Dining at Lakeside Tavern

Due to busy schedules, we hadn’t been able to get together with our friends Jodie and Morrie in quite some time.  Jodie has been successfully dieting so we needed to pick a restaurant that could satisfy her needs and simultaneously give the rest of us a variety of selections that would make the rest of us happy too…  

We chose Lakeside Tavern due to its pleasant setting plus the fact that we hadn’t eaten there in at least a couple of years.  As it turned out, this is one of Jodie and Morrie’s favorite places to eat!

Lakeside Tavern is a big restaurant with lots of parking and an imposing entry way.  It is part of Diverse Concepts Ltd., aka DCL Foods, which operates 8 different restaurant concepts with the Mellow Mushroom pizza chain and its locations scattered all over the eastern part of the USA.

Lakeside Tavern has a great location at Knoxville’s Concord Park.  It is scenic and relaxing.  This restaurant overlooks the Sinking Creek arm of Fort Loudon Lake, a reservoir on the Tennessee River.  Fort Loudon Lake is 50 miles long and it has 379 miles of shoreline.  Note the marina just below the restaurant… The last time that Morrie and Jodie ate here, they arrived by boat!

As I mentioned before, Lakeside Tavern is a big restaurant.  The photo of the inside dining area only shows part of it.  In addition, there is a nice bar area and for much of the year, the outside dining patio is very popular.  The restaurant as a whole has that woodsy warm lakeside feel to it…

I took this photo of Morrie, Jodie and Laurie at our table… One thing that I like about Lakeside Tavern is the fact that there is a lot of room between tables.  Patrons don’t feel crowded.

This is less than half of the basket full of bread that we were served.  It was so good that it was almost gone when I remembered to take a picture.  It had great crust with a bit of salt embedded in it and it had great texture too.

Laurie and I couldn’t resist one of our favorite appetizers, especially since it was only $5.99 during happy hour!  Lakeside’s Parmesan Fried Asparagus spears features fresh asparagus lightly coated in a seasoned batter and then fried golden brown.  It is served with a slightly spicy wasabi-ranch dipping sauce… It was as good as we remembered it! 

Note: Laurie’s happy hours vodka and tonic was only $2.75!

Jodie knew exactly what she wanted for dinner…the same salad she’d ordered the last time she was here.  This was her Concord Pecan Chicken Salad. ($12.99) For this salad, sliced pieces of chicken breast are served over field greens, caramelized pecans (Morrie got most of those), craisins and sliced celery…paired with honey vinaigrette salad dressing.  Jodie was quite content with her meal…

Morrie decided to order the Hawaiian Sirloin Steak. ($19.99) It included a house salad.  The 10 oz. sirloin steak was cooked as he liked it.  It had been marinated in Lakeside’s house-made American-style teriyaki sauce.  It was served with white cheddar mashed potatoes.  Yet another happy diner!

Laurie agonized over the menu for a bit before deciding to order the Parmesan encrusted Tilapia. ($16.99) The tilapia filets were breaded with parmesan bread crumbs, then lightly fried and topped with a roasted tomato cream sauce.  It was served with white cheddar mashed potatoes and it normally comes with steamed broccoli.  Broccoli isn’t one of Laurie’s favorites so she substituted the shiitake mushroom rice pilaf. 

We both agreed that the roasted tomato cream sauce was a mystery as it didn’t add anything interesting to the parmesan tilapia filets.  She skipped eating most of the mashed potatoes, instead focusing on the rice pilaf.  All in all, she thought that her meal was just OK.  By the way, Laurie said she didn't see that it came with mashed potatoes or she wouldn't have ordered the rice pilaf.

I decided that I’d order the Chicken Saint Barts Double Breast of Chicken. ($14.99) The double breast of chicken was lightly floured and pan-seared in a lemon-caper butter sauce.  It was served with angel hair pasta and a side of steamed broccoli.  The lemon-caper butter sauce worked well with my broccoli but I certainly wasn’t enamored with it otherwise.  It was OK and that’s the way I’d rate my entrée as well.

Lakeside Restaurant is a pleasant place to dine and it has a nice comfortable feel to it.  It’s big and it’s clean.  Service was a bit above average.  Jodie and Morrie were happy with their food but, other than the bread and the asparagus, Laurie and I felt that our entrees were pretty pedestrian.  But in the end, we had a nice evening with our friends!  Relaxed after our meal rocking in the outdoor patio rockers, enjoying the remarkable beauty that East Tennessee has to offer! 

Lakeside Restaurant is located at 10911 Concord Park Drive in Knoxville Tennessee.  Phone: 865-671-2980.  This restaurant’s website is found at https://lakeside-tavern.com/.

As we departed Lakeside grill to ride off into the sunset in our ‘sporty’ Hyundai Sonata, we passed a couple of other more interesting cars in the parking lot.  Love this Chevrolet ‘hot rod’!  Even the grill is cool!

Then we came to this tricked out Plymouth!  Wow!  What a beautiful car… Love the detail work, the wheel covers and even the trunk lid!  This is somebody’s baby, that’s for sure…

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave