Comments

There is 1 response to this article. Click here to join the conversation »

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Printer friendly

More Dining

• Sweet P's hosts Smokin' Day Festival
• Lakeside Tavern hosts Belgian Bonanza
• Wine tasting at Puleo’s Grille at Deane Hill

Share and Enjoy

Our best night for doing some Grubbing last week just happened to fall on my birthday, and since I am a pizza lover at my core, I thought I could kill two birds with one stone by celebrating the occasion at a local pizzeria. The one sitting highest atop my list of prospects was the new Hard Knox Pizzeria in Western Plaza.

Naturally, both The Grub Spouse and The Grub Sprout were invited to jump into the ring with me, and we had the customer queue to ourselves as we stepped inside and quickly oriented ourselves to the wall-mounted menu.

Hard Knox’s pies are all made Neapolitan-style — not with three flavors of ice cream but baked in a wood-fired brick oven. You can customize a pizza to your liking, making it a red or white pie and choosing from more than a dozen toppings, many of which aren’t exactly standard at most area pizzerias. Toppings include Genoa salami, caramelized garlic, kalamata olives, basil, pine nuts and rosemary, to name a sampling.

They also have eight specialty pies — four red, four white — all of which are tied into the restaurant’s boxing theme. The 10-inch pies are all named in honor of legends like Marciano, Basilio, La Motta and Mancini. The Pastrano, for example, is a white pie featuring over-roasted Italian sausage, caramelized garlic and a blend of parmigiana and Romano cheeses. All Hard Knox pizzas are made with whole-milk mozzarella cheese.

We decided to try a couple of the red pie selections — the Graziano, topped with Italian sausage and oven-roasted baby Portobello and button mushrooms — and the Carnera, which is made with pepperoni, red onion and green pepper.

There’s not a whole lot of seating at Hard Knox — maybe a half-dozen tables or so — but fortunately, we were able to grab the only empty one. The seats resemble a boxer’s corner stool, while the overhead lights are reminiscent of those old-school microphones that drop down to the ring announcer. Some stylized boxing photos on the wall help accent the boxing theme.

With those brick ovens running at 850 degrees, we didn’t have to wait too long for our pizzas, which were delivered to our table in brown paper wrappers. We tore in to discover that each pie was segmented into four substantial slices, and all three of us got a sampling of both creations.

The crust is on the thin side and chewy but pleasant to consume. Coming from a wood-fired oven, both crusts had a few scorched spots but not enough to sway either pie’s favorability rating. They certainly don’t go overboard with the tomato sauce, which I personally prefer, and I must say that each topping was a true contender. The freshness of the crunchy pepper and onion slices and the ample mushrooms was unmistakable, while the savory sausage and pepperoni were both authentic in flavor and abundant in quantity.

We were not able to go all 10 rounds with these deceptively substantial pies, much less sample the restaurant’s Italian ice or gelato flavors, so we took our leftovers home, crying “No mas!” in satisfied surrender.

For the record, Hard Knox also serves a couple of Italian-style salads as well as authentic Italian sodas and draught beer. But I probably won’t wait for another birthday to come around before sparring with this pizza place. Yep — it was a real knockout.

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel
Want to use this article? Click here for options!