Up mountainsides and into old mills, we visit some of the region’s best-loved eateries.
Courtesy of The Native Kitchen
The Native Kitchen Classic Burger is made with pasture-raised beef and is served with house chips.
I cannot tell you how many people come in with tears in their eyes because they can eat anything on our menu,” says Cassie Coker, who owns The Native Kitchen in Dalton, Georgia, with her husband Dustin. While The Native Kitchen is forward-looking in its approach to food, it is rooted in the past. Dating to 1884, the now refurbished brick building housed a cotton mill. By 1910, Crown Cotton Mill employed some 650 people. The site is listed on the West Georgia Textile Heritage Trail.
Within that 19th-century setting, known now as The Mill at Crown Garden, The Native Kitchen operates as a gluten-free restaurant. But it didn’t start out that way. Two factors led to the conversion of the menu. First, the Cokers’ oldest son, now four, was diagnosed with celiac disease. And then, an employee, who was pregnant at the time, began experiencing rashes from head to toe, traced to her breathing wheat in the air.
Although the Cokers can craft a biscuit akin to the traditional buttermilk variety, their standard biscuit, which doubles as a bun, is made with almond flour. Gluten-free toast is on the menu, and for dessert, sweet potato brownies and pecan pie bars. Cassie says customers cannot tell that they’re gluten-free.
“Even our muffins, you can’t tell,” Cassie says. “All of our pastries are not only gluten-free but also vegan, with no eggs or butter.”
Another restaurant trademark is a plate of “Y’All Nachos,” with house-made potato chips fried in peanut oil and loaded with vegetarian chili. Customers can add a meat of choice, such as shredded chicken or locally sourced ground beef, or eggs and bacon for a breakfast-style nacho plate. House-made guacamole, jalapeños, and cashew-nacho cheese sauce complete the dish.
Cassie and Dustin knew they had found the right location for their restaurant when they learned that Cassie’s grandmother, Janie Cochran, had once been a millworker in that very building. Says Cassie: “When she came to visit our restaurant for the first time, shortly after we opened in 2018, she remembered very clearly where she worked.”
The Native Kitchen, Dalton, Georgia
706-529-8129; nativekitchendalton.com
Canyon Grill
On the “backside” of Lookout Mountain, in the community of Rising Fawn, Georgia, Canyon Grill has been attracting diners to its relatively remote location since 1996. Lawton Haygood, a Lookout Mountain native, and his wife Karen, the original owners, named the restaurant after nearby Cloudland Canyon State Park. In 2014, Johnny and Jessica Holland, who had trained and worked with the Haygoods, took over the business, and fittingly so. The Hollands say continuity in the kitchen and dining room is the key to success in the restaurant business.
“It is impossible to be a great restaurant with turnover,” Johnny says. “Most of our employees have been here five to 10 years or more. This is critical to maintaining our superior product.”
The Canyon Grill menu runs the gamut, but customers consistently praise the seafood, whether they’re having a dish of trout raised in northern Georgia or hickory-wood-grilled sea scallops from the Georges Bank area near Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The Hollands say there’s a reason that customers notice a difference in their seafood offerings.
“We are one of the few restaurants that store all our meat, chicken, fish, and pork under ice rather than refrigeration,” says Johnny. “This is expensive and labor-intensive but well worth the effort. Ice does not dehydrate and dilute flavors the way refrigeration does.”
Because of product availability, weather and fishing conditions, the Canyon Grill menu changes almost daily, but those scallops, whether grilled or pan-seared with lemon butter, are favorites. Canyon Grill frequently offers Scottish salmon, grilled over that same hickory fire and served with tarragon butter.
Thursdays are chicken nights, often featuring one of our all-time favorite dishes, chicken piccata, the filet pan-seared and served in lemon juice, white wine and plenty of capers. Popular sides are southern fried okra and grilled red cabbage.
For dessert, Canyon Grill serves a bread pudding that would make any Louisiana grandmother proud. Made with apples and pecans, it comes to the table warm, with a bourbon sauce and vanilla bean ice cream.
The Canyon Grill, Rising Fawn, Georgia
706-398-9510; canyongrill.com
Farm to Fork
Courtesy of Farm to Fork
Farm to Fork is dedicated to bringing families “the freshest ingredients, straight from the farm to your fork.”
Staci Humphreys is the daughter of a United Methodist minister as well as a graduate of the culinary arts program at Walters State Community College in Morristown, Tennessee. She has been around her share of church dinners, and she puts her culinary education into practice every day as an accomplished home cook. When Staci recommends a place, we listen.
“My family goes out of their way from Chattanooga to eat at Farm to Fork in Ringgold, Georgia,” she tells us, pointing to the restaurant’s deviled eggs, spicy peach wings, and Hawaiian pizza as favorites.
Farm to Fork is a breakfast-brunch-lunch-dinner type of place, with a bar to boot. You’ll find tater tots dusted with bacon and served with pimento cheese, the hefty Big Barn Door Sandwich for breakfast (sausage, eggs, cheese, lettuce, and tomato on Texas toast), and fried green tomatoes, as an appetizer or side dish. Those tomatoes are topped with house-made bacon and onion jam, which also serves as a condiment on the restaurant’s eight-ounce Black Angus burger.
Farm to Fork features one of the best, and simplest, restaurant mission statements we’ve ever found: “We are dedicated to bringing families back to the dinner table, to enjoy the freshest ingredients, straight from the farm to your fork.”
Farm to Fork, Ringgold, Georgia
706-937-3675; farmtoforkga.com
Samplings
We have to admit being a bit envious of the folks in and around Chatsworth, Georgia. They have access to an old-style southern cafeteria.
Chatsworth’s Village Cafeteria offers a menu filled with southern classics. Chicken and dressing, cubed steak with white gravy, macaroni and cheese, and broccoli casserole are customer favorites, with a slice of coconut cake for dessert. The cafeteria is unpretentious, friendly, reasonably priced, generous in its portions and family-owned—all the qualities we value, and miss so much, as we think back to the cafeterias of our youth.
Chatsworth is also home to biscuit lover’s nirvana, Pop’s Place on Highway 76. Every kind of meat and biscuit combination you can think of is on the menu, including the sine qua non of southern breakfast menus: the pork tenderloin and egg biscuit. The biscuits at Pop’s Place are lightly browned and buttery beautiful. And at lunchtime, the griddle at Pop’s is constantly covered with what many diners describe as the best hamburger around.
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 March / April 2022 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!