Knoxify

The Best Burger in Knoxville series is our attempt to find the best local burger joint. Fol­low us on our taste test­ing journey.

In the two plus years we’ve been around, we here at Knox­ify have ded­i­cated our­selves to bring­ing our read­ers every­thing we can find that makes Knoxville a great place to live. So far that’s included music reviews, local busi­ness spot­lights, neigh­bor­hood infor­ma­tion and some very cool pho­tos of our scruffy lit­tle city. But just like the rest of you, we get hun­gry too, so we thought it was high time the Knox­ify crew stepped away from our key­boards and hit the town to try to find the best eats K-Town has to offer. From burg­ers to pizza to steak­houses and beyond, we plan on leav­ing no stone unturned and no plate half full in our search for Knoxify’s favorite Knoxville eater­ies. And after we’ve fin­ished each taste test, we’ll be post­ing a review right here for your read­ing plea­sure. The eat­ing part is up to your discretion.

First up in our culi­nary quest is our search for Knoxville’s Best Burger and what bet­ter place to start look­ing than Litton’s Mar­ket and Restau­rant in the heart of Foun­tain City. Founded in 1946 by Elridge Lit­ton, Litton’s is not just a burger joint, it’s a Knoxville insti­tu­tion. Burger lovers can enjoy the reg­u­lar Litton’s Burger, with or with­out cheese and bacon, or they can ramp it up a few — ok, sev­eral — notches and take on the Thun­der Road burger, which comes com­plete with pimento cheese, sauteed onions and jalapenos. Hooowee! Litton’s also has some pretty tasty hot dogs and some mighty fine deserts, but our bel­lies sim­ply didn’t allow us to include those good eats in our review.

The Knox­ify team sam­pled sev­eral dif­fer­ent types of burg­ers at Litton’s and we each reviewed our indi­vid­ual burger and din­ing expe­ri­ence on a scale of 1 – 5 (five being the best) in the fol­low­ing categories:

1. Burger size (How big was that burger?)
2. Taste (How did that burger taste?)
3. Cheese (How was the cheese on that burger?)
4. Bun (How was that burger’s bun?)
5. Fries (How were the fries that came with that burger?)
6. Ser­vice (How was the wait­per­son who served that burger?)
7. Atmos­phere (How was the atmos­phere of that burger joint?)
8. Value (What kind of bang did I get for my buck with that burger?)
9. Return­abil­ity (How likely am I to come back and eat that burger again?)

After gath­er­ing our rat­ings together and furi­ously watch­ing Casey tab­u­late the results, here is how Litton’s fared on aver­age, accord­ing to our Knox­ify taste test team.

Litton’s Burger Size — 4.25
The Litton’s burger, while not the biggest we’ve ever seen, is def­i­nitely big enough to fill up most anyone’s belly, espe­cially when pared with some fries. Size also seemed pretty uni­form from burger to burger.

Litton’s Burger Taste — 3.88
We sam­pled lots of dif­fer­ent kinds of burg­ers with dif­fer­ent top­pings and dif­fer­ent types of cheese, so there was a lit­tle dis­crep­ancy in this cat­e­gory. Testers gave their burger’s taste any­where from a 5 all the way down to a 2, with most giv­ing it some­where around a 4. So, while the over­all taste of a Litton’s burger might not absolutely pop your socks off, it’s still pretty down­right yummy.

Litton’s Burger Cheese — 4.06
Cheese­wise, Litton’s burg­ers seem right on tar­get. Each burger seemed to have a good amount of good qual­ity cheese, but not so much that the burger was over­whelmed by it. Again, the taste might not blow you away, but it’s def­i­nitely above average.

Litton’s Bun — 3.69
The Litton’s bun is a good size match to the burger and it’s lightly toasted, which is nice. How­ever, there was noth­ing about it that was absolutely awesome.

Litton’s Fries — 3.64
The fries were good but as you can see from our rat­ing, not great. To go from good to great we’d like to see their fries coated with some type of seasoning.

Litton’s Ser­vice — 3.44
We went on a Thurs­day night, and while Litton’s is almost always busy, it wasn’t nearly as busy as a week­end night can be. That said, our ser­vice, while, well, ser­vice­able, wasn’t spec­tac­u­lar. A few of us had to ask for drink refills or condi­ments more than once and our wait­per­son was a lit­tle hard to flag down.

Litton’s Atmos­phere — 3.81
As pre­vi­ously men­tioned, Litton’s is almost always busy, so it’s almost always quite lively. We were a large party, so we got sat in a back room, far away from the nor­mal hus­tle and bus­tle of the front restau­rant. We were also sit­ting right by the restrooms and next to ban­quet room where a wed­ding shower was in full swing, so all of these fac­tors may have decreased our over­all atmos­phere rating.

Litton’s Burger Value — 3.44
At $6.99 for a reg­u­lar Litton’s Burger and $8.99 for a Burger Plat­ter (burger + fries), plus $1.29 each for cheese and bacon, some Knox­ify testers felt that they had seen bet­ter burger val­ues else­where in town. But over­all, a night out at Litton’s cer­tainly isn’t going to break the bank either.

Litton’s Return­abil­ity — 3.88
All things con­sid­ered, it looks like most of us would go back and throw down another Litton’s burger in the future. Thun­der Road, anyone?

So, one burger joint down, and sev­eral more to go. If you have sug­ges­tions of burger places the Knox­ify test team should visit, send them on to tips@knoxify.com.

Photo by: Jody Collins