Saturday, February 14, 2009

Jungle Love at the Knoxville Zoo

Adventure 090214

This year I was lucky enough to be able to take Kathy to the "Jungle Love" event at the Knoxville Zoo for Valentines Day. This was a wonderful adults only evening which included a cocktail hour with the Red Pandas at The Boyd Family Red Panda Village, several close-up animal encounters, heavy hors d’oeuvres, delectable desserts, and a hilarious special presentation about the animal kingdom’s "Mating Game" by Kevin Hils, the Director of Education at the Knoxville Zoo. I got extra husband points for this one and Kathy said she "had the BEST VALENTINE'S DAY EVER!!!!" We are already planning to attend again next year! ^_^


Sunday, February 1, 2009

King Tut's Grill

Adventure 090131

My wife, four of our friends, and I went to King Tut's Grill last night and it was delicious smothered in awesome with a side order of surprisingly cheap! This little place is tucked away in a corner of the South Knoxville community of Vestal in an ANCIENT ramshackle building with parking you have to get to through a narrow ally. Don't bring an SUV, you might not fit.

We called ahead for reservations and showed up real early to grab seats at one of the five tiny booths and tables and were still the second large group there. Once we were seated the owner Mo took our drink orders and brought them back in huge glass vases. My friend Carrie had been there before and strongly advised we share, so at Mo's suggestion we requested two orders of "the best Greek salad in Knoxville", two Egyptian platters, and two of the "Three Chicken" platters. Everything was fantastic and the servings were huge! Mo is a nut and did several slight of hand tricks for us while our food was being prepared. Once we had gotten most of the way through the meal Mo started up all the funky lights hanging from the ceiling, picked victims from the crowd for Karaoke target practice, started handing out masks and props and otherwise went into full fledged hosting mode. It was corny, it was hokey, and yet I couldn't stop smiling! For desert we shared orders of the baklava, basboosa, and the tiramisu. All of which were great. When we finally needed to head out the bill for six over-stuffed big eaters was only $101.

King Tut's Grill
4132 Martin Mill Pike
Knoxville, TN 37920
(865) 573-6021