An Old Depot Transformed + More Stuff

Continuing with yet another new restaurant near our home…and yet another neighborhood estate sale.

This is Monkey Town Brewing Company’s new restaurant in Loudon Tennessee.  It is located in Loudon’s old railway depot just about 3 blocks from US Hwy 11.  Monkey Town has 2 other locations, one in Chattanooga Tennessee and the other in Dayton Tennessee.  

Why Monkey Town as the name for this small local chain of restaurants?   Well, the first restaurant using this name is the one in Dayton Tennessee.  That town was home to the famous or infamous Scopes Trial, and the struggle over teaching evolution vs. creationism in 1925.  It was termed the Monkey Trial…hence Dayton became ‘Monkey Town’ in the popular press of the day.  William Jennings Bryan was the prosecutor and Clarence Darrow was the principal defense counsel.  Oddly enough, Bryan died in his sleep in Dayton only 5 days after the trial ended.

These 2 interior photos of Monkey Town Brewing in Loudon give you an idea of the ‘look’ of the restaurant.  It’s basically an open space with brick walls, high ceilings and a concrete floor.  There is that accent wall of wood.  At some time in the past the interior of the building was ‘gutted’ and none of the charm of an old depot remains.  Even though there isn’t anything wrong with space, we like ‘old stuff’ and we were disappointed by its appearance.  The ambiance of Monkey Town was enhanced during our meal when a freight train rumbled past the back of the building...

This used to be Loudon’s passenger station.  It was built by Southern Railway.  The railroad first came to town in 1855 when a bridge spanned the Tennessee River near here.  At that time, the town was known as Blair’s Ferry...

We started out with the House-Made Beer Cheese accompanied by house-made potato chips. ($7.95) The beer cheese dip was very tasty and it was complemented by nicely done house potato chips.

No photo…but Laurie did have a Monkey Town brew with her appetizer.  It was a 16 oz. “Road to Mordor”, an India pale lager. ($5.50) It was easy to drink...

There are a wide variety of appetizers on the menu.  They include Honey Butter Biscuits ($6.95); Mexican Sweet Corn – 3 half cobs ($6.95); Potstickers ($9.95), Irish Nachos with corned beef ($12.95) and; Chicken Wings…easily the most expensive price per wing we’ve seen yet, $12.95 for 6 wings, or $2.16 each.

For her dinner, Laurie ordered the Thai Chicken Lettuce Wraps…4 ‘wraps’ for $13.95.  Sesame pulled chicken with peanut sauce, red cabbage slaw, sweet Thai chili sauce, sesame seeds and fried wonton were stacked on top of pieces of bibb lettuce.

The only issue that Laurie had with her entrée was that the bibb lettuce sections were way too small to ‘wrap’ anything in…much less the stack of goodies that overwhelmed the lettuce.

For my entrée, I ordered the Shrimp Scampi with angel hair pasta, roasted tomatoes, fresh basil, white wine, garlic butter, parmesan cheese, and garlic crostini’s. ($13.95) It was OK but like many other dishes in East Tennessee that say they contain garlic…I struggled to find any garlic flavor in the meal. 

OK…Service was a huge problem for us at Monkey Town Brewing in Loudon.  We were seated and got our drinks fairly quickly and then we were ‘abandoned’ for quite a while.  Finally our server showed up again and we ordered our appetizer, foolishly holding off on ordering our entrees until after we received the appetizer.  Bad move…yet another wait!  When I got my entrée, there weren’t any crostini with it and you can see how little parmesan cheese was sprinkled on top.  I asked for the crostini and more parmesan…but I ended up finishing my entrée with neither request ever being delivered.  We won’t be in any hurry to return to this restaurant…

The Monkey Town Brewing Company in Loudon Tennessee is located at 318 Angel Row.  They are open for lunch and dinner Thursdays through Sundays.  Phone: 865-657-9624.  Website: Monkey Town Brewing Company - Loudon - Loudon, Loudon, TN.  FYI...the menu at Monkey Town has a wide and imaginative varied number of entrees and appetizers...

Living in a community that is primarily comprised of retired folks, there are always estate sales going on.  As a matter of fact, we will be trying to go to another sale either today or tomorrow.

In any case, the last one we ‘explored’ was in the home shown above…after all, we 'need' more stuff!

This was my big purchase!  I spent a dollar for this book, “The Best Little Stories from the White House”.  If nothing else, it should be entertaining and the price was right.

Laurie went a little bigger with her estate sale purchase.  We paid $50.00 for this nicely done and very old ‘postage stamp’ pattern quilt for a double bed.  It was perfect for our 3^rd bedrooms antique double bead!  Even I like it…

That’s all for now… Next time I’ll start covering yet another road trip, this time, in mid-July, we traveled to southern and northern Missouri on our way to Omaha for a family visit. 

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave