Back Inn Cafe

Back Inn Café
412 E 2nd Street
Chattanooga TN, 37402
(423) 265 5033

I don't know what the deal is with the Back Inn Cafe. I don't know its history. Maybe once it was a great restaurant. But now it's just a place for people with a little extra cash that like the view and don't care about food.

There are restaurants that are hit-or-miss, and then there are restaurants that are miss-miss, and Back Inn Cafe is the second one.

Four years ago, when I ate at the Back Inn for the first time, I genuinely enjoyed it.  But each subsequent visit has been less satisfying than the one before, my overall displeasure compounding with every increasingly-banal bite.

Where do I even start?  The menu, which is allegedly seasonal, never changes.  It's always the same tired, unimaginative fusion cuisine, food that seems to be constructed purely around its printed descriptions rather than flavor.  Like Tony's, the Back Inn suffers from hire-unskilled-and-apathetic-teenagers syndrome.  And like every establishment in the Bluff View Art District, it attracts all manner of rude patrons. 

I want to give credit where it's due.  The Back Inn Cafe is a lovely restaurant with big sunny rooms and large windows nestled into an artsy part of town.  And maybe if you only eat there once every few years, or stop by just for drinks, you'll be okay with it.  But if you visit with any degree of frequency the less-attractive elements will pile up quickly: the overdone cream sauces, the fancy descriptions of boring food, the unskilled servers, the annoying patrons, and the never-changing menu.

There's always something wrong with the food.  It's become apparent to me that this restaurant just can't get it right.  Ever.  My most recent meal, featuring the Stuffed Eggplant Penne, was so wretched it was like a slap in the face. The thick, greasy eggplant, tempura-fried and forged into clumsy tubes, was bad enough. But to stuff it with huge globs of herbed goat cheese took the dish from "bad" to "disgusting, overloaded mess."  Meanwhile, the maranara sauce was inexplicably bland, resulting in a two-for-one--terrible and boring.

The Back Inn doesn't serve food, it serves notions of food.  Underneath the charming environs it's just another so-called upscale restaurant for people who want to feel fancy and spend a little money--but not too much money--on entrees that merely posture as food.

I'm tired of wasting my time and my money with this place.  I kept giving them chance after chance, because I want this restaurant to be great, but it's just not, and at this rate, it's never going to be.

Leave the Back Inn for the tourists.