Eating in Knoxville, Tennessee

Maybe had we stopped in to visit the residents of Mountain City we could've had some authentic southern food, but through East Tennessee and Knoxville, we hadn't found much other than what Bush's Best Baked Beans was serving up in Chestnut Hill.

What it lacked in southern style homecooking, Knoxville made up for with the variety of restaurants and bars along Gay Street and Market Square.

A crowd gathered for Shakespeare on the Square in Knoxville's Market Square.

While we were in Knoxville, we tried two of the Market Square restaurants.

Soccer Taco was set up like a Mexican sports bar. The food was good, but of course, it was the soccer-themed decor that left the biggest impression.

The televisions on the wall betrayed that soccer theme, however, by showing some collegiate American football during our meal. Between this and the food, Soccer Taco was a fun place to grab a bite, but it couldn't top our earlier experience at Ole's Guacamoles in Johnson City.

Flow serves beer and coffee drinks to to the residents and locals in Knoxville.

Elsewhere in Knoxville, we found the small, trendy Flow Brew Parlor with its coffee, beer and espresso offerings. We enjoyed a Memphis-brewed coffee milk stout by Wiseacre.

Back at Market Square, Not Watson's offered a comfortable experience with big booths, dark lighting and interesting artwork. It also served up an awesome alligator po' boy sandwich.

The food at Not Watson's is served with style, including the alligator po' boy.

Checking out the menu, we learned the story behind the restaurant's peculiar name. Watson's was a renowned department store on Knoxville's Market Square one or two generations ago.

Whenever the restaurant owner's mother wanted to take her family to town, she'd suggest Watson's. They went so often that the kids would always answer the question of, "Where should we go today?" the same way:

"Not Watson's!"

When one of those kids grew up to own this Market Square restaurant, naming it was easy, and Not Watson's stands as a subtle tribute to Mom.

We didn't try this Market Square bar, but we did spot the man pulling a keg through the wall.

Just one block from Market Square, on Gay Street, we tried the Irish pub called Clancy's Tavern and found some good, but pricey versions of pub staples such as fish and chips. What set this place apart was its unique drink offerings, called beer-tails.

The cocktail version of a glass of beer, the bartenders created beer-tails by mixing together two complimentary beers. This sounded to me like it'd be awful, but the one we tried - called Snakebite, it tempered a hard cider with Harp's lager - was delicious.

Our final Knoxville dining experience came on a whim a little further along on Gay Street.

It was early afternooon, and we were headed to a beautiful, historic movie theater now owned by Regal Cinemas when we saw the Parisian-styled French Market Creperie.

The French Market Creperie in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Inside, we ordered a sugary dessert crepe and a savory ham-and-cheese crepe to go along with a couple cappuccinos. For that long moment, my wife and I sat in Knoxville, Tennessee, and reminisced over our honeymoon in Paris, France, just a few years earlier.

An introduction to drinking in Tennessee

In the course of our Tennessee adventure, we came across a variety of locally made drinks, including beer, wine, whisky, bourbon and moonshine.

Our self-guided tasting tour of Tennessee started at a local liquor store near Johnson City.

We'd passed a number of vineyards along the nearby highways, so we asked about Tennessee wine. This store offered one variety, and we took home a bottle of Tennessee-made apple peach wine. The peach flavor was strong, the apple was subtle, and overall, this sweet wine was fun to drink, though I'm still not sure if it was best suited to go along with dinner or to stand alone afterward as dessert.

In that same store, we found an entire selection of moonshine. It's weird to think of moonshine as a commercially packaged drink, but we went along and I picked out the most traditional looking bottle (glass jug) I could find, which ended up being Roberson's Tennessee Mellomoon.

At first sip, this drink was rough. I had it just after dinner, and maybe having another taste involved made it a lot harder to swallow. Later on, I was able to appreciate it's subdued sweetness and the little jug was empty after another week or so.

Bourbon, moonshine and whisky at Corky's in Memphis.

Later on in our trip, we found a hip, but empty place called Flow in the bottom of an old, downtown residential building in Knoxville. Flow serves coffee drinks and local beer to the residents. I ordered a coffee-flavored oatmeal stout by Memphis's Wiseacre brewery and enjoyed it from one of a couple sofa chairs on the far end of the room.

The staff at the Belle Meade Plantation in Nashville surprised us with a wine tasting at the end of its tour. The plantation was once known for thoroughbred horses, but today it offers its own selection of wine, which is where I discovered muscadine wine.

Muscadine wine is a southern staple, apparently, because I heard about later in country songs such as Jason Aldean's "Country Boy's World" and Canaan Smith's "Love You Like That":

Muscadine grapes are larger than other grapes, with stronger skins, and they grow individually on the vine as opposed to in clusters. Of the Belle Meade wines we tried, the muscadine wine was my favorite. At home, we paired the sweet wine with a spicy dish, and it was perfect.

Finally, in Memphis, Tennessee, we sought out Corky's Ribs & BBQ where part of its offering was a custom flight of bourbon, whisky and moonshine.

I tried a sweet tea moonshine that tasted like a spiked iced tea. The Jack Daniel's Fire whisky is Tennessee's answer to Fireball, and it offers a delicious cinnamon flavor. Calling back to our plantation experience, the third drink I tried was the Belle Meade bourbon. As the most traditional flavor of the bunch, this was my favorite, but the novelty of the other two drinks made it a tough call.

Image courtesy of trndmonitor.com.

One last note: it was in a Tennessee discount liquor store that we first spotted Tennessee's own Dr. Enuf soda as well as the above curiosity, courtesy of Budweiser. We purchased a can of this hideous-sounding, light beer concoction, but to this day, we haven't found the courage to try it.

Authentic southern food (deep, deep south)

Main Street in Johnson City shows a lot of promise. There are one or two late night bars, some shops, some restaurants, and, of course, almost all of this was closed in the middle of a weekday, which is when we showed up.

Our choices for food were pizza or nothing else, so we drove down Roan St. toward a more residential area and came across authentic Mexican food by Ole's Guacamoles.

Mexican counts as southern food, right? Deep, deep south?

From the Ole's Guacamoles Facebook page.

We've had authentic Mexican before, so this wasn't the very best we've tried, but the food was tasty and they surprised us by providing an awesome bean dip with our free tortilla chips.

With a starter like that, we should've known we wouldn't be leaving hungry.

There was a complimentary salsa bar with different flavors, too, as if the bean dip wasn't enough.

It may not be southern fried chicken and biscuits, but Ole's Guacamoles is awesome and Johnson City locals should be excited that it's in their backyard.

It looks like there are only two Ole's Guacamoles out there (the other one is in North Carolina), so show this local restaurant some love when you're in town, and help keep them going strong.

Tri-Cities Flea Market welcomes us to the south

We didn't have a plan for our first day in east Tennessee, so when we saw the billboards hyping up the Tri-Cities Flea Market, that seemed like a fine place to kick things off.

The Tri-Cities (Johnson City, Kingsport and Bristol) Flea Market is pretty wild. It's situated in what appears to be an old quarry. The parking lot gives way to rows of long, matching buildings, each with dozens of vendors inside.

It wasn't long before we were surrounded by confederate flags, NASCAR tees, children's toys and rifles. Welcome to the south!

After shuffling through all the buildings we could find, we spotted a downhill bend in the road. There were more vendors in the next parking area down! From there, we found stairs leading further down to another spread of matching buildings. Even more vendors!

The Tri-Cities Flea Market, photo courtesy of the official website.

We got some cheap soda to help beat the heat, and continued on.

At $5 apiece, we found the first batch of Donald Trump for President tees that we'd ever seen. A little further on, a long-time sci-fi collector showed us around his collection of Star Wars action figures and other oddities. We found a fish scale and tape measure concealed as a can of Skoal chewing tobacco and took it home as a souvenir.

Elsewhere, a man was selling antiques that included real segregation-era signage and shackles that would've been used on women or children who were slaves. It was crazy to feel just how heavy a single leg shackle was.

We tried to explore every corner of the massive market, and we ended up closing the place down. By the time we made it back up to our car, the area was mostly deserted, but before we left, we made note of an unusual sign: it was an ad for a place called "Backyard Terrors," and it promised life-sized dinosaurs to anyone brave enough to visit.