What are the opening hours?

Tuesday 11am - 9pm Wednesday 11am - 9pm Thursday 11am - 9pm Friday 11am - 10pm Saturday 11am - 10pm Sunday 11am - 9pm

The Tomato Head

Name: The Tomato Head
Address: 12 Market Square, Knoxville, TN, 37902, US
Telephone: +18656374067
Price range: $$
Rating: 4.7

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The Tomato Head

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Food gotta cook. Don't come out of a can. Serving fresh food and culture for our Knoxville neighbors since 1990. Our lunch meats are nitrite/nitrate free.
(2530)

A Market Square restaurant that was called by the New York Times as “the nexus for all things hip and happening in town” is well-known for our vegan and vegetarian fare. Don't worry - we have the carnivores covered, too. You'll find antibiotic free chicken, Benton's Bacon, Italian sausage and our house made lamb sausage. You can find a second location of The Tomato Head in The Gallery Shopping Center, located at 7240 Kingston Pike in West Hills (on Facebook ). Our bread and desserts are fresh and baked close to home by our sister Flour Head Bakery, check them out on Facebook ! Our restaurant was voted by Metro Pulse readers as the Best Pizza for the past ten years and Best Restaurant for the past 15 years in their annual Best Of Knoxville poll. If you can't make it out to one our restaurants, look for us in your grocery aisle. You'll find Tomato Head products at Three Rivers Market (regular and vegan spinach & sundried tomato pesto, and hummus + Flour Head Bakery granola and a fine selection of breads) and Butler & Bailey Market (hummus, regular and vegan spinach & sundried tomato pesto and Flour Head Bakery granola). And you can find our hummus throughout the Knoxville and the southeast at Kroger, Whole Foods Market, Earth Fare and may independent stores.

10/17/2026

It’s a big weekend here in Knoxville! To get in on the fun, we are opening at 10 am this morning. Swing by to check out the market and have brunch before the big game 🍊

10/06/2026

It might not feel like it just yet, but we are well on our way to fall. Wishful thinking hasn’t sped the process along much, so we are breaking out the big guns: Pumpkin soup with a sage and goat cheese cream. Made with pumpkins from our friends Zavels Family Farms I can’t think of a better way to bring in the fall weather. Available now through November🎃🎃

10/02/2026

It’s time for another night of vinyl vibes with Ty's Eye taking charge! See yall downtown from 6-8:30 pm for an excellent first Friday

09/25/2026

HOMECOMING

JAN LYNCH: He was a priest and a photographer, religious and irreverent, serious and mischievous. He photographed architecture, street life, artists, friends, drag performers and naked men. He could be reverent about one thing and gleefully provocative about another, and sometimes, I suspect, both at once.
But what interests me particularly about this exhibition is Jan’s Knoxville.
He seems to me now like one of those pivotal figures who inhabited Knoxville at the moment when one version of the city was beginning to become another. Downtown was not yet the downtown we know today. At night it could feel sketchy and strangely empty. Whole stretches seemed almost abandoned.
And yet things were happening there.
Artists, actors, dancers, g**s, goths, hippies, punks and assorted other oddballs were building a community in those supposedly empty spaces. Tomato Head became one of its gathering places.
In my memory, that Knoxville is somehow already black and white.
That’s probably unfair to reality, which I’m reasonably certain occurred in color. But so many of my associations with that period have been reinforced by Jan’s photographs that black and white now feels like the proper medium for remembering it.
Eventually downtown became desirable again. It was cleaned up, repopulated and gentrified.
But Jan photographed that world before it became picturesque.
He wasn’t visiting it.
He lived here. He walked these streets—literally, since he never owned a car. These were his friends, acquaintances, subjects, churches, restaurants, storefronts and peculiar Knoxville characters. His camera wasn’t looking into this world from outside. It was already inside it.
That’s part of what makes the Tomato Head exhibition feel so right. A version of Knoxville is coming home.

09/10/2026

The Flying Spaghetti Monster: There are some ideas that begin with careful planning.
Others begin with somebody looking at a perfectly respectable grilled cheese sandwich and wondering what would happen if you put spaghetti inside.
I’m grateful there are people in the world willing to ask that sort of question.
Our Flying Spaghetti Monster Grilled Cheese starts with toasted Flour Head Texas toast, melted cheese, and spaghetti in all the wrong places, and the happy reminder that life is occasionally improved by refusing to take every last thing quite so seriously.

09/05/2026

Don’t forget postcard nowhere is playing downtown tomorrow 12-3 for the first slowcore Sunday. See yall there 🎸

09/03/2026

More fun this week! It’s time for another first Friday vinyl vibes with Ty's Eye we can’t wait to see you downtown from 6-8:30!! 🔊🔊

09/01/2026

It’s going to be a busy week here, and we are quite excited. First up, introducing our new slowcore Sundays at the Tomato Head downtown!! Think jazz brunch, but not quite. Our friends from postcard nowhere will be setting the vibes while we serve up all of your brunch favorites from heuvos to monkey bread. We can’t wait to see y’all there

Address

12 Market Square
Knoxville, TN
37902

Opening Hours

Tuesday	11am - 9pm
Wednesday	11am - 9pm
Thursday	11am - 9pm
Friday	11am - 10pm
Saturday	11am - 10pm
Sunday	11am - 9pm

Telephone

+18656374067

Website

http://www.thetomatohead.com/

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