Oscar's Restaurant — Restaurant in Knoxville

There is a reason that the reviews for this restaurant are either 1s or 5s. The owners clearly have a passion for food and cooking, and that comes through in their fresh ingredients, friendly service, and tasty food. At the same time, there are multiple small missteps that suggest that the owners have little experience with or training in the BUSINESS of owning a restaurant. First, they need to change the "Fine Italian Cuisine" on their sign to reflect what the restaurant really is: a taste of the Mediterranean. There's nothing fine dining about this, and Italian food is only a fraction of their menu. The combination of the "fine" on the sign with the shabbiness of the building likely scares away many customers, as it did me for my first ten years in this city. The "fine" implies that the food is expensive, and the look of the building implies that the food is low quality. No one wants to pay a lot of money for bad food. Getting a better sign would send the message that this is a hole in the wall with good food, which it is. Second, they need to think about the ways that they are cutting corners, because the cuts I saw are damaging the experience without saving the owners money. For example, the food comes on a real plate, and the drink comes in a real glass, and yet the cutlery is plastic. This isn't saving the restaurant money, but it's making their food hard to eat. The restaurant serves beautiful salads with fresh ingredients, and then they ruin it by serving chemical-laden, pre-made salad dressing in pre-packaged plastic cups. Their beautiful salad is ruined, because they didn't take the two minutes required to make fresh dressing (which will save them money). Third, the menu is simply too large. Large menus mean that the customers take too long to order and disrupt the flow of the kitchen, creating long delays. Those who complain about this place, complain about long delays. A stripped down menu would solve that. Keeping so many fresh ingredients is also costly. In sum, good food, but...

0 Stars. Poor Management. Poor Quality. Prices online reflect cheaper than actual prices! I was so excited about eating a BBQ chicken calzone from Oscar's tonight, even had a friend hyped about eating them.. I ordered my calzone with light onion add mushroom and she ordered a meat lover's calzone add mushroom. First of all.. The delivery driver called, said he was outside, then immediately hung up. Called the driver back because he's not outside, he then says he is outside and hung up again.. He was walking up and down the street. When we got the food, it wasn't fully cooked to the point the mozzarella was chunky and we had to put them in the oven to cook it the rest of the way. My calzone had so much onion, I couldn't enjoy it.. I had to pick a load of onion off each bite that I did eat. My friend only ate a few bites of hers. We called to speak with the manager. We were advised by the gentleman who answered the phone the order was put in wrong, that instead of keying light onions, onions was hit which added extra. Regarding our undercooked calzone, we were advised it wasn't done because they cooked it in 20 minutes to have it to our house in 45 minutes. We then spoke with a manager, who didn't provide a name. He was extremely rude, told me extra onions were ordered on the pizza and it was made right. We asked how he was going to make it right and he said, "What you want?" We agreed for him to make another one, with an attitude, said, "I'm about to make it! I'm about to make it!" He then HUNG UP in our face! We then called back and requested a refund and he had an even bigger attitude. They are on the way to pick up the calzones for a refund.. I'm so disappointed as this used to be one of my favorite places...

It's basically Papa John's, but priced higher. There's a Papa John's just on the other side of the same building, so if that's what you're after, just go there instead.

We were passing through Knoxville somewhat late at night (after 9pm, which didn't seam unreasonably late to us, but apparently most local businesses differ in opinion), and this was one of the only places that was open that looked decent, where we could sit down for a meal. It's right next to the university, and a good number of college students trickled in after we were seated. I imagine this place does a lot of takeout and delivery. The food we ordered came out very much like if you were to plate up a takeout dinner straight from the box: plastic flatware, condiments in packets and little plastic containers - even the Parmesan cheese we asked for came out in packets instead of a shaker.

The Oscar's Burger tasted "like a frozen veggie burger pattie," and the chicken parmesan pizza was sworn by multiple members of our party to be exactly the same crust and ingredients as Papa John's. It was even served with the same pepperoncini pepper and garlic sauce. As someone who doesn't mind Papa John's pizza, that would have been okay, except for the fact that we specifically picked this place over Papa John's and paid more for it. It seemed particularly suspicious that the two businesses basically shared a back wall. Maybe they share the kitchen back there, too.

The one bright spot - the breadsticks were freshly baked and pretty...