of 5. Impressive!

Philip decided to get the famous fried chicken wrap, with the Blue Plate’s famous buttermilk fried chicken, shredded lettuce, diced tomato, mixed cheese, house cheese sauce and all wrapped in a flour tortilla. It was gigantic and had a good balance of ingredients. That fried chicken-wow! It’s delicious. Philip really enjoyed this wrap, which also came with chips.

Since I’ve never really heard anything about Blue Plate’s burger, I didn’t really think of it as a contender for top burger, but I was really amazed by how great the burger was!

The Blue Plate serves really great, high quality food with as much local food as possible. And they don’t have a microwave in the building, which makes me happy.

We really enjoyed our meal and our first opportunity to dine outside in 2015. I’m looking forward to more opportunities like this…and more burgers! By the way, our bill was just under $20 before tip.

The Blue Plate is located at 191 Chestnut Street Unit B, Chattanooga, TN 37402 (across from Ross’s Landing and the Tennessee Aquarium). They are open Tuesday-Friday, 7:30 a.m.-9 p.m. and Saturday-Sunday 8 a.m.-9 p.m. You can call them at 423-648-6767. Check out their website, theblueplate.info and their menu. You can like The Blue Plate on Facebook.

Mimi’s Deli & Bakery (Hixson, Tennessee)

January 26, 2015

Mimi’s Deli & Bakery is a great, family-owned sandwich shop and bakery in Hixson, Tennessee. I think they have the best sandwiches this side of the county!

A few years back, Mimi’s Gluten-Free Market opened up in Hixson, right next door to O’Charley’s. Though we aren’t gluten-free, we went in several times then sort of inexplicably stopped going…I have no idea why. They carried quite a few products that we couldn’t find anywhere else without having to drive to Whole Foods or Earth Fare. They mentioned to us on one visit that they were hoping to eventually add housemade sandwiches and baked goods to their offerings…then one day we drove by and noticed that the place was no longer Mimi’s Gluten-Free Market but rather Mimi’s Deli & Bakery.

So it turns out Hixson wasn’t quite ready for such a niche market, and the family that owned the shop decided that rather than close their business they would change their business into a restaurant. It took me a while to go in, though I’m really not sure why. Let me be clear….this isn’t Mimi’s Gluten-Free Deli & Bakery, though you can have your sandwich on gluten-free bread if you so choose, and the bakery case is full of gluten-free options like big, gloriously iced cupcakes, brownies, and cake pops (plus a few gluten-full items for those of you who are a little frightened of the gluten-free offerings).

In the back of the space, there’s still a small area selling some food items, including prepared gluten-free breads and frozen items and baking items. The rest of the place is full of tables. The seating is ample, so you can find a spot after you place your order and pay at the counter. The menu items are written on a gigantic chalkboard wall, but for details you can grab a menu at the counter to peruse. There are sixteen sandwiches, five hot dog options, burgers, salads, soups, and sides.

The lady at the counter recommended the cheesesteak, with sliced beef, onions, peppers, Provolone cheese, mayonnaise, and a house seasoning blend on an 8-inch hoagie roll. I have a hard time passing up a well-made cheesesteak, though they are admittedly difficult to find. I am usually sorely disappointed by cheesesteaks that are full of tough meat, not enough cheese, and barely cooked vegetables served on a dry and overly crunchy roll. This was not one of those sandwiches. The meat was perfectly cooked-so tender and deliciously seasoned. The vegetables were caramelized with just a tiny bit of crunch, and there was a ton of cheese melted on top. The roll was chewy but soft enough to bite through and the whole thing was hot and fabulously delicious. I’ve been watching my caloric intake, but I threw that out the window for this meal and ate the whole thing. And I didn’t regret it even a little bit.

Philip is a sucker for a Reuben, so he took the lady’s other recommendation and ordered the Reuben (the traditional Reuben with corned beef, not the California Reuben with turkey). The Reuben was made on grilled marbled rye with corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and house made Russian dressing. Everything was well-heated through (unlike some other places that serve Reubens with cold corned beef in the center where the grill just doesn’t quite get) and the ingredients were well-balanced-not too much or too little of any one item. The Russian dressing was tasty…the best Reubens are always made with house made dressing. We also ordered a basket of hand-cut natural fries, which were tossed with house seasoning. They were skin-on, which you guys know that I love, perfectly cooked, and deliciously seasoned.

One other thing! I had to take a picture of the ketchup. Unfortunately, a lot of times when you eat in restaurants you are assaulted with cheap food-service ketchup (a lot of times that’s bottled as “fancy ketchup). Not here. The ketchup was Hunt’s! My BFF is a ketchup connoisseur, so I had to text this to her as I knew it would make her smile.

I’m going to take a leap here and tell you that Mimi’s Deli & Bakery has the best deli sandwiches in Hixson, at least from what we’ve experienced.

The people were very friendly and are obviously committed to serving a quality product. The prices were good as well-for our sandwiches and fries (we drank water), we paid about $17. There were quite a few people in and out while we were there, so this place is not a secret…but the service was impressively quick. Get to Mimi’s, you guys!

Mimi’s Deli & Bakery is located at 5036 Hixson Pike, Hixson, TN 37343 (between O’Charley’s and The Bread Basket). You can call them at 423-877-8700. They are open Monday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Additionally, they offer delivery (!) Monday-Friday, 11-2 p.m. as well as call-ahead ordering. You can find more information on the Mimi’s Deli & Bakery website, including their menu. Be sure to like Mimi’s Deli & Bakery on Facebook!

Kevin Brown Burgers (Ooltewah, TN)

October 27, 2014

Kevin Brown Burgers is a popular hometown spot serving classic-style burgers, sandwiches, and barbecue in Ooltewah, Tennessee!
I’m a major homebody, you guys. During the week, I do my best to never leave the house after I arrive home from work. Usually I am successful. I kind of get stuck in patterns on the weekends as well, and we tend to stick close to home or to downtown when choosing places to eat. For that reason, Chattavore is heavy on reviews of spots in Soddy-Daisy, Hixson, and Downtown Chattanooga. Ooltewah and Cleveland have been terribly neglected. Sorry, guys. I didn’t mean to leave you out…you’re just so far away! In the search for new blog material, though, I realized what a large market I have yet to really venture into, so I started searching for some places in that area to try.

Since I have been planning for a while to update my burger list (I’m going to make it a top ten), I’ve been thinking that I need to make it to a few places that I’ve heard are great for burgers. It made sense, then, that I’d start my Ooltewah dining experience with Kevin Brown Burgers. After a Google Maps fiasco (really, it isn’t that hard to find! I’m just not very familiar with the Ooltewah area), we arrived at Kevin Brown Burgers around 2:00 in the afternoon and found a packed out parking lot. The tables in this tiny, quaint diner (formica tables, booths, a dining counter, and sparse decorations) were all full, but a couple of diners got up right after we walked in so we were seated quickly. A very friendly lady took our drink orders while we checked out the menu, which consists of appetizers, burgers, sandwiches, dinner plates, salads, and specialties (like nachos, barbecue, and stuffed potatoes).

We decided to order the fried pickles (served with a side of ranch) because, well….fried pickles. You know I always have to try out the fried pickles. The fried pickles were spears coated in a seasoned crumb breading. I have begun to recognize when I’m served a food service frozen fried pickle and, well, this was one of those times. I like those well enough, but it’s always a little disappointing when the fried pickles are frozen. I was here for the burger, though.

The large burger is an 8 ounce patty and the small burger is 5 ounces. The man at the table next to us had the large burger and it. was. gigantic. Like the size of my head, I do not kid. Now, I love a gigantic burger as much as anyone but I’ve set a goal for myself to be able to button my smallest jeans ASAP and that burger was not going to contribute to meeting that goal, so I went for the small cheeseburger-5 ounce patty with American cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion (which I skipped, of course), pickle, mayonnaise, and mustard on a small hamburger bun. It was a delicious burger, a classic burger-well-cooked, well-seasoned, with just the right amount of toppings and condiments-not so much that stuff was dripping or falling off of it.

Philip decided to order the brisket sandwich. It was a heaping pile of smoked, sliced brisket on a large hamburger bun with mayo, lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickle. The meat was perfectly tender, falling apart and very moist. It was seasoned beautifully and had a great smoky flavor. Philip did say that he would have rather had it on some other type of bread, but thought that the toppings, which one would probably not normally put on a brisket sandwich, went really well. We also ordered steak fries, which were the standard frozen variety.

While the sides and the appetizers were pretty much the same as you’d find in just about any other roadside diner, the burgers and the smoked meat at Kevin Brown Burgers are definitely worth venturing to the other side of town from time to time for. The people here were very friendly and this is clearly a neighborhood favorite-and an affordable one, at that. Pre-tip, our appetizer, sandwiches, and fries were around $16 and some change.

If you’re looking for a great burger on the Ooltewah side of town, give Kevin Brown Burgers a try!

Kevin Brown Burgers is located at 8228 Mahan Gap Road, Ooltewah, TN 37363. You can call them at 423-344-8344. Their Facebook page says that they are open Tuesday-Saturday 11-8, but when we were there we found out that they actually close at 3:00 on Saturday so that the owner can spend the weekend with his family (several Urbanspoon reviewers also caution that you might want to call first to make sure they haven’t run out of burgers…apparently it happens sometimes). They do not have a website, but you can like Kevin Brown Burgers on Facebook.

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