Put your dukes up and work up an appetite in a place that’s as lively as hearing a bell go off to begin a match. Hard Knox Pizza is an undefeated champion.

As you walk in, you’re greeted with beautiful smells. To the left, a wall of cut wood ready to be placed in the brick oven nearby. To the right, plenty of seats, each table with an illustration of a famous fighter that you can read about while you wait for your pizza (I sat at the Mike Tyson table.). And just in front of you is where you can watch all the magic happen. And they mean business. The owner originally found inspiration for the innovation of the brick oven after a trip to Naples, Italy. When he returned, he created his own version in his backyard!

The menu items are also named after legendary fighters – both real and fictional. For example, I ordered the Rocky Balboa; a red sauce pizza complete with provolone, sweet Italian sausage, red and green pepper, onion, dried oregano, crushed red pepper, and extra virgin olive oil. To compare, I ordered half a Balboa and half a regular pepperoni. Needless to say, it was a knockout.

The overall experience is casual but comfortable. After you choose what you’d like from the menus up front, you walk up to the cashier and order. Afterward, you seat yourself and they bring the pizza to you. Simple as that. It feels fitting for the kind of atmosphere that brings various photos of professional fights cascading the walls.

Once the pizza arrives, you can’t help but smile. The colors of the assorted toppings over the fluffy crust is too much to bear. Taking a bite feels rich to the taste. The cheese and the bread feel like they’re one. A bountiful amount of flavor erupts your taste buds in a way only good pizza can. Even the regular pepperoni just feels like comfort food that won’t come back to haunt later. I’m normally not a pepperoni enthusiast for the sole fact that lots of pizza places tend to make them extremely dry, but here it felt just as fresh as the rest of the ingredients. It felt like it was part of the pizza and not an afterthought. The taste just feels fresh in your mouth, the use of the brick oven makes the texture feel much more authentic, and the overall atmosphere kind of feels like you’re in an 80’s hangout with your friends (Oh and it may make you have a strong urge to watch Rocky later.).

This boxing themed pizzeria is tucked in the middle of a Kingston Pike strip mall, plenty of parking to bring the whole crew to experience a refreshing taste that’s hard to find in East Tennessee. Finding pizza joints that are easy to park into are harder to find in the Knoxville area than you think. And when you leave, you not only feel full and satisfied but you leave knowing you ate something that was worthwhile with flavor that packed a punch and then some.

Location

Hard Knox Pizza
4437 Kingston Pike
Knoxville, TN
(865) 602-2114

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