Tennessee Grill

Pardon me, Roy, is that the cat who chewed your new shoes?

(No official website.)

1128 Taraval Street (between 21st and 22nd Avenues)

phonicular contact: (415) 664-7834

(Yeah, a Tennessee[1] song done by an Irish group and sung by a Welshman. Makes perfect sense to me.)


I ventured back over to the Sunset/Parkside for breakfast this morning and ate at  Tennessee Grill. They are located just a half block away from New Taraval Cafe (see recent 'blog-entry from September 2nd, 2012). Tennessee Grill is a very large, old, home-style diner place. There is probably easily seating for 100, including the 13-14 diner/counter stools. Why "Tennessee", though? I really didn't bother to ask, but the place seemed like it was run/owned by an Asian family and most of the cook staff looked Mexican.

Strange Tennessee Interlude, Eugene
 
I have been to Tennessee a few times in the past.

I visited Nashville for one day and night with my brother, Kerry. We stopped there to see an old Peace Corps buddy of his nicknamed "Nash", because he was from Nashville. It seems that the Peace Corps needs to work on their nickname-giving a bit, Ernie.

I spent a week once in Chattanooga[2] while visiting an old girlfriend, who is nicknamed "Phyll", as her given name is Phyllis. It seems that Georgians/Tennesseans need to work on their nickname-giving a bit, also. (I suppose it beats being called "Chatta".) I even got to see the famous "Choo-Choo", Mr. Miller. I really wouldn't suggest visiting Chattanooga in late May without the aid of any air conditioning, though.

And I have driven across the State a few times on my way to California.

Sadly, I have never been to Memphis, Elvis Aaron.

Now back to breakfast (as this is a breakfastary 'blog supposedly).

Tennessee Grill offers most of the standard diner fare for breakfast, I simply went with the Spinach and Cheese Omelette ~ served with toast and hashbrowns (OR) home fried potatoes. I also had a large glass of orange juice.

(Okay, ignore the completely crappy photo of breakfast. I have dealt with the photographer already.)


They offer a choice for cheese and I went with Cheddar. I had sourdough toast as my bread choice. And I had hashbrowns for my potato side dish; I always like it when there is a choice of potato side dishes offered. The omelette was made with lots of spinach, but the omelette was really nothing special. The real find was the home-made/restaurant-made chilli sauce that they have (see condimentary supplementation information below).

I didn't figure their coffee would be any better than the sludge that I can make at home, so I skipped a cuppa while there and made some Bettys Christmas Coffee to enjoy while typing this out. Now, I know what you are thinking, "Christmas coffee in July?" (September. Whatever.) But I had only opened this bag up recently and it had been stored in my freezer since December. This is really a full and robust blend; even I can't mess it up much.

For condimentary supplementation Tennessee Grill offers both Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce and Cholula® Hot Sauce; plus, my server happened to notice the three bottles of hot sauces that I had brought from my own collection and he mentioned that the cook makes his own home-made/restaurant-made chilli sauce, too. He was nice enough to bring me out a small cup of it to try.  I ended up using some of my own Palo Alto Fire Fighters Pepper Sauce (The standard version. Thanks, Amys and Brian!) on the potatoes and some of the home-made/restaurant-made chilli sauce on the omelette. The chilli sauce was very good ~ smoky, tasty ~ and packed just the right amount of heat; it was possibly made from chipotle chillis.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating:  Spinach and Cheese Omelette ~ 5.8; Home-made/restaurant-made chilli sauce ~ 7.0


[1] Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-geographical/pseudo-historical pointer of the day, number one:

The meaning and origin of the word "Tennessee" are uncertain. Some accounts suggest it is a Cherokee modification of an earlier Yuchi word. It has been said to mean "meeting place", "winding river", or "river of the great bend". However, there is no truth to the rumour that "Tennessee" is the Cherokee word for "Land where White Devil sing like cat with hemorrhoids".

Are there any Cherokee cunning linguist volunteers for clarification?

[2] Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-geographical/pseudo-historical pointer of the day, number two:

The first part of "Chattanooga" derives from the Muskogean word "cvto" (pronounced "chato"), meaning "rock". The latter may be derived from a regional suffix "-nunga" meaning dwelling or dwelling place.

You know, I may have just figured out one of those confusing Georgian/Tennessean nicknames. Phyll has a brother named Edgar, whom they called "Rock". Perhaps it was easier to call him that than "Chato". Her other two brothers Thomas and Timothy had equally as confusing nicknames; Thomas was know as "Tommy" and Timothy was know as "Timmy". I will never understand the ways of the Southerner.