Sunny Point Café
Buttermilk Biscuit
Blueberry Cream Cheese Bread Pudding French Toast with Vanilla Anglaise and Whipped Cream
Carrot Cake Pancake with Cardamom Cream Cheese Icing
Iced Coffee
Griddled Peach Poundcake with Raspberry Sauce and Whipped Cream
Pecan Brioche Cinnamon Roll
Suffice it to say that no matter how much I’d read about the family owned and operated Sunny Point Café nothing had prepared me for what I would find early Saturday morning, the large culinary garden in full bloom, children playing on the restaurant’s playground, and families waiting in line with nary a parking space to be found thus relegating me to a space down the block which afforded me a long, pleasant walk through the aforementioned gardens. Thankfully with a full day’s agenda leading to an early arrival it would not be long before the doors to the space opened and seated with the first group of the day at a cozy booth near a pair of regulars I perused the menu, a dozen or so items catching my eye with half portions thankfully available for many of them and ‘to go’ options for others allowing me to select five. Featuring a cute and whimsical interior with a staff to match my meal began with a glass of iced coffee refilled so frequently that I actually had to ask my server to hold off and with my primary plate competing for time with the rest of the patrons my meal began with a pair of appetizers – the first a flaky and immense biscuit rife with buttermilk notes and paired with butter and housemade blueberry preserves and the second a toothsome carrot cake flapjack topped with cream cheese icing and pure maple syrup. Moving next to the main course it was with good fortune that one of the daily specials was so many of my favorite things wrapped into one as day old slices of housemade brioche found new life in the form of densely saturated bread pudding subsequently griddled and topped with fresh berries from the garden, house made whipped cream, and extra anglaise for good measure – every aspect of this plate and the experience as a whole an impetus to order more but my schedule dictating the rest be to go – a dense piece of pound cake teaming with peaches and an almost impossibly buttery cream cheese frosted pecan roll proving a more than adequate snack en route back to Knoxville.
