Landing House fuses Asian cuisine and Knoxville community in comfortable, homey space | Food

With the appearance of a regular house, Landing House welcomes everyone to enjoy their Asian fusion cuisine.

Located at 1147 Sevier Ave., Landing House operates out of a blue house with a large yard across the street from Alliance Brewery in South Knoxville. Opened in July 2017, they serve a variety of dishes based on Asian cuisine, with seating available throughout the house.

Originally, the house was used for the Civil Air Patrol’s operations. Married couple and owners Zach and Hao Land tried to name the restaurant after them, but weren’t able to. Instead, they were inspired by other aspects of South Knoxville for the name, like Suttree Landing Park.

They opened the restaurant after living in the area for several years. They wanted to deliver something to the community right as the area began to grow with Alliance’s opening.

“It was our neighborhood, and there was not really much on the street,” Hao Land said. “Alliance had just opened up I think a year before then.”

“This house came up for sale, and it was the right price, so we just kind of jumped on it,” Zach Land said.

They bought the house to potentially move into it, but decided instead to build a restaurant. Hao Land said that she was also inspired by a similar restaurant that she used to visit while growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, as well as friends telling them that they should open up a restaurant. They want Landing House to be a welcoming place for everyone.

“It is inviting, and it is homey, and those ideas that we wanted about the space,” Hao Land said.

They’ve been open since they started five years ago. Although they’ve changed their menu and space over time, they’ve remained consistently successful and well-received, even during the COVID-19 pandemic as the local community continued to support them when they reopened.

“It’s been great,” Hao Land said. “They’ve been supportive from the beginning. I think that was part of the thing that helped us through the pandemic, was still having people order takeout or when it got cold, there were still people sitting out in the yard.”

“We definitely got lucky,” Zach Land said. “A lot of restaurants didn’t fare quite as well as we did. And we were definitely at the forefront of safety and precaution. We were definitely one of the first ones to shut down when everything started.”

Since reopening from the pandemic, they’ve seen more and more people coming into the restaurant. With the continued ramifications of the pandemic, fluctuations in food prices and increased customers, they’ve had to change their menu to be efficient and manageable based on what’s available.

With their menu, they offer several Asian fusion dishes, including spring rolls, noodles like their Chilled Egg Noodles, Pho and fried rice combos, Gai Lan and curry. Along with their menu, they have also begun expanding their drink menu to include several options, like their featured cocktails the Friendly Fire and Yer Ol Uncle Terry.

Both Chinese and Cambodian, Hao Land grew up with several of these dishes. Along with what they cook at home and Zach’s other restaurant experience, the Land couple wanted to bring their signature style of cooking to the people of Knoxville. This was also with the notion that it will be different from other restaurants, like how family members make meals differently.

“It differs from family to family, from region to region,” Hao Land said. “Just because you’ve had Pho this way somewhere else doesn’t mean it’s going to taste the same when a different family makes it. Like, even growing up, going from my mom and dad’s house and then going to my aunt’s house, there were nuances that you could tell that were slightly different.”

Zach and Hao Land also talked about their favorite dishes on the menu, mentioning a variety of dishes like the Pho, Pork Belly and Veggie Stir Fry as ones that they eat whenever they can.

As of right now, Landing House doesn’t have anything planned for its upcoming fifth year anniversary, but they said that they’re open to the possibility of celebrating it.

Instead, they look toward what they need to do for the restaurant going forward. They talked about building an overhead roof for the front yard, expanding the kitchen to meet demand and bringing back their karaoke night sometime soon.

Landing House is constantly evolving. Along with their menu, they’ve changed their seating arrangements to accommodate for shifts in the number of people that they serve. They invite people to come in and try their Asian fusion cuisine, as well as ask questions about anything that they offer, within their restaurant inside of a home.

“We’re not that kind of restaurant,” Zach Land said. “We have something for everyone.”

“We want everyone to be comfortable, as a casual dining situation,” Hao Land said.

“It’s food that is elevated a little bit, but with no pretension,” Zach Land said. “You should feel as comfortable as you would eating in your own house.”