Searching for the perfect glass of tea:
Charger restaurant reviewers are hot on the trail

Leigh Ivey, Editor-in-Chief

People always say that when you stop practicing something, you lose your talent. I, however, never knew that this wisdom applies to restaurant reviews.
Actually, that’s not fair. We, my fellow reviewers and I, never truly had any talent at critiquing food (although we like to pretend), so we couldn’t really lose it.

What we forgot, however, was checking out a restaurant before deciding to eat there (it is especially critical to find out the business hours...).
For example, we were going to dine at the City Square Cafe, a place I’d never heard of until recently and thus decided to try, mostly because I had heard that they have the best iced tea in town.

But alas, when we arrived to begin reviewing, we discovered that certain places are only open during lunch time, and supposedly 2:00 is not a typical lunch hour...

So after this dilemma, reviewers Emilee Chaffin, Spud Flatt, Adam Jaynes, Hillary Pate, and I decided to go to McAllister’s (also known for its tea). We soon found out this restaurant had closed. What a fun surprise.

At last we settled on Stroud’s. It wasn’t a bad choice. Granted, we were all starving because we’d driven around Cookeville for 45 minutes deciding where to eat, but the barbecue was excellent, and the tea was extraordinary. It was cheap too, another good thing about Stroud’s.

The menu consists of any kind of barbecue you can imagine--pork, beef, turkey...even barbecue salads. None of us were bold enough to try that, however.
We gave Stroud’s three stars. And although we couldn’t compare Stroud’s tea to that of City Square Cafe or McAllister’s, it’s hard to believe that it could be better than what we enjoyed.