A Celebration of Mountain Food, Part 1: Places

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Fred and Jill Sauceman study, celebrate and write about the foodways of Appalachia and the South from their home base in Johnson City, Tennessee, and have been covering food for this magazine for decades. Who better to provide a set of food favorites in three realms: Restaurants, Products and Recipes. 

Good food, appealing presentation, a clean atmosphere and personable owners are common themes connecting the hundreds of restaurants we have covered over the years. But there is another trait we look for that may exceed them all in importance, and that is persistence. Whether serving Turkish kebabs or Appalachian soup beans, the restaurant owners we admire most are the ones who faced adversity and kept right on cooking. Never has that kind of determination been more vital or risky than in the recent months. And never has our appreciation for these business owners been deeper.

This is a sampling of some of our very favorite places, owned by people who have made great sacrifices to keep feeding their communities.

Dan’s Grill, Blairsville, Georgia. We delight in finding immigrant influences in Appalachian kitchens. In the mountains of north Georgia, Cuban immigrant Dan Hernandez serves up Caribbean dishes he learned from his mother and grandmother. His ropa vieja, which means “old clothes” in Spanish, is a blend of shredded beef, bell peppers and onions in a light tomato sauce. It’s served alongside cumin-scented black beans, yellow rice and tostones—green plantains cooked, pressed into patties, fried and accompanied by a citrus and garlic mojo sauce.

The Dillard House, Dillard, Georgia. Having evolved from Carrie Edwards Dillard’s World War I-era boardinghouse, The Dillard House serves up a tableful of dishes family style, beginning with Carrie’s original recipe for Calico Salad, made with cucumbers, onions and tomatoes in a simple dressing of white vinegar and water. The Dillard House even owns a USDA-approved curing plant for its incomparable country hams.

The Dairy Cheer, Pikeville, Kentucky. In the course of our travels, we have come across such oddly named hamburgers as the Big Hack, the Humpburger, the Gurney Burger and the Big Pal. For well over half a century, Pikeville’s Dairy Cheer has served up the Smashburger. Locals tell us the name is derived from the days when the patties were beaten with number-10 cans.

The Portal, Harlan, Kentucky. One of the best pizzas we have ever found was in Eastern Kentucky coal country, in downtown Harlan. Wood-fired pizzas are baked at temperatures ranging from 590 to 625 degrees in the former location of the Harlan National Bank. Photographs and displays on the restaurant’s walls pay tribute to the coal mining history of the region.

Brown’s Café, Sparta, North Carolina. The Brown family serves up slabs of North Carolina liver mush for breakfast, plate-covering pork chops for lunch and meringue-crowned chocolate pie any time.

The Moose Café, Asheville, North Carolina. Located next to the Western North Carolina Farmers Market, The Moose Café features food that is simple, inexpensive, hearty and connected to the region. Housemade biscuits of cathead proportions come to the table even before you order, along with servings of chunky, spicy apple butter. Much of the food is locally sourced, including country ham and trout. Bowls of soup beans are topped with the garden-clearing relish called chow-chow, purchased from the market just down the hill.

Rocky’s Hot Chicken, Asheville, North Carolina. Former Whole Foods and Earth Fare executive Rich Cundiff now runs three Rocky’s Hot Chicken establishments: in Asheville and in Arden, North Carolina, and in Greenville, South Carolina. While fully acknowledging the hot chicken tradition begun by Prince’s in Nashville in the 1940s, Cundiff has created a version that rivals any we have found in Music City. He patiently explains the gradations of heat and coaches diners to work their way up the scale gradually and carefully. We often order a three-tender plate, with three different levels of heat, and a syrupy waffle on the side. Other side dishes like sweet potato casserole hearken back to Cundiff’s grandmother’s Thanksgiving table.

The Stoney Knob Café, Weaverville, North Carolina. Quite simply, this is one of the best restaurants in the region, and the food is even better once you learn its story. Gus Dermas left his native Greece for New York City in 1947 before eventually opening a restaurant in Greensboro, North Carolina. At a time in Greensboro when African American college students were being turned away from the local Woolworth’s lunch counter purely because of their race, Dermas welcomed them to his diner. “We’re all human beings, and everyone deserves a good meal,” he told his customers. Dermas moved to Weaverville in the far western part of the state and opened the Stoney Knob Café in the 1960s, originally as a meat-and-three, serving Southern favorites like fried chicken and liver and onions. When his sons John and Yotty bought the place in 1992, they began adding spanakopita and lamb shanks, dishes that reflected their Greek heritage. Today, the fare is international—as the brothers put it, “Cuisine from Near and Far.”

The Beacon Drive-In, Spartanburg, South Carolina. We think very highly of places that create halls of fame and memorial walls to show appreciation for their employees. Employee longevity at The Beacon is among the best in the business. Since 1946, its most popular item has been the chili cheeseburger. The Beacon claims to serve more sweet tea than anywhere else in the country—over 1,200 gallons a week, sweetened with about 3,000 pounds of sugar. The Beacon has its own lingo, starting with the term “A-Plenty,” meaning a sandwich platter topped with both French fries and hand-breaded Vidalia onion rings.

Pomegranate on Main, Greenville, South Carolina. The kebabs, stews and rice dishes of Persia have fascinated us for years. In a once-dangerous and run-down section of Greenville, Hashem Bassam serves this ancient cuisine, carrying out the restaurant’s theme from pomegranate martinis to pomegranate-marinated beef kebabs cooked over an open fire to pomegranate chocolate chip ice cream for dessert.

Wade’s, Spartanburg, South Carolina. Wade and Betty Lindsey started serving food to millworkers and their families in 1947, and the restaurant is still thriving. On a typical day, Wade’s sells over 3,500 yeast rolls. Listed on the 15-item vegetable board are speckled butter beans, a southern favorite. Another clear sign that you’re in the South is the presence of macaroni and cheese and rice and gravy on that vegetable board.

The Bean Barn, Greeneville, Tennessee. When the Hartsell family retired in 2019 and The Bean Barn closed, it was a sad day in Greeneville. But paint and body shop owner Gary Hoese revived the restaurant and had the good sense to keep Beans All the Way on the menu. It’s a dish that the late Romie and Zella Mae Britt started serving at what was then called Britt’s Grill in the 1950s. In a documentary film we produced about the restaurant several years ago, we called soup beans and cornbread “the iconic, dollar-stretching, belly-filling, soul-enriching meal of Southern Appalachia.” Romie and Zella Mae added a bit of homemade beef stew to their lard-seasoned pinto beans and scattered chopped onions on top. The result was Beans All the Way.

The Little Top, Greeneville, Tennessee. The Big Top building has been bulldozed away. Its former location is now an empty lot. But Sonny Paxton’s drive-in was so popular in the mid-20th century that auxiliary policemen had to be hired to direct traffic in and out. A dying tobacco market and the end of the Magnavox company spelled the death knell for The Big Top. But its signature sandwich, the Chipburger, lives on at The Little Top, Keith Paxton’s diminutive version of his father’s restaurant, on the other end of town. Made with very thinly sliced and lightly grilled pork shoulder, the Chipburger, and especially the ramped up Double Cheese Chipper, rank, in our book, among the grandest sandwiches of the South, on equal footing with the New Orleans muffaletta, the Tampa Cuban sandwich and the Kentucky Hot Brown.

Red Meze, Johnson City, Tennessee. Bulent and Sengul Yaman are contributing to the revitalization of downtown Johnson City through plates of Turkish kebabs and rice mixed with orzo pasta. Their roasted eggplant appetizer with yogurt and garlic is a mandatory beginning to every meal.

Ridgewood Barbecue, Bluff City, Tennessee. Shortly after the COVID-19 outbreak, Ridgewood owner Larry Proffitt, a pharmacist by trade, assured us that the fires at his family’s barbecue joint in Bullock’s Hollow would continue to burn. His parents, Grace and Jim, started the place in 1948 as a beer joint. It survived the county going dry in 1952 and the construction of a new road to Elizabethton in 1987. The location has never changed, nor has Proffitt family ownership. Unlike barbecue houses on the other end of the state in Memphis where pork shoulder and ribs dominate menus, neither is served at The Ridgewood. The hickory fires there enrobe fresh hams that are then sliced and slathered with a sweet and sour, spicy, tomato-based sauce, its flavor described by our friend and barbecue scholar Dr. John Shelton Reed as “what ketchup will taste like in Heaven.”

The Shamrock, Johnson City, Tennessee. The oldest food-related business in the city where we live is The Shamrock Beverage and Tobacco Shop. It’s the only place we know where you can get a house-made chicken salad sandwich and a bag of pipe tobacco. The Shamrock is a survivor, having opened in March of 1929, seven months before the stock market crash. Its freshly squeezed lemonade is legendary. Despite a full menu and every kind of cigar imaginable, owner Jack Cox says his business is “nothing but an expanded, glorified lemonade stand.”

The Dip Dog Stand, Marion, Virginia. The coming of Interstate 81 in 1963 meant the end of many businesses along U.S. 11, the Lee Highway, in Southwest Virginia. But The Dip Dog Stand, officially The Hi-Way Drive-In, held on. It has even survived food fads and dietary dictators. A Dip Dog is a red-dyed hot dog, skewered, dipped into a secret batter, deep-fried and painted in mustard. The method hasn’t changed since opening day in 1957. The business has been owned by the Hall family since 1966. Grant and Pam Hall cite the closeness of their family as one reason for the survival of The Dip Dog Stand. There is always a member of the family present at the restaurant. “We might be business people, but we get in there and get our hands dirty with the kids,” says Pam. That joyous labor goes on seven days a week, and the Halls rarely take a vacation.

Edelweiss German Restaurant, Staunton, Virginia. Ingrid Moore is an octogenarian whose morning routine includes pounding pork for her various versions of German schnitzel. A native of Karlsruhe, Germany, she came to America when she was 23 and learned English while cleaning houses in Queens, New York. Now she and her son John bring the flavors of the Black Forest to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Says Ingrid, “We use old-fashioned cast-iron skillets. They make such a difference. Cast-iron works best for schnitzel.”

The Harvest Table, Meadowview, Virginia. Most of the vegetables and herbs come from a farm two miles outside this tiny Southwest Virginia town. That farm was the site of novelist Barbara Kingsolver’s experiment to see if she and her family could eat only local food for a year. We were captivated by The Harvest Table from our very first visit, when we were served fresh turnips cooked four different ways.

The Hob-Nob, Gate City, Virginia. Since Bent and Elgie Strong opened it in 1952, The Hob-Nob has nourished the citizens of Scott County with hamburgers, hot dogs and soup beans. Their grandson, Ross Jenkins, now offers emu burgers as a leaner option, counterbalanced with Monster Cones of soft-serve ice cream.

The Texas Tavern, Roanoke, Virginia. With the stock market crash happening the year before, 1930 may seem like a bad year to have opened a restaurant. But that’s exactly what Isaac Newton “Nick” Bullington did in downtown Roanoke, Virginia. You can sit at his original 10-person counter still today and learn the history of the place from current owner Matt Bullington, Nick’s great-grandson, while having a bowl of chile (Nick always said cheap chili ended in an “i”) and a Cheesy Western. Dressed with cabbage relish and a fried egg, the “Cheesy” occupies a prominent place in our pantheon of quirky hamburgers.

El Gran Sabor, Elkins, West Virginia. The population of Elkins is barely over 7,000 people, but it supports a Venezuelan restaurant. At El Gran Sabor, we were introduced to cachapas, and we have been thinking about them ever since. “Try cachapas one time and you’ll be back,” owner Derdlim Lopez Masten tells us. Masten grew up in the town of Mérida, Venezuela, about 5,300 feet up in the Andes Mountains. Cachapas are corn cakes, cooked on a griddle or in a skillet. Typically, this Venezuelan street dish is stuffed with cheese, or sometimes roast pork. But Masten uses the cachapa as a springboard for all kinds of creativity. In the spring, she’ll use West Virginia ramps. Chicken, beef, shrimp and even barbecue also serve as cachapa fillings.

King Tut Drive-In, Beckley, West Virginia. Kenneth McKay ran Depression-era tea rooms in New York City and Cleveland. She would be amazed to learn that her recipe books from the 1930s are still in use and at a West Virginia drive-in, no less. Her son John took over King Tut’s from the Tutwiler family in the 1950s and promptly introduced pizza to Beckley, which he had to give away at first. Leftover items from pizza-making made their way onto pizza burgers, still on the menu today. John McKay’s Nightmare Sandwich, consisting of Polish sausage, mustard, onions, sauerkraut and cheese, came with a complimentary packet of Alka-Seltzer! Today Kenneth McKay’s grandson Dave consults those 1930s cookbooks in creating a full line of homemade pies at King Tut’s, where it’s curbside service only.

Patterson’s Drug Store, Martinsburg, West Virginia. Through our travels for Blue Ridge Country, we met former Martinsburg Mayor George Karos. The son of Greek immigrants, Karos runs Patterson’s Drug Store, with a fully functioning soda fountain and lunch counter. He treated us to a Jo-Jo, a sundae made with melted peanut butter, marshmallow cream, vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup. In five years, Patterson’s, which still delivers medications, will celebrate a century in business.

>>> Continue to Part 2, Mountain Food Products

The story above appears in our March/April 2021 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!