chow with chaz

Tag: food

  • Battle of the Bakeries

    Knoxville Edition

    Two of my go to spots in Knoxville are bakeries. Magpies Bakery and Wild Love Bakehouse. These both have incredible offerings, but they can be quite different. Whoever said you can’t compare apples and oranges is wrong.

    I will start with something they both do…cookies. Wild Love generally has one or two cookie options. Their salted chocolate chip is maybe the most common, its ok. I don’t love the salt. The cookies also tend to lean a bit dry, and that goes for the majority of their cookies. The chocolate sable is a bit better, but it really just tastes like a brownie. Magpies cookies are soft and just chewy enough to be out of this world. They did a chocolate chip cookie with oreos baked in and its maybe my favorite cookie I have ever had. They also do cookie sandwiches. The oatmeal cookie sandwich is magical. One of my favorite desserts ever.

    I think where Wild Love really shines is in their buns. Everyone loves some good buns. Their apple morning bun is probably my favorite thing that they do. Their normal morning bun is really good as well. They also do a hand tart, but these always just leave a bit to be desired for me. It’s a bit too much filo dough for me, I want the filling!! I also enjoy their tea loaves, their citrus tea loaf is phenomenal, but I have only seen it once.

    Magpies shines in their cupcakes and actual cakes. They generally have special cupcakes for the week. One week was a brown sugar espresso and oh my lanta was it delicious. The strawberry cream is also amazing. I cannot think of a bad cupcake I have had from there. Their carrot cake will also knock your socks off. This is a favorite of ours.

    In this battle of the bakeries, my winner is Magpies. They do specialize in different things, and I like cupcakes more than pastries so that does not help Wild Love’s case. Magpies cookies are just far and away better too though, so it is a pretty decisive victory for me. There are a couple people in my life that I am pretty confident would pick Wild Love. You cannot go wrong with either, and you really can’t go wrong by just getting both! Love you all!

    PS Sorry for still not having pictures. I will have a restaurant review next week that I promise will include pictures!!

  • Eat Around Athens

    City number two is the city I lived in for 6 years, and one I visited last month. I was able to hit up a few of my favorites, but I will help you plan your perfect day of food and drinks in Athens.

    Athens has an incredible food and coffee scene so this one may be a bit tougher. I miss quite a few of my coffee shops, so there may be a few or’s thrown in there. I saw that Athens Bagel recently opened back, so I am starting there. I am going sausage, egg and cheese on Jalapeno cheddar. Man do I miss that bagel. The shop was closed for the last year or two I lived in Athens. You can take a short drive or a decent walk over to 1000 Faces. You cannot go wrong with any coffee there. For lunch I am going to grab a burger. In my opinion you have three options here, Clocked which is a small diner spot downtown (get the feta burger), Grindhouse (any burger is great but you have to get the blue cheese fries), or maybe my favorite in Baddies Burgers. They only have a few options but they do all of them well. Get you some pudding as well. For my afternoon coffee, I have two options as well. If you are just wanting a drip, head over to Choco Coffee on Baxter. Grab a bag of beans on the way out, you will not regret it. If you are feeling a latte (specifically a spiced chai), Jittery Joes. You can go to any, but the best atmosphere by far is the Five Points location. If it’s nice out, enjoy the patio. There is approximately 4 billion bars in Athens, but for a nice cocktail, I am going to The Place. Their upstairs bar is really neat and they make fantastic drinks. You could also swing by South Kitchen. Super cool atmosphere and they make great drinks as well. If you’re wanting to try several beers for cheap, go to Terrapin. It is $15ish for 6 pours (they are GENEROUS) and you get a glass. On our trip we had originally planned for Cali and Titos on the Eastside. I would highly recommend going there. Their sandwiches and drinks are just as good as the atmosphere, which is top notch. Understandably, it was quite a long wait, so we called an audible and went to Taste of India. I love Indian food and this one doesn’t miss. I am not sure the name of it, but the cauliflower appetizer will blow your mind. And you can never go wrong with Chicken Tikka Masala. For a post dinner drink, it is hard to beat Bar Bruno. It is a cozy little spot with a fantastic offering of Italian wine and cocktails. It also has another atmosphere that is top notch. Writing this made me realize how well Athens bars and restaurants do atmosphere. For a fairly small place, there are some incredible and unique bars and restaurants. Just beware of the “fans” that will bark at you…GO VOLS!!!

    PS. Sorry for the lack of pictures. I still don’t feel comfortable being that person taking pictures of their food.

  • Beard Brothers Coffee Review

    I visited a new coffee shop today; it is actually my second time but I ordered wrong and didn’t hang out the first time. Today I am at Beard Brothers Coffee in Maryville, TN. I had heard great things about them from a friend, so today I finally checked it out. When you walk in, it has the looks of an antique hunting cabin. The furniture is all antique, there are old pictures on the wall, taxidermy deer, and an assortment of other antiques. It is such a unique but also very welcoming atmosphere. The atmosphere feels especially warm as there is still snow on the ground. It truly looks like a place where you could just walk out back and roast marshmallow.

    Now the coffee. With an atmosphere like this, I would come back even if the coffee wasn’t my favorite. Did not have to worry about that though. They have an assortment of coffee and tea options with some very unique lattes. My first drink here was a Mexican Mocha which was basically a mocha with cayenne. I don’t like spicy drinks so that was on me but I panic ordered. Happens to the best of us. Today I got a black coffee. They had two roasts, a light and a medium. The barista had to brew the medium which he said was his favorite, but patients isn’t a strong suit of mine so I went with the light roast. This is the one my friend told me about anyway, so I was glad to get to try it. Holy mackerel it is delicious. I am not super good with tasting notes but I will give it the ole college try. The initial note is your typical coffee note, just that tad bit of coffee bitterness, not off putting at all. The coffee finishes with this delicious dark Hershey chocolate note that just makes me want to keep drinking it, which I will do because as I always do, I ordered too large of a drink. Hello jitters!! I’m going to come up with my rating system right now (subject to change):

    I am going to give the Atmosphere 4.85 chomps out of 5.

    I am going give the coffee 4.5 chomps.  

    That leaves Beard Brothers with a 4.68 chomps out of 5.

    I highly recommend it if you are in the Maryville area.

  • Coffee Shop Chronicles

    Coffee shops have food too so we’re going to include them on chow with chaz. Coffee shops are some of my favorite places on earth. My love story with coffee started like most…I thought it was gross. I would try my mom’s and hated it!! Eventually I matured, some would argue that, but I had my first 8 am class in college. For some reason, these were so much more difficult to wake up for than being at school by 7:45 my entire life. Anywho, I figured it was time to try that awful beverage. So I dove right in with the most intense coffee you can find, a white chocolate mocha. Holy moses this was delicious. As of writing this, it has probably been over a decade since I had one. I eventually started drinking it with cream and sugar and finally evolved into feeling as cool as possible…”room for cream and sugar?” “no thanks.”

    In college, I would do all of my schoolwork (which if you knew me, wasn’t as much as it should have been) at Milledgeville Starbucks. During grad school, hours a day were spent there. I spent much of my twenties still being drawn to Starbucks. As I developed a love for different roasts from places all over the world. This led me to trying various coffee shops around Athens and new ones whenever I visited a new city. I developed an infatuation for these places. The variety of beans matched the varieties of coffee shops there are out there. My Sunday afternoons in Athens, were always spent at one of the many coffee shops. Sometimes the local chain of Jittery Joes (caremello and spiced dirty chais!), 1000 Faces or Choco Pronto which still roast some of my favorite coffee I have ever had to Local which had the largest variety of coffee of any place I had been. It wasn’t necessarily the coffee that drew me to these places though, it was the places and the atmosphere. Anytime you walk into a place and hear “the usual?” it just makes you feel at home.

    It may seem crazy, but one of my biggest worries when I was moving from Athens to Knoxville was leaving behind those places that had grown very dear to me. I was quite worried that I wouldn’t find that in Knoxville. Again, I totally understand if that is bizarre to you, but these were my sanctuary’s. If you’re reading this, then you can probably figure out that I love to write. (You’ll see at the end that I just paused right there to take a picture for the blog…from the coffee shop in which I am writing). Theres a 98% chance that any blog of mine that you have read was written from one of these shops. If you have received a text from me just checking in, its probably because I was sitting in a coffee shop just reflecting on life. To me, these places truly become a home away from home. Back to those worries, as you could probably guess from the picture and words above, I have found those places in Knoxville. I don’t get “the usual” question but I do get “oh you’re changing it up today” or “Chaz with 1 Z”

    As I searched for my footing in this new city, Partial has become that place in the city that feels like home. At this point, I can safely say that I have been to A LOT of coffee shops, and I can also safely say this is my favorite. The shop opened not longer after I moved here. Kelsi and I tried it a few times but would go to others as well. I still venture out from time to time, Wild Love Bakehouse has incredible pastries to go with their coffee, KBrew is my Knoxville version of Jittery Joes, Seed has my favorite fancy coffee (what I call anything outside of just regular coffee) in their PB&J shaken espresso, Commonplace which is in an old bank and that makes for a really cool atmosphere, and several others throughout the city that offer tremendous drinks as well as environments. Partial is something different though. Shay and Murph have created a shop like no other. Everyone who walks in feels like family. Kelsi jokes that its our Cheers. It really does feel that way.

    That was a lot of words. If you read them all, God Bless You. I hope you find your place where everybody knows your name. New cities and life changes can be hard, but they can also be incredible. I hope yours are incredible.