ANNIE’S
BEGINNING A NEW “OLD CITY”
You mean there’s a place older than this?” my tour guests asked while crossing Gay Street after I mentioned the Old City. The term Old City can be somewhat confusing to newcomers. It is a misnomer, as the oldest part of Knoxville would be near the river. The name was created as a branding or marketing term for a particular area of town near Central and Jackson Avenues that actually developed around the 1850s, as the railroad was being built.
The expression “Old City” is attributed to Kristopher Kendrick and Patrick Roddy. Kendrick had a vision for this worn area of town that others couldn’t imagine. When he mentioned to his friend and Coca-Cola Bottling Company owner Patrick Roddy that he had bought property on Jackson and Central with the intent of revitalizing the area, Roddy blatantly expressed, “Kris, that’s the old city.” The optimistic Kendrick replied, “Pat, that’s the perfect name.” And a new “Old City” was born.
“Don’t you know what kind of neighborhood that is?” Kristopher Kendrick remembered his father saying. “Pop, I’m going to change it,” Kendrick replied. Once restoration began and new businesses started opening, nearly every article or mention of that particular part of town thereafter noted, “They prefer to call it the Old City.” Intrigued about what was being imagined in this previously run-down neighborhood, locals followed suit with the language.
The Old City became one of our favorite destinations in college. Rummaging through vintage stores in old warehouses was a favorite Saturday afternoon pastime. The Old City was an outlet for the creative, the alternative and the inspired. It was a getaway, an escape, an area of Knoxville where you could feel like you were somewhere much cooler than Knoxville and that you were even a much cooler version of yourself. Filled with old abandoned brick warehouses, industrial buildings and the massive railyard, the Old City had been the perfect hideout for outlaws and outsiders and now artists, musicians and restless young people. It was restored just enough to feel safe but left alone just enough to feel edgy.
Many eclectic eateries and clubs have passed through the Old City: Manhattan’s; Spaghetti Warehouse; Old City Grill; New City Café; JFG Coffeehouse; Amigo’s; Black Sheep Café; Pasta Trio; Summit Diner at the corner of Central and Summit Hill; El Camino; the vegetarian All Night Eggplant, which did not serve eggplant all night; and, in the words of one of my tour guests, “What about Ella Guru’s?”
But before all those, one of the first proponents of the Old City in the 1980s was Annie DeLisle, formerly Annie McCarthy. She lived in one of the condominiums renovated by Kristopher Kendrick. After her mother passed away, she asked Kendrick what he would do next, if he were her and could do whatever he wanted and be whoever he wanted to be. Kendrick answered that he would open a little restaurant in the Old City, something unlike anything anyone had ever seen in town.
“Well, there was this place we would go in the Old City, it had a woman’s name,” my friend related. “Oh, Annie’s,” I told her. “She was the ex-wife of Cormac McCarthy,” I threw in for special effect. “Really!?” she responded, immediately recognizing the name of the Pulitzer Prize–winning author. Annie, the English-born ballet dancer, came to Knoxville following their marriage.
Annie’s—A Very Special Restaurant opened at 106 North Central in 1983 with twenty investors. I have a feeling that—just as at the Atlanta Bazaar in Gone with the Wind, “If Melanie Wilkes says it’s alright, it tis alright”—if Annie DeLisle said it was a very special restaurant, then it was a very special restaurant.
Guests were to look for the entrance near the only dogwood tree on Central Avenue, as the restaurant was not marked with a sign. It was a small gray stucco building connected to Patrick Sullivan’s. Inside, twelve tables would seat twenty-eight guests. The first chef was Micael de Burca. That’s Meehaal to us. Annie had met him while he was working as chef of Piccolo’s at the Pembroke.
Dinner at Annie’s—A Very Special Restaurant included an appetizer, bread and butter, salad or soup, entrée, dessert and coffee at a prix fixe of $13.95. Now it’s my turn to say, Really!? Although, one of Micael’s signature dishes—fusilli pasta with cream, white wine, strawberries and Italian truffles—had a $3.50 surcharge because of the extra expense of the truffles. Another extravagance of Micael’s was Sundae a la Maison—ice cream covered with green, red and blue grapes, as well as strawberries and blueberries, topped with a chocolate Cognac sauce that used a Swiss semisweet chocolate that sold for $20.00 a pound.
The prix fixe increased to $17.95 in 1986 but still featured lush dishes of rich and creamy almond soup, light and cool chilled watercress soup, salads of fresh greens with tart dressings, Dover sole covered with a chive sauce and key lime fusilli with shrimp and scallops. By 1988, lack of easy parking in the Old City began hurting business at Annie’s as other restaurants and bars were opening and more people were coming to experience the revitalized area. When Annie opened her restaurant in the Old City, there was nothing else going on in the area. By 1989, there were twenty-nine businesses. Although Annie said those six years were among the most fabulous of her life, she decided to close in 1989, relating that she was very, very tired.
Mark Wischhusen had been a patron of Annie’s and was a part owner of the Blues Harbor club in Atlanta. He took over the space and reopened as Lucille’s, a restaurant and jazz club, named for his mother. He closed Lucille’s in 1996, but it was revived by Frank Gardner in 2001 as part of Patrick Sullivan’s. Gardner created Back Room BBQ in the space before closing in 2011.
The building was not of the best construction and had fallen into bad condition. In 2013, there began to be calls to demolish the worn structure. Later, the space became the outdoor patio of Tim Love’s Love Shack, adjacent to his Lonesome Dove Bistro. But we can always remember, once upon a time, that small space was home to—a very special restaurant.