I only have pies for Chattanooga's City Cafe

Pam Wattenbarger and her peanut butter cake

Chattanooga is one of my most favorite places to visit. You can see seven states above Lookout Mountain, "See Rock City" and its trails through fun rock formations, admire the majesty of Ruby Falls in an underground cave — and that doesn't even include the town! So when my friend Pam Wattenbarger, an author and travel writer who pens the Simply Southern Mom website, offered to introduce me to a lunch spot that served up giant slices of cake in an old-fashioned-looking diner, I was so there.

City Cafe is practically attached to the Days Inn Hotel in downtown Chattanooga and a bit out of the way. There's another location on Lee Highway in Chattanooga and in the neighboring town of Cleveland, but we were visiting the downtown location that, I found out later, has a funky bar off the side called The Office. The downtown spot (along with the others) offers 450 menu items that range from Mediterranean dishes to American favorites such as burgers, fries and shakes. There are lunch specials, chimichangas, chicken pot pie, broiled scallops and salmon Monte Carlo. To say the menu runs the gamut is an understatement.

Naturally, since it's a diner, I chose the tuna melt with fries, a huge helping of tuna salad on toasted wheat bread with a layer of sliced American cheese, the kind you peel off the plastic wrap but which combined with the tuna tasted delish. Halfway through this mammoth sandwich, I had to pause because there was no way I was not saving room for a slice of City Cafe's cakes.

These cakes are enormous! Did I mention they were big? So large that you pause on the way to your table and your chin falls open and your eyes bug out.

Here are but a few of the many offerings:
Red Velvet
Butterfinger Cake
Coca Cola Cake
Death by Chocolate
Milky Way Cake
Italian Cream Cake
Mint Chocolate Chip Cake

I could go on and on.

Mint Chocolate Chip Cake

I chose the canola cake with the little canolas on top and Pam went for the peanut butter. We asked for take-out boxes because the slices were so huge but we delved right in and had a hard time stopping. We did bring home parts of our desserts, but we managed to enjoy much of our slices first, stumbling out of this diner like drunks at 2 a.m., our full bellies and blood sugar off the charts.

The diner's been rated Best of the Best by the Chattanooga Times Free Press and won the Certificate of Excellence and Hall of Fame nods from Trip Advisor. It's easy to see why.

Weird, Wacky and Wild South is written by food and travel writer Chere Dastugue Coen.

People standing on rocks

            People love to stand on rocks in the South. Maybe it’s because our mountains are tired after years on this earth, resting gently to let the moss grow on their backs as opposed to the majestic heights of the Rocky Mountains to the west with its sharp precipices and mighty peaks. In the South, there aren’t that many grand places to step out on to. (Considering Southerners and their love of hijinks, that could be a good thing.) But life in the South is more like a soft Blue Ridge vista or an Ozark overlook sporting fall colors down a gentle slope.

            I hail from the Deep South, a land created by mud deposits of the Mississippi River where rocks are purchased at lapidary shops. So naturally, I’m all about shooting a photo of me on top of Lookout Mountain.

            “Offbeat Tennessee” writes about one such place that has drawn visitors for years, Umbrella Rock on Lookout Mountain above Chattanooga, Tenn., where up to 30 people at a time can pose on the formation — and have! Even presidents Theodore Roosevelt and FDR (must be a Roosevelt thing) have visited Umbrella Rock for a photo opp. Of course today taking one’s photo would be too dangerous so the rock formation is currently off limits.

            You can view a collection of photos taken on Umbrella Rock here. And even more here.

            And by the way, visitors standing on Umbrella Rock can view seven states from that impressive rock collection! On a clear day.

            I’m going to end with a couple of my own. My grandparents took my father on a road trip to the Ozarks and visited Pivet Rock and Natural Bridge outside Eureka Springs, Arkansas (that's the threesome in the photo to the right). When I visited the area, I stopped at the park and gazed upon this rock formation that I knew I had seen before. No, my family didn’t climb on top for their immortal photo — my grandfather would have never allowed it — but they did bring home a photo nonetheless. 

             And guess what? So did I.

Cheré Coen is an award-winning travel writer specializing in the Deep South. She is also the author of “Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History,” “Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana” and “Exploring Cajun Country: A Historic Guide to Acadiana” and co-author of “Magic’s in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets.” Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.