New to Downtown Maryville: Swank’s Jazz Club and Two Doors Down

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New to Downtown Maryville: Swank’s Jazz Club and Two Doors Down

Thursday, August 21st, 2008 | East Tennessee |

The newest arrival on the Maryville restaurant scene is Swank’s Jazz Club. We got there early on a Saturday evening so we were too early to take in any music, but they have live shows almost every night of the week. The interior was well done and the food was good. We sampled the filet and the shrimp alfredo and no one was unsatisfied.

Two Doors Down is a rock ‘n’ roll centric bar that is well-arranged for live music, with an elevated stage and shoebox layout. (For Knoxvillians of a certain age: it’s like a slightly reduced scale version of the Library/U. Club/Barley and Hops on the UT Strip.)

This is the same building that previously housed the Lighthouse Cafe and - three decades ago - Burns Drugs. The stainless steel lunch counter from the drugstore days survived into the Lighthouse Cafe era. I ate a pot roast lunch at the counter in the last several years. Alas, it didn’t survive the latest transformation. The owner told me the floor underneath the stainless kitchen was rotten, and it’s now in possession of a pal of his for future projects.

The blue and white building next door is 114 East Broadway and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was originally the Samuel A. Patton Building and dates from 1875. The tilework at the entrance reads “HOPE BROS JEWELERS” and a stone medallion in the second floor architecture reads “WATCHES AND JEWELRY.”

Today it’s better known as The Sandwich Shop. It’s been a downtown Maryville beer bar for as long as my 40 year old memory can recollect.

Just beyond that is Brackins Bar, the upstairs of which was once the public library. It’s only been a bar for the last decade or so. Not long after it opened I talked to the owner and he recounted all the businesses that had been there previously. At one point it was a barbershop. In a great example of how new things build on old things, the barbershop mirror became the bar mirror.

2 Comments to New to Downtown Maryville: Swank’s Jazz Club and Two Doors Down

Swanky
August 21, 2008

No relation…

Stephanie saw their myspace page and I emailed them to see if they wanted some help with their drink menu. They have a Mai Tai on it and I fear they make one like most, sickly sweet. I offered t get them the right recipe and sources for the ingredients to make it a good Mai Tai. They said they were forwarding it to their head bartender. Never heard back. Scared to try it.

Would it be wrong to order it and if they serve me a pineapple juice filled lollipop with a dark rum floater, to give it back and say “that’s not a Mai Tai” and leave?