Superlatives for Eastern Kentucky cuisine include the Heritage Kitchen’s heroics in the face of flooding, Tommy’s five-generation chili and Baker Farm’s world-class tomatoes.
Fred Sauceman
Brad Shepherd and Daryl Royse opened Whitesburg’s Heritage Kitchen in 2015.
When we first met Brad Shepherd and Daryl Royse in December of 2015, their new restaurant, Heritage Kitchen in Whitesburg, Kentucky, had been open for only three months. They told us then that they selected the restaurant’s name because it conveys a sense of home and comfort.
Little did they know how much those two qualities would eventually mean to them, their business, their customers and to the town of Whitesburg.
Brad Shepherd
Heritage Kitchen’s Greek salad with fried chicken.
In late July of 2022, flooding of historic and catastrophic proportions devastated sections of Eastern Kentucky. Homes were washed away. Businesses were destroyed. Water and electricity remained unavailable in some parts of the area for weeks. The death toll exceeded 40 people. Longtime Eastern Kentucky residents said they had never seen anything like it.
Since Heritage Kitchen sits on a hill, the front of the building sustained very little damage from floodwaters. Out front, the only thing out of place was a jet ski in the middle of the street. But the back of the building was a different story. It was once a place of great joy for the children of Whitesburg, who looked forward every year to visiting that basement, in the old Hoover’s clothing store, when it was transformed into a Christmas wonderland.
Shepherd and Royse chose the building for their restaurant back in 2015 in part because of its history and the memories associated with that downtown location. When the 2022 floods hit, water rushed into that basement, reaching levels almost five feet high.
“It was an absolute nightmare,” Shepherd recalls. Heritage Kitchen lost two of its propane tanks, but in less than a week, the restaurant was up and running again, providing at least a small sense of normality to downtown Whitesburg.
Brad Shepherd
Heritage Kitchen’s Belgian waffles are topped with blueberry compote.
But about 2,000 yards away, in the offices of Appalshop, the media, arts and education center founded in 1969, it was a different story. In addition to being a partner at Heritage Kitchen, Royse is Appalshop’s financial director. In the organization’s 54-year history, water had never reached its offices. But this time, the North Fork of the Kentucky River rushed in, depositing ankle-deep mud and threatening valuable archives that documented the entire history of the Appalachian region.
While they were dealing with the water at their restaurant, Shepherd and Royse retrieved Appalshop’s financial records and computer systems and relocated them to temporary quarters.
“Over at the restaurant, people came out to help,” Shepherd remembers. “They said, ‘We know you’re struggling. We’re here to eat.’”
Soon Royce was back in his usual spot at seven o’clock on Saturday mornings, making two gallons of sausage gravy. “People come from all over for it,” Shepherd tells us.
Soon, too, chicken and waffles returned. And so did chicken salad, a customer favorite made with pecans, grapes, apples, craisins and a sweet and tart dressing. And comfort returned in the form of French toast with bananas and brown sugar.
Grant Baker
Yields of 50 to 60 pounds of tomatoes per plant are common on the Baker Family Farm.
Heading slightly southwest from Whitesburg, we discovered Tommy’s Rootbeer Stand in Barbourville, owned by Heather Mills, a former psychologist with the Knox County School District, and her husband Matthew, a pawnbroker. Tommy’s is an old-style drive-up restaurant. The parking lot holds 15 vehicles, and carhops take your order.
Tommy’s is known for its rootbeer floats but even more so for its hot dogs, which are two for a dollar every Wednesday.
“We’re going to continue that price as long as we can,” Heather Mills says. “This is a poverty-stricken area, and we want to help out our community by offering good quality but inexpensive meals.”
Those hot dogs, no matter the price, hold a place in Eastern Kentucky history. The chili that tops them has been made by five generations of the Mitchell family since 1929. Tommy’s uses the storied chili in a variety of other ways, too: on chili cheese fries, on tater tots, on taco salads and as chili and crackers with grilled cheese sandwiches.
About 18 miles southeast of Barbourville, in the DeWitt community of Knox County, is the Baker Family Farm. Except for a few years between the 1950s and 1969, the farm has been in the Baker family since right after the Civil War.
We first met Grant Baker and his mother Judy at the annual convention of the National Sweet Sorghum Producers and Processors Association in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where Judy was giving away her sorghum cookies. They have gained quite a reputation across Eastern Kentucky.
Grant Baker
Tomatoes on the Baker farm are grown in structures called high tunnels.
The Bakers plant nearly three acres of sorghum cane in a typical year. In the fall, they boil the juice down to create an outstanding sorghum syrup, not too light and not too dark. They’ve been making sorghum syrup since 1975, and in addition to her soft cookies, Judy adds it to her dried apple stack cakes, popular items at Kentucky farmers markets.
But the Bakers are perhaps even better known for their tomatoes, purchased by restaurants and supermarket chains from across the country at a produce auction, held three days a week all summer long, in Lincoln County, Kentucky.
The Bakers grow Red Deuce, Primo, and Carolina Gold tomatoes. They are planted in the ground in “high tunnels,” structures of metal and plastic measuring 32 by 96 feet.
Grant explains that these particular varieties were developed for high tunnel growing. He says the plants only reach a height of about three feet, but they are heavy producers.
“We often get 50 to 60 pounds of tomatoes per plant,” he tells us, adding that these are number-one grade tomatoes with no blemishes.
“They have to be picture-perfect,” he says proudly. “Most customers can’t tell the difference between ours and a garden tomato.”
And that’s saying a lot, in a region known for its love of tomatoes at midsummer.
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 May / June 2023 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!