Janie X Spring 2021 Cocktail Menu
Janie Brackett, Oliver Royale Bar Manager, hit the ground running when she took over Oliver’s bar program earlier this year. This uncharted territory has challenged Janie creatively, and from the outside looking in, we’re seeing how the bigger picture view is influencing things across the board...in a good way!
Janie Brackett, Oliver’s newly promoted Bar Manager, has been with us for 3 years this fall. From server to bartender in just about 6 months, (which is pretty fast in our company), Janie’s long time experience in the hospitality industry is seen on and off the floor. Her love of people and the built-in flexibility while she completed her undergraduate degree in 2015 in psychology and english have made the years fly by.
Though her role as Bar Manager gives her the opportunity to craft seasonally rotated cocktail menus, a management position isn't new to Janie. In fact, following the great footsteps of her predecessor, Ari Rector, Janie hit the ground running as she took over Oliver’s bar program earlier this year. This uncharted territory has challenged Janie creatively, and from the outside looking in, we’re seeing how the bigger picture view is influencing things across the board...in a good way!
New Role, Fresh Innovation
Transitioning from being on the floor, at times in the trenches, to taking a step back to be able to oversee the bigger picture of all the wheels turning at once, has brought about fresh innovation throughout.
Janie has been praised, and rightfully so, for absolutely slaying (as the kids say) her first cocktail menu as bar manager. We honestly couldn’t be more proud. Here’s what Janie had to say:
“As the bar manager, building a new menu wasn’t just about creating and tasting cocktails, though that is a big and fun component! First and foremost, aligning with the same energy and vision as our new Executive Chef Darin Hoagland had to be the foundation from which we built off of. And it was more challenging than I expected!
In the process of following spring flavors and ingredients, it was important that the cocktails paired beautifully with the new spring menu. I also had a personal goal of encouraging and mentoring our new and growing staff to showcase their talents, experiences and ideas as well.
I’m really proud of the product that our bar team created for the spring 2021 cocktail menu. The teamwork, encouragement of ideas, and comradery that took place was infectious and we hope our guests can sense that with every sip. We played with new ideas and flavors that hadn’t been featured on our menu before like Matcha Gin, blueberry yellow chartreuse, and thai tea. ”
To pair these exciting new flavors with Chef Hoagland’s new spring menu, join us and make sure to order the CATTYWAMPUS (house-infused matcha gin, green chartreuse, lemon, honey), MAURY STREET HOUSE (mezcal, house-infused blueberry yellow chartreuse, lemon, campari, simple, tiki bitters), and WEST JACKSON JIVE (postmodern kore vodka, thai tea, arancia, lemon, honey, champagne, soda).
p.s. don’t forget about our Q2 fundraiser for Zoo Knoxville happening now through June 30th too. For every Royale Roulette or Librarian Recommendation (PKL) ordered - a $1 donation will be made on your behalf to Zoo Knoxville. A percentage of every ticket purchased to our Bubbles & Rose wine dinner will be donated to Zoo Knoxville and our hotel room minibars are now stocked with Flying Panda Specialty Beverages and Tip Top Proper Cocktails. A $1 donation will be made on your behalf when you purchase either beverage while staying with us.
A Look Back at Some Special Recent Events
Here at Oliver Royale, our events are our lifeblood. Far beyond just being a restaurant, we love being able to provide a whole experience for our guests. And often, that means designing special events that allow guests to really dive deep into a particular spirit, experience a special holiday dinner, or have fun with others who share their same culinary interests.
Whether you’ve joined us recently for an event, or you’re still mulling over which is the best option for you, take a look at some of the fun we’ve had over the past few months:
Taste of Spain 2-Day Event
The wine event was so good we had to double it up. We’ve featured Grapes of Spain wine at dinner events before. But there’s always been so much interest (and we enjoy the brand so much), that we decided to make this our first-ever multi-day event. Aurelio Cabestrero, the Grapes of Spain ambassador, was a huge part of that decision. His knowledge, charm, and all-around great personality, makes it easy to understand why his events are always such a great success! We wanted to make sure our community had twice the opportunity to experience Aurelio and his product, and we knew that transforming this into a two-day event would make the whole experience more intimate and accessible.
And Knoxville showed up! We sold out BOTH dinners, with 50+ people at each one. If you missed the chance to taste a little Spain, make sure to join us for our Cass Winery Dinner on March 11. It will be a similar celebration of some amazing wines, plus the delicious food to match.
Sazerac Bourbon Dinner
If you were one of the lucky 55 who got tickets to our sold-out Sazerac Bourbon Dinner, you’ll know why this is always one of our favorite events each year. This was our fourth Sazerac dinner, and we think they just keep getting better.
Whether you consider yourself a bourbon connoisseur, or you joined us because you’re trying to acquire that taste for whiskey, the Sazerac dinner is always the perfect night for both ends of the spectrum.
If you missed our Sazerac Bourbon Dinner, check out our cocktail class, June 7th with Post Modern Spirits. This will give you the chance to not only enjoy your favorite spirits, but also learn how to incorporate them into your own homemade cocktails.
Holiday Season Events
Starting from Thanksgiving on, Oliver Royale hosted a marathon of events: our Bubbles Dinner in early December, followed by our Christmas Day and New Years Eve dinners (and then our Valentine’s Day dinner less than 2 months later!). Thank you to everyone who continues to support us through these special events - we were completely booked for all of our holiday events! Since we ask our staff to come in and work on those holidays, the support and love we get from the community on these days means the world.
A Look At The Local Vendors That Make Our Menu Possible
Creating a new season’s menu at Oliver Royale involves a lot more than simply changing up the choices and printing a new menu. We start researching potential new ingredients for the next season’s menu up to a month and a half in advance. And one of our biggest focuses during this preparation phase is choosing the local vendors where we’ll get those ingredients.
Finding local farmers is a huge part of the process for building a new menu. Our Executive Chef, Jon Gatlin, takes the lead, meeting farmers in person to discuss what kind of crops they’re expecting that season. These relationships are always built in person: Jon either meets them at local farmers markets (including the one right here in Market Square!) or he’ll visit the farm himself. Once he has a better understanding of the ingredients available in the area that season, he develops menu items based off that list.
We take our place in downtown Knoxville seriously. We’re a part of this community, and we know how many amazing farmers are right here in our own neighborhood. Building off that community and using as many local ingredients as possible in our food is so important to us. As an added bonus, using local ingredients guarantees quality and freshness, while reducing the chance of damaged produce that often happens during long-term transportation.
If you’ve visited us recently, you’ve probably enjoyed at least a few of the ingredients that we’ve sourced from our neighbors. But when you were enjoying your food, you probably didn’t know the story behind your food. Here’s a look at all the vendors we worked with for this year’s menus, as well as the delicious ingredients they brought to the table:
Mountain Meadow Farms: stone fruit, berries, apples, and pears
In operation since 1970, Mountain Meadows is located in Anderson County, near Norris, Tennessee. They specialize in fruits and vegetables, and their products are available at several farmer’s markets in the area!
Cruze Dairy Farm: ice cream
Cruze Dairy has been around since 1980 and offers a ton of exciting ice cream flavors, including at Downtown Knoxville location. They also offer ice cream catering!
A Place of the Heart Farm: seasonal produce, fall squash, and beans
Located in Pioneer, Tennessee, A Place of the Heart Farm offers 70 different types of heirloom vegetables, culinary and medicinal herbs, all certified naturally grown. They also specialize in using environmentally friendly farming practices.
Springer Mountain Farms: chicken
Springer Mountain has more than a half-century of experience in raising chickens, humanely and without antibiotics. They’re located right next door to Tennessee, in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Abby Fields Farm: lettuce greens, pea tendrils
Abby Fields is truly our neighborhood farm, located just outside of downtown Knoxville. They have focused on creating local food systems and rebuilding urban spaces to produce healthy food.
Sugartree Farms: seasonal produce, fall squash
Mike Robinson runs Sugartree Farms, near Belvidere, Tennessee -- and he was actually named the 2017 Tennessee Farmer of the Year! On his hundreds of acres, he grows everything from produce and hay, and even raises timber, too.
Zavels Family Farms: seasonal produce, beets, butternut squash, kale
Located in Corryton, Tennessee, Zavels Family Farm is super active in our community and is a regular participant in several local farmers markets.
Huff Farms: corn
Huff Farms is family-owned and our go-to producer of sweet corn. They are the corn experts in the area, and are located in Blount County, Tennessee!
Honeybee Coffee: coffee beans
Maybe you like a cup of coffee with your dessert; thankfully, we have Honeybee’s special blends to offer! Honeybee is located right in Knoxville, and we also offer their coffee next door at The Oliver Hotel.
Lacewing Farms: heirlooms squash, tomatoes, beans
Lacewing is located just 17 miles from downtown Knoxville, in Corryton, Tennessee, and offers everything from vegetables to eggs. They even have their own beehives too!
Seven Springs Farm: tomatoes, beans, corn, specialty micro greens
This farm offers an incredibly diverse array of crops, including fruits, vegetables, and beef. They’re located in Maynardville, Tennessee, where you can also find The Winery at Seven Springs Farm.
The Evolution of the Old Fashioned -- And How Oliver Royale Gave It Its Own Twist
Like a night after too many Old Fashioneds, the history of one of the most classic cocktails is a little blurry. But it remains one of our favorites -- both to drink and to experiment with.
Cocktail recipes, like that for the Old Fashioned, were often shared via word-of-mouth before official recipes were recorded in bar books or other publications. Bartenders used to be pretty secretive about their concoctions, so we may never know who actually created what we now know as an Old Fashioned.
Many credit a bartender named James E. Pepper with creating the cocktail in 1880. He mixed up one of the first Old Fashioneds at a private social club called Pendennis in -- where else? -- Kentucky. After that, Pepper traveled to the Waldorf-Astoria hotel bar in New York with the recipe. And the rest was history.
The name “Old Fashioned” doesn’t necessarily come from the bartenders involved in the mixology, though. It comes from the patrons.
Before recipes were “official” and cocktails were mostly mixed according to word-of-mouth instruction, the classic whiskey drink tended to vary quite a bit. People got tired of never getting a uniform result, and started ordering the cocktail the “old fashioned way.” That method involved whiskey, a sugar cube saturated with bitters, and ice stirred together.
Since then, the Old Fashioned has gone through several iterations. During Prohibition, people often could only get their hands on bootleg, low-quality whiskey. This is when bartenders started to muddle oranges or cherries to add to the drink, or even added a splash of soda water.
Here at Royale, we take pride in our own evolution of the drink. The historic Kern Building has a reputation for producing the city’s finest Old Fashioneds, and we like to think we live up to that. Like with everything we do here, though, we like to put our own spin on the classics.
We have the Old Fashioned #7 on our menu now, which is a Tennessee-style variation of an Old Fashioned. We mix up Tennessee’s Favorite Sour Mash, Jack Daniels #7, a banana simple syrup that we create in-house, and The Bitter Truth nut bitters. Garnishment, instead of the typical orange peel or cherry, is a bruleed banana slice. This is a sweeter version of the Old Fashioned you know and love, and brings out the inherent banana notes you taste in Jack Daniel’s.
If you visit us and ask for a classic Old Fashioned, though, we can deliver. Typically, the more classic version of the cocktail will include a rye whiskey. A rye’s tasting notes will usually shine through your cocktail a little better than other whiskeys. (For a bit of a kick, try a rye with notes of pepper, fruit, and oak).
Some popular whiskey requests in our classic Old Fashioned are Pikesville Rye, Maker’s Mark, and Blanton’s (we even have our own barrel selection of Blanton’s, so we always have that on deck). One of our bartenders, Ari’s, go-to’s is our own hand-selected barrel of Corsair’s Ryemaggedon Rye.
However you choose to drink your classic Old Fashioned, don’t forget our top pro tip -- don’t leave that cherry in the bottom of the glass when you’re finished.
How We Train the Employees Who Bring Our Menu To Life
You’ve visited us and enjoyed the Market Square view just outside our patio. You've eaten a delicious meal and loved it. And you've even sipped our selected whiskey barrels and cocktails and called our bar 'heaven.’
But did you know there's more than meets the eye? Behind-the-scenes, there's an intricate process that all of our back-of-the-house employees go through to create the best experience for you and your palette. There’s a lot that goes into making that experience consistent, upscale, and seamless. And it all starts with our employees. In such a constantly evolving industry - and in our buzzing Knoxville corner of the world - we understand the importance of consistent, thorough, and ongoing training for our kitchen staff. This way, you're in for an incredible experience every time you walk in.
It All Starts with the Hire
Creating the ultimate customer experience begins with our hiring process. We start with an initial interview where the applicant and our Executive Chef, Jon Gatlin, conduct a walk-through of the kitchen and discusses the basics of who we are, our history, and what we’re looking for in employees. If both parties are interested in moving onto the next step, we schedule a “work preview.” This is when the applicant agrees to come in for a few hours to complete related tasks from the job description as well as a competency questionnaire.
Things get serious during the work preview: applicants go through a battery of testing, including on knife cuts, recipe understanding and adherence, room/item placement recall, verbal communication, and restaurant jargon. The competency questionnaire tests the applicant on basic culinary education, like mother sauces and quantity measurements (how many cups in a quart, for example).
Through all of that testing, we’re evaluating a candidate on their organization, cleanliness, efficiency, attitude, and more. We love to bring on the best, and the process to find the cream of the crop can be extensive, especially during the hiring process.
Time to Train
After all of the evaluations are complete, we invite a possible candidate to schedule their initial training time in the kitchen. This is when they’ll receive the menu-specific information pack which includes information on ingredients, recipes, menu themes, and chef notes. They’ll also receive a build/prep sheet which lists every menu item they’ll be responsible for at their designated station. This document is important as it helps employees double-check their work and makes sure each dish is up to standard (and has all the appropriate ingredients).
Welcome to the Team
For one to three weeks, new employees train with a tenured team member. After the initial training, we test our candidates again using another extended competency test. Through this, we’ll point out where the new hire needs to improve and what they can focus on in the next few weeks.
From here on out, we expect our staff to constantly learn and evolve because that’s what our industry requires. We encourage their continued education by keeping track of their progress and providing ongoing educational opportunities - from daily conversations with senior staff to providing resources like documentaries and publications that can help our employees evolve their craft.
Through the whole process, one thing is consistent in all the bustle: we expect the best, and we train the best. Only through hiring the best staff do we provide the most enjoyable culinary experience for all of you!
To stay up to date on the unique Oliver Royale culinary experience, check out our Instagram and Facebook.
Debuting the 2019 Spring Menu
Every season, but especially the Spring, we get hit with a dose of inspiration. Maybe it’s the weather where the blossoms are blooming, and so is our creativity. Or maybe it’s connecting with our local farmers who inspire us with the fresh Spring seasonal harvest. Or perhaps it’s our team and our collective passion to push past the previous iteration of innovation. It all starts in the kitchen where we gather ingredients and products ready to start the not-so-linear process of creating a new menu.
The switch from the warm and hearty Winter Menu dishes to more cool and vibrant (both visually and palette-wise!) dishes gives us a breath of fresh air. Don’t get me wrong: a nice big confit lamb shank on lentils, beans, and piping hot demi-glace is delicious, but the opportunity to combine cold, hot, sweet, and savory - and mix in some island flavor and culture into our menus – is amazing.
Take for instance our swordfish dish that hits our menu soon. Swordfish is a rich and meaty fish and is one of those ingredients that gives us the flexibility to combine and play with spices and sauces, resulting in a tender, flavor-packed dish. We rub the swordfish with our special jerk spice recipe, and pair it with black rice, coconut, tamarind, dragon fruit, and kiwi for great flavor combinations - and all Spring inspired. Pair it with our fabulous Louis Jadot Unoaked Chardonnay to create the perfect meal! Other top contenders to look out for in our Spring menu are the Lobster Roll, Poached Halibut, and the Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake!
The journey in creating a new menu is more like a community project or a combined movement which is what is so inspiring about what we do here at Oliver Royale. It’s an opportunity to connect or be a part of something greater: to choose and experience ingredients directly from our backyard and to explore cuisines that aren’t always available in our city. You can be sure when you come in to dine or have drinks at Oliver Royale, the ingredients and selections have been carefully planned and thoughtfully sourced to make your experience with us the absolute best!
Don’t just taste; Experience our food
In last month’s blog, we talked about three Fall dishes that inspired us to experiment, try new techniques, and up the ante in how we create food. We do this best by connecting experiences and stories to our dishes, staying true to who we are in the food industry, and using local ingredients to support our community.
This month, we’re walking you through these same three dishes, but this time, we're offering you suggested appetizers, desserts, and wine pairings, to hopefully set you up with your own stories and memories to share. Get to know our menu and our techniques so you can experience food at its fullest at Oliver Royale.
If you're craving adventure, this dining experience is for you:
Appetizer
Artisan Cheese & Charcuterie - an assortment of locally sourced cured meats, artisan cheeses, pickled vegetables, olives, dried fruit, jams & chutneys
Entree
Confit leg of rabbit - braised endive, Benton’s bacon, Yukon gold potato mousseline, roasted radishes, roasted cauliflower, and kale, paired with our 2015 Diora Pinot Noir
Dessert
Pumpkin Cheesecake Brûlée - candied pumpkin, pretzel ginger snap, pepita, caramel, corn, dark chocolate, and crémeux
If you're craving more of a seafood kind-of-night, look no further:
Appetizer
Mussels & Clams - pho bone broth, house-smoked tasso ham, fennel, basil, jalapeno, cilantro, cured lemon
Entree
North Carolina Trout - foraged mushrooms, cornmeal-crusted okra, Anson Mills grits, swiss chard, radish, and tabasco gastrique, paired with Anonymous Sauvignon Blanc 2017
Dessert
Autumn Mousse Cake - charred orange mousse, roasted pears, candied walnuts, caramel, poached pear sorbet, and oatmeal cookie
The days are short and the holidays are near, so this dinner experience is all about treating yourself:
Appetizer
Seared sea scallops - Chestnut risotto, roasted cauliflower cream, truffle dust, crispy leeks, and radish chips
Entree
Confit lamb shank - parmesan polenta, butternut and acorn squash, chestnut, gremolata, and confit garlic, paired with the Heartless Cabernet Sauvignon 2016
Dessert
Truffles & Macaron - tasting of assorted, seasonally inspired chocolate truffles & house-made macarons
The next time you’re here, have this blog handy and take your taste buds on an adventure. Whether it’s with friends, family, or yourself, we invite you to explore our dishes in a way that’s not just about taste, but about the experience. We’ll see you here!
Psst...the holiday season is approaching! Check out our upcoming events and make your reservations!
New Fall Dishes...and a few surprises for you!
It's been a long time coming, but Fall has made its debut, and it's finally here to stay. While it's been a bit of a transitional challenge with this seasons' high and low temps, we are grateful that we know the area well and our local farmers, too, to help build this season's menu.
This Fall, we honored typical Autumn-worthy flavors like pumpkin, cinnamon, big bold braises, and red wine. But we're not all about the familiar. As you know, we like to straddle over the edge of well, edginess here, like:
What will surprise your palette?
Which aromas will pull you into the dish?
How can we put a spin on a typical plate?
What techniques could we use to bring out the flavors in our meat?
As we answered, experimented, and taste tested, we decided to introduce, and bring back, a few new concept dishes that we feel will delight you and your taste buds. For example, we tried out confit versus braise techniques on a few of our long-term cooking items such as the short ribs and lamb shanks. The result was that the absence of liquid allows for so much more flavor and a much different texture than a traditional braised cut.
So here are some of our favorite dishes that combined techniques, bold flavors, and new concepts to the table:
Confit leg of rabbit
with braised endive, Benton’s bacon, Yukon gold potato mousseline, roasted radishes, roasted cauliflower, and kale
North Carolina trout
with foraged mushrooms, cornmeal-crusted okra, anson mills grits, swiss chard, radish, and tabasco gastrique
Confit lamb shank
with parmesan polenta, butternut and acorn squash, chestnut, gremolata, and confit garlic
Playing around with rabbit, cornmeal, squashes, and other Fall flavors and ingredients were wonderful and exciting, and they gave us an opportunity to create and concentrate on flavor. In turn, we are so happy to produce an amazing dining experience for you! The next time you're in town, sit with us and try one of our new culinary dishes. We love feedback and hearing from our guests.
Psst...the holiday season is closely approaching so be sure to check our upcoming events and make your reservations! We also have some new faces at Royale so be sure to stop by and meet the crew!
How We Created the Fall Cocktail Menu by Bartender Ari Rector
Fun Fact! At Oliver Royale, we change up the food menus, but we also change up the cocktail menus every season. It’s an exciting time to witness the changes and I’m even more thrilled to share with you, first hand, how we created this Fall’s cocktail menu.
Taking on my first cocktail menu change was intimidating. I’ve contributed to previous menus, but never had to manage the intricacies of developing a well-balanced and on-theme lineup. There are plenty of details to consider, both creatively and logistically, when working on a new seasonal menu. There are questions we bartenders must think about and ultimately answer for a perfectly balanced, delicious, and thoughtful menu. Thankfully, my counterpart, Chris, is a veteran of the cocktail game, and we worked together to create a fresh take on this year's Fall menu!
So diving head-on, we pored over each cocktail, each alternative, again and again. We asked ourselves questions like how do we make tequila taste like fall? Instead of drawing primarily from stereotypical autumn flavors like pumpkin and allspice, we drew inspiration from the sensations of fall: a dry, crisp breeze, the coziness of being wrapped up in a blanket, or the smell of smoke from a campfire.
We even tackled presentation, like would a certain cocktail be better presented in a coupe or a whiskey snifter? Beyond liquor, you also want to present a varied cast of supporting ingredients. A bright, tart tequila drink must counterbalance an earthy, saccharine gin drink on the menu.
We went back and forth on the drawing board to figure out the logistics, too: is there a variety of spirits being used? You probably want a few different whiskey drinks, one boozy, one bright, one dry. The list goes on - How many gin cocktails are too many? How many drinks should be served up? How many on the rocks?
With this template to guide us, we began to craft our first menu together.
So here we are now - polishing up the menu, adding the last touches, and excited to present you a couple of Oliver bar classics, like the rich and smoky Campfire Old Fashioned and Bram Stoker. You’ll see some new takes on old classics with the Eye Opener and the Circa 1895. To keep things current, we brought plenty of new players to the game with Smoke & Mirrors, A Clinch River Runs Through It, the Terra Otono, and the Euphemia.
Chris and I are tremendously excited to present the Fall cocktail menu to our guests and to build upon the solid foundation we inherited from our previous bar manager, Colin, and lead bartender, Matt. We will do all we can to live up to their legacy!
Here’s a sneak peak of one of our brand new cocktails premiering in the coming weeks, Smoke & Mirrors. Go ahead and give it a try! We'd love to know what you think!
Smoke & Mirrors
● 1 oz Rye Whiskey
● .5 oz Suze
● .5 oz Amaro Abano
● .5 oz Lillet Rouge
Stir, pour up into a coupe and top with champagne! Drink up!
Stay tuned for the menu release on 9/26! Check us out on Facebook or Instagram for more sneak peeks!
Eat Real with Local Food
“I always say that I don't believe I'm a chef. I try to be a storyteller.” Jose Andrés
Storytelling isn’t only for the great authors of our time. You’ll find it here in our kitchen, vibrating through the clanks of our pots and pans; it’s in our hands mixing and sautéing and perfecting each plate. But we tell our real story through our food. You get a taste of our restaurant philosophy and our values in every bite you eat.
Our local food is a big part of that story, too. We couldn’t create our dishes without the support of our local farms! Our unpredictable East Tennessee weather gives us a run for our money sometimes, but we all make it work.
But why put so much time and effort to eat local?
Fresh. Sustainable. Community. Variety. And the list goes on!
When you eat local, you eat real food. It’s not frozen or microwaved. It sustains the local economy. It fosters community engagement and connections. It offers exclusive dishes during the seasonal harvest.
Basically, local food tells us a story. Let us show you our summer story using our local seasonal summer veggies and fruits. Next time you eat at Royale, we want you to see the food in a different light. Pick any of our top three summer dishes below. Take a look at the dish, notice the seasonal veggies we’ve introduced, and see where we added dashes of nostalgia and summer memories into the plate.
Pan Seared Snapper - step into the cool waters around the Carolinas where snappers are freshly caught by boat (next day delivery for the win!). The rocky sand, the sounds of the waves, and the low sunset bring memories of our childhood at the beach. That al-dente bite of heirloom tomatoes bubbles up memories of fresh grown tomatoes in your mother’s garden and sunflower shoots give that toothsome bite of lemon. Try the Pan Seared Snapper with our Diora Pinot Noir from California.
Confit Short Rib - Adirondack chairs. Ice cold beers. Smoky scents gently breezing over the grill. Our Confit Short Rib wears the summer barbecue badge here. It has all the components of a traditional barbeque (yes, we got potato salad for you!) fine-tuned to represent our style. Any dark reds will do but we recommend the Peju Cabernet Sauvignon to heighten the bourbon cherry barbecue sauce.
Bucatini Bolognese - Your grandmother’s kitchen. You see her standing over the stove twirling the thick strands of spaghetti around the fork. Nothing beats her sauce but we’ve got a house-made ricotta that’ll remind you of home. We can’t get enough of the light oregano and basil combination, too. An acidic Italian red wine is perfect with the bolognese. Take the If You See Kay Cab Blend for a swirl.
The kitchen is our platform but the local food is where it shines! We hope you’ll stop to try these three dishes and bring up some wonderful summer memories. Just like Jose Andres, we try to be storytellers - the best of them in Knoxville.
A shout out to our local friends: Mountain Meadows Farm, A Place of the Heart Farm, Lacewing, Circle V, Wolf Creek, Huff Farm and many more who have done a great job rolling with the punches of mother nature to supply us, and the public, with wonderful seasonal products!
PS: Bring on the new season! Sign up for our newsletter for an exclusive look at our upcoming Fall Menu >>> Click HERE to sign up!
We’re REAL Certified!
Over the past year Oliver Royale has made it it’s mission to be a leader in the restaurant industry while focusing on creating locally sourced menus, supporting our surrounding community, and promoting health and sustainability in everything we do!
In March of 2017 we received notice that Oliver Royale was awarded the Snail of Approval which honors local restaurants and food businesses that exemplify the principles of Slow Food and contribute to the quality, authenticity, and sustainability of food in our community.
This year we’re proud to announce that Oliver Royale is now REAL Certified!
Following an in-detail audit for healthful and sustainable practice, Oliver Royale has been nationally recognized by the REAL trust-mark for restaurants and food service providers that are committed to promoting health and sustainability within the industry. This certification means that we stand out from others in the industry for our REAL food practices. You, our community and customers, are playing a part in the growing health of not only our diners, but also our nation.
In order to achieve this recognition, Oliver Royale opened its kitchen to a full-scale audit, conducted by a REAL Certified Registered Dietitian. We knew that walking the walk was critical in indicating our commitment to transparency within the food service world but also to our patrons here at home.
In qualifying for REAL certification, Oliver Royale ranks in the top 25% of restaurants nationwide, for our commitment to serving high-quality REAL food. We also meet the following prerequisites:
- Having a vegetarian entrée on the menu, or clearly stating that a vegetarian substitution can be made at no additional cost.
Not cooking or baking with any hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil or fat.
Having a menu comprised of entrées that provide a full serving of fresh produce.
Here are some of the specific ways in which Oliver Royale further supports the health of its dining community:
Our food preparation is exceptional, largely because of our focus on cooking in-house from scratch, our use of plant-based oils, and our incorporation of healthy cooking practices.
Our commitment to ingredient quality is significant, particularly in these categories: sustainably sourced produce, regionally sourced organic chicken, and sustainable seafood.
We minimize environmental impact through the following sustainability measures: Snail of Approval certification.
As far as we’re concerned, a win for us is a win for Knoxville! We couldn’t do it without YOU! Cheers to attaining our next best! Keep an eye out for our Spring Menu - debuting soon!