These East Tennessee establishments nourish and connect us.
Fred Sauceman
Troyer’s Mountain View Country Market in Limestone simply calls it the Big Burger.
Past the bulk spices and bags of Uncle Henry’s pretzels, there’s a hidden offering at Troyer’s Mountain View Country Market in Limestone, Tennessee. This Amish-Mennonite-style store on Highway 11E stocks countless cheeses, regional soft drinks and home canning supplies. In the parking lot, customers line up for discus-sized doughnuts.
What many of those customers miss, though, is one of the best hamburgers in the region. To find it, you step all the way to the back of the building, locate an order form, fill it out, place it in the basket and then browse the store for about 20 minutes. But the burger is worth the wait. Made from fresh ground chuck, it’s a burger with craggy, irregular edges, and it’s dressed with a plank of pickle. Best of all, there are picnic tables outside on the porch, where you can meet new friends and proselytize about the glories of the half-pound Troyer’s hamburger.
About 45 miles to the northeast in Bristol, the diminutive Circle Burger is sold at the country’s last remaining Blue Circle restaurant. Homer Longmire opened the first one in Knoxville in 1931. His business eventually grew into a chain of 32 Blue Circles across the Southeast.
Fred Sauceman
Debbie and Mark Sourbeer have resurrected Bristol’s Blue Circle with the last-step steaming of the Circle Burger.
This lone Blue Circle sits between what was once a dental arts building and an old-style putt-putt course.
Owners Mark and Debbie Sourbeer follow the tried-and-true Circle Burger cooking technique. “We season them with pepper and salt and then add mustard, pickle and onion as they’re cooking,” says Mark. “Then we flip them and put a bun on to incorporate flavor.” The final touch is to steam the whole sandwich.
Greeneville, Tennessee, is home to one of the country’s best steakhouses. Without the Steaks-R-Us sign to tip you off, you might walk up and mistake the building for a Social Security office. Inside, the furnishings are honest and unadorned. The place even lacks the mandatory steakhouse table decoration from our childhood: a candle in a red globe wrapped in plastic netting.
Fred Sauceman
Myra Cardenas and her mother, Mary Sipple, serve dishes based on family recipes from Mexico and Texas at Jonesborough’s Texas Burritos & More.
But folks don’t flock here for décor. They fill the parking lot expecting a well-deserved night out on occasion, a break from the factory or farm, and the feeling that their hard-earned money has been well-spent. That’s what The Butcher’s Block has given its customers since 1987.
The 14-ounce char-grilled Angus beef ribeye is always cooked perfectly to the specified temperature and requires no additional seasoning. The Butcher’s Block may be best known for its “Texas Tails,” the flat end of the tenderloin. This year The Butcher’s Block celebrates 36 years in business.
The oldest town in Tennessee, Jonesborough, is home to one of the region’s newest Tex-Mex establishments. Its story begins in a grandmother’s kitchen. The setting is Lubbock, Texas. It’s a Saturday morning.
The scents of ground cumin and garlic fill the air as hands knead masa into tamale dough. Gloria Cardenas has instructed her 11 grandchildren to clear their calendars. By the end of the day, some 60 dozen tamales will be ready for the growing family.
Food became granddaughter Myra Cardenas’ mission in life. She opened Texas Burritos & More in a Jonesborough building that once housed a pool hall.
Cardenas proudly serves Tex-Mex food, distinguished by those very aromas of cumin and garlic she recalls from her grandmother’s kitchen. Another defining element of Tex-Mex cooking, she adds, is yellow cheese.
“It’s a huge thing in Texas. We’ve had customers from Lubbock come to see us in Jonesborough, and they tell us they knew immediately we were authentic Tex-Mex when they saw the yellow cheese, not white.”
In 2011, Yassin Terou left his native Syria for Knoxville, Tennessee, and soon began selling falafel sandwiches at the city’s Annoor Mosque. Three years later, he opened his own restaurant, and now, there are two Knoxville locations of Yassin’s Falafel House, one downtown on Walnut Street and a newer one west of the city on North Peters Road.
Yassin’s grilled chicken shawarma captivated us on first bite, served over rice along with a garlicky yogurt sauce, baba ganoush and a hunk of pita bread. Customers are drawn to these two establishments not just by the bright flavors of the Middle East but also by the endearing and welcoming personality of Terou. In a Reader’s Digest poll, Yassin’s was named the “nicest place in America.”
Fred Sauceman
Oak Ridge’s Big Ed’s serves pizza only—no salads, no sandwiches.
In nearby Oak Ridge, the late “Big Ed” Neusel opened a pizza joint in 1970, settling in the Atomic City because of its first-rate school system. Big Ed’s Pizza has never served anything but pizza. There are no salads and no sandwiches.
Big Ed’s has provided first jobs for thousands of Oak Ridge High School students, along with lessons about cleanliness, punctuality and getting along with people. Big Ed’s formal education ended in ninth grade, but his late son David once told us his father was one of the smartest people he had ever met. Ed’s education came through the grimy labor of race car repair, lonely nights working on the Penn Central Railroad and dodging Japanese gunfire as a Marine on Okinawa during World War II. His was the broken-nosed education of semi-pro football in Michigan and the dirtied fingernail learning of a landscaper.
He became one of Oak Ridge’s most popular and successful businesspeople, and the caricature of him on the restaurant’s front window is one of the city’s most recognizable symbols.
These are just a few of the countless places in our East Tennessee homeland where the food is straightforward and honest and where simple dishes, lovingly prepared by people who care, connect us with one another.
Fred and Jill Sauceman study and celebrate the foodways of Appalachia and beyond from their home base in Johnson City, Tennessee.
The story above first appeared in our January / February 2023 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!