Ricky's Nails the Neighborhood Bar

Welcome to the weekend!

We recently shared our favorite places to eat and drink in Knoxville, Tennessee, and one spot we visited (multiple times!) was Ricky’s. The new watering hole, which opened in January, aspires to be a friendly, welcoming neighborhood bar. You can absolutely get a bottle of Miller High Life or a local draft beer at Ricky’s, but there’s also an excellent cocktail menu that offers takes on classics, a soft serve machine (in addition to cones, bartenders tap the ice cream for cocktails), and a fun food truck that slings Seattle-style hot dogs, smash burgers, and more. For this week’s Cover Story, we chatted with Jocelyn Morin about the bar (which she co-owns with partner Ryan Shanley and their business partner Dan Blaisdell) as well as the other two Knoxville cocktail spots she’s behind, Tern Club and Fly by Night.

Our latest Field Guide covers the great city of Indianapolis, Indiana. If you want to see why you should plan a trip now, read our Weekend Getaway feature and snag our Field Guide to Indianapolis, which features 30+ vetted picks for where to eat and drink on your visit. It’s included in a paid subscription, or you can grab it for $15 on our website.

Finally, our Weekend Reading list includes reports on three restaurants: Canard in Portland, Oregon; Lao Der in Chicago; and Thai Pop in Rochester, Minnesota.

Thanks for reading!

— Amy Cavanaugh & Kenney Marlatt
Editors, American Weekender

KNOXVILLE, TENN. — Good neighborhood bars are an essential part of any city. The best ones can really tell you something about a place. When we travel we always seek them out, because when we find them we’re much more likely to be sitting on a barstool next to someone who lives down the block, rather than someone visiting from out of town. Neighborhood bars can be old or new, but they fill a need for folks who live nearby by serving easygoing drinks — a craft beer or a Miller High Life, an old-fashioned or a glass of wine. There should probably be some snacks as well, but nothing too fancy. Neighborhood bars are about comfort and familiarity, keeping the focus on the friends you are sharing a drink with.

When we visited Knoxville recently, our second stop in town was at Ricky’s, a brand new bar in the Parkridge neighborhood, just northeast of downtown. Ricky’s had caught our eye with its menu of classic cocktails with a twist — and also with the mention of Seattle hot dogs on the menu. Over a couple visits we sampled not only that Seattle dog, but a smash burger, a pimento cheese plate, and most of the cocktail list. It was clear that Ricky’s was resonating with locals — it was packed no matter what time we were there.

Jocelyn Morin and Ryan Shanley opened Ricky’s in January. They are also behind the downtown rum bar Tern Club and Fly by Night, a ’70s inspired bar. The couple are not from Knoxville — Morin is from Laconia, New Hampshire, and Shanley is from Portland, Oregon, where they met working at the now-closed Altabira at the Eastlund Hotel. In 2018, they moved to Knoxville.

“It was kind of a random choice for us,” Morin says. “We were looking to move out of Portland and both quit our jobs and were doing a National Parks road trip. That’s how we stumbled onto Knoxville and just decided to take that leap. We saw it as a really viable place to start a bar business. It was the right size, right demographic. And we’ve been here ever since.”

In 2019, the duo opened Tern Club, serving both house and classic tropical cocktails, like a mai tai and a frozen painkiller, along with a nice rum selection. “I’ve always had an affinity for tropical cocktails,” Morin says. “One of our favorite bars in Portland is Rum Club and were like: no one is filling that niche in Knoxville right now. So we decided to go all in on a focused theme for our first concept. As the years have gone on, rum is still my favorite spirit and there’s so much to know and so much diversity within the spirit category that it’s a lot of fun to work with.”

In June 2023, they opened their second concept, Fly by Night, which also taps into a focused theme: the 1970s. The bar offers a menu of updated classics from the era, like a Cynar-laced Pink Squirrel and a Fernet grasshopper. We also loved two drinks from the happy hour menu: A perfect cosmopolitan and a sarsaparilla old fashioned. The drinks are excellent and the bar quickly transports you to the era of disco balls, shag carpet, and Galliano cocktails.

“Ryan and I love the thrill of the hunt,” Morin says. “We love vintage and thrifting. We were going in with a super-focused vision of something that we didn’t really see yet in Knoxville and especially on Sevier Avenue. It was really fun to curate all the furniture and decor in there. Our basement at home was filled to the brim with all this vintage stuff when we were in the middle of build out.”

Ricky’s is similarly transportive, but to a place of non-specific nostalgia. The interior is layered with details: eclectic light fixtures, vintage beer signs, an inviting pool table, and plenty of let’s say hunting lodge decor — wood paneling, paintings of birds, duck-print wallpaper, and a menagerie of ceramic animals.

“We were collecting for a long time during the process of opening,” Morin says. “It’s just been us with the vision of design at all the places. It’s more difficult to articulate the vision verbally with Ricky’s, with it being more like a neighborhood spot. But when we would be shopping, we’re like, ‘Is this the vibe? Is this Ricky’s?’ And that’s how that vision came into play — we were inspired by the things that we would find when we’re out and about.”

That vision was a place for the neighborhood. “I felt like Parkridge needed a neighborhood bar, something that is for everyone,” Morin says. “I think a big thing is having a wide range of offerings that can be affordable and accessible to everyone that lives in the neighborhood. So we wanted to have a pretty decent beer selection. It was important for us to have affordable food options. And if you want a higher-end cocktail, that also can still exist for you at Ricky’s.”

We sampled most of the cocktail list, starting with a round of tiny tinis, a black Manhattan with the addition of artichoke amaro and a classic dry gin martini. From there, we explored drinks like an Aquavit Negroni (washed with olive oil to soften the texture), Ricky’s Rickey with cucumber gin and basil, and a Hemingway daiquiri with bay leaf simple syrup.

“The approach was that I wanted them to feel accessible, like you may be ordering this drink that sounds familiar to you, but we have our own twist on it,” Morin says. “I think sometimes, and even at our other bars, you’re looking at a cocktail list and there are so many different words that you may not know. Just being able to be like, ‘Yeah, I’ll order the Black Manhattan’ and you may not know every ingredient that’s in this Black Manhattan, but you know it’s a Black Manhattan. We’re having the names of the drinks imply what they are. We want to be unique in the offerings while still being accessible.”

There’s also a soft serve machine that dispenses swirls of pineapple and vanilla ice creams. Ricky’s is family-friendly by day — on one afternoon a group of kids enjoyed vanilla cones festooned with sprinkles. But there is also an ice cream cocktail program. We tried the Jungle Berg, with rum, rouge aperitif, lime, and pineapple ice cream, a fun twist on the Jungle Bird, and the espresso martini spiked with Branca Menta and served with vanilla soft serve.

“We all have had a million espresso martinis in our life, but having something that tastes a little different exposes people to different liqueurs and amaros through something that’s accessible,” Morin says. “And then I think the ice cream element in the cocktails is really fun. We were like, ‘I know this sounds crazy, but we want a soft serve machine.’ There’s a lot of kids in the neighborhood. It’s fun to be able to integrate that with cocktails.”

Ricky’s also offers draft, bottled, and canned beers, like $4 Miller High Lifes, $8 glasses of wine (just pick red, white, rosé, or sparkling), and non-alcoholic options, like a basil mule, a housemade shrub and soda, or a can of Moxie, Maine’s beloved bitter gentian soda. (Is there anywhere else in America where you can have a Moxie with your Seattle dog?)

The bar offers great snacks like a pimento cheese plate served with cornichons, pickled onions, and three types of crackers, and “Pick Up Sticks,” a fun bowl of ranch pretzels, veggie straws, hot fries, and sesame sticks. There is also a food truck out back called “Lil’ Ricky’s” (well played).

“We don’t own any of the buildings that we have the bars in,” Morin says. “So you’re investing a lot of money into somebody else’s property. We may have had the space to do a full kitchen in the physical bar, but by the time you do a grease trap and a hood system, it gets really expensive really fast. We were like, ‘We have this big patio, why don’t we just use a food truck as an auxiliary kitchen?’”

At the food truck, you can get plates like smash burgers dressed with American cheese, shredded lettuce, pickles, caramelized onions, and sauce; BBQ wings; truffle parm fries; and Seattle-style hot dogs with cream cheese, caramelized onions, and jalapeños. There are a few patio tables for seating, or you can bring your food back to the bar.

Morin has been in Knoxville for eight years, and she’s seen the hospitality scene evolve. “I think that it just keeps continuing to grow, which is great to see,” she says. “Our customer base is more willing to take risks and be more adventurous in the things that they’re ordering. So that’s fun for me. I’m excited to see the direction that Knoxville continues to grow in.”

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OREGON

Going Out No. 43: Canard: Riley Stevenson stops into Canard in light of the discussion on Portland’s potential foie gras ban. Canard chef Gabriel Rucker loves the ingredient, and uses it many ways, like in foie gras dumplings and the duck stack with pancakes, duck gravy, a duck egg, and foie gras. While there, she takes in the happy hour, which includes the standout steam burgers (which we also enjoy!) and mini martinis (honestly the size all martinis should be), and makes a case for why Canard should be on your Portland itinerary: “It only feels appropriate to pair these sliders with a martini. Specifically the Viper, a high-proof variation made with gin, vodka, and Lillet Blanc. At happy hour, it’s shrunken and repackaged as a mini-martini and sold for $5. Between this, $4 steam burgers, and $2 oysters, it’s a remarkable deal.” (Riley’s Recs)

ILLINOIS

Sing it Lao-Der: Dennis Lee visits Lao Der, a new Laotian restaurant in Chicago. The menu includes papaya salads, khao mun gai, Esan sausage, and one of my personal favorite dishes in any cuisine: nam khao. Dennis writes of the dish: “This is an interplay between crisp and crunchy textures, with strongly sour notes from again, the lime — but what you can’t see in the photo is the diced fermented pork. It’s not crumbled sausage bits, but rather cubes of meat that look more like ham. They’re very sharp, so the whole dish just runs away with that flavor. I’ve never had a dish that’s primarily composed of rice that just felt so bright, which is why I loved it.” (The Party Cut)

MINNESOTA

At Thai Pop, Sauce is King: Kirstie Kimball heads to Thai Pop in Rochester, where she finds lots of great, spicy dishes and standout sauces. Her favorite dish caught my eye: “The walleye is my favorite because it’s part of a Minnesotan tradition: Asian restaurants have taken walleye and paired it in traditional dishes to make a diasporic love letter to two homes. Eating the first bites of fish, my dining companion said, “I don’t feel like I’m eating fish.” That’s because walleye is known for not really tasting all that fishy, and when handled by deft hands, it’s exceptionally mild. It pairs well with spicy sauces precisely because it’s a great base to suck up those sauces. I like to eat this fish backwards, from the middle out, so my last bite is one of the ends. Those last bits of crunch? On whole fried fish, they’re the best part.” (Beyond Beurre Blanc)

— Compiled by Amy Cavanaugh

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