And the Search Continues…plus Eating at Home

Recently, we’d noted that a new restaurant had opened in a location that had been occupied by one of our favorite breakfast destination.  One morning, actually closer to noon, we decided to give it a try.

This is “Mad Town Grill”, an eye-catching name but really just a clever shortening of the name of the town where it’s located.  Mad Town Grill is in Madisonville Tennessee.  This location, attached to a gas station, was previously the home of “Fat Stacks”, our favorite basic breakfast place, especially when price was considered.

The interior/dining room of Mad Town Grill looks pretty much as it did under the previous owner.  The small town diner look has been augmented with that metallic bar and Mad Town Grill serves beer, something that wasn’t available previously.

From the time that our waitress first brought menus to the table until the time I paid my check, we felt that the folks working here had never run a restaurant before and may never have worked in one either.  Service was uneven to say the best…although the staff was nice enough.

Since Mad Town Grill doesn’t seem to have either a Facebook page or website, I thought that I’d include photos of the menu.  Weirdly, the breakfast menu doesn’t feature what we would call, a ‘standard’ breakfast.  In our mind, that would include toast, 2 eggs, bacon or sausage and hash brown potatoes or some other variety of spuds.  At $7.99 for the “Mad Town Big Breakfast” the price is right if one wants that combination of food for breakfast.

The lunch menu is pretty basic with a few appetizers or ‘starters’ and a number of sandwich options. 

Laurie ordered something she rarely has…Mad Town Grill’s French toast with 3 slices of bacon. ($6.99) She asked for the bacon crispy…but something got lost in communications or in the kitchen and she received “bacon limp”.  The French toast was nothing great either.

I didn’t get a receipt so I can’t tell you what I paid for my ala carte breakfast which consisted of 2 over easy eggs, 2 sausage patties, a scattering of hash brown potatoes and 2 tiny slices of untoasted toast.  The coffee was decent.

Needless to say, Mad Town Grill will not be on our list of preferred area restaurants.  In our minds, it is unlikely to survive.  Their prices are lower than most local diner style restaurants and they did have a number of customers coming and going while we were there.  Mad Town Grill is located at 4915 New Highway 68 in Madisonville Tennessee.  Phone: 423-545-9585.   

Now for a couple of home based food experiences…

A few years ago, when we were vacationing in upper New York State, we ate dinner in a couple of local restaurant landmarks near Buffalo.  Probably our favorite dining experience was a special sandwich that we’d never seen anywhere else.  It is called “Beef on Weck”.  This sandwich is made with thinly sliced rare roast beef on a kummelweck roll.  The rolls are topped with kosher salt and caraway seeds.  The top of the firm bun is dipped in au jus and then it is spread with horseradish.  We fell in love!!!

So recently, I looked on the Internet to see if I could find kummelweck rolls and have them shipped to us.  Success!  I ordered 2 dozen kummelweck rolls from DiCamillo Bakery which is located in the Buffalo metropolitan area.  The first photo shows the first group of rolls from the bakery.  The rolls are dense enough to handle the moist meat and dipping the top in au jus.  The salt and caraway seeds come with the rolls but they are applied at home.  Bakery Website: https://www.dicamillobakery.com/.

We ended up with just an OK sandwich.  It wasn’t a problem with the rolls, but it was obvious that: 1) the quality of the sliced medium rare grocery store roast beef didn’t measure up; 2) The beef slices not only needed to be thinner but also rare, and; 3) quality au jus would have been a real plus.

On to a couple of simpler items related to my personal specialty, breakfast!  In this case, we had leftover prepared chicken cordon bleu left over from a recent dinner.  I also had some leftover cheesy scalloped potatoes…and I threw in a slice of deli style ham just for good measure.  I cut the chicken cordon bleu in half to enable me to heat it in my frying pan with some butter.  The potatoes and ham also bathed in the butter before I fried my over-easy eggs.  It was a very nice breakfast!

…another day and yet another ‘healthy’ breakfast.  In this instance, Laurie had prepared chicken fried steaks for dinner a couple of days earlier.  I decided to heat a leftover ‘steak’ in the frying pan with butter.  Then I placed the meat on a buttered piece of bread, smothered it with leftover no bean chili and then I dropped a couple of over-easy eggs on top…adding my Tabasco after taking the photo.  This was a filling and satisfactory way to start my day.

That’s all for now… Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave