A couple of weeks ago I got a job driving a giant Oreo cookie set piece to Chattanooga, Tennessee. My friend Josh would be driving another truck with the second half of the cookie, so that was a good sign right at the start. Josh appreciates a good meal and will tolerate a lot of driving around and asking directions to find the right place. Then he'll trade food with you and argue about it. We get along great.
The pre-production work was done in New York so they needed a way to get the set to the only town Payton Manning will work in during the off-season. The lady that hired me explained why they couldn't build a giant fake cookie in Chattanooga, but to my ears she just kept saying "barbecue, grits, barbecue, greens, sweet tea, barbecue, barbecue, fried apples".
I vaguely recall her saying I would be driving the largest vehicle America will let you rent without a Commercial Driver's License through the top of the Appalachian mountains. I think I was having black eyed pea fantasies during that part, but it wouldn't have mattered.
It's so tall I was looking semi drivers in the eye. I loved every second of it. Of course.
As we were getting on the road I called my uncle Tom in Wichita, the owner of a book called Road Food by Jane and Michael Stern. It lists restaurants by highway so you can plan your trip and then figure out how to avoid Cracker Barrel. Tom read me off a few options along 81, we managed to get to three of them. He pointed out that if we could make it to Memphis our odds shot up dramatically, but we had responsibilities to tend to.
Besides, there were plenty of kitchens to keep us busy. On the first night we stopped in Roanoke, Virginia to eat at a place called the Roanoker. We showed up right as they were closing and the manager gave us the once over before telling the hostess to seat us. Apparently we seemed desperate because he looked us up and down and said "Alright, I'll feed you". As a long time restaurant worker I usually walk out at that point so people can finish mopping and go home, but I was so damned hungry I took him up on his offer.
The problem with walking into a good restaurant at closing time is that they're out of nearly everything. The book recommended chicken livers, which I'm not partial to. I was ready to try them, but the livers and nearly everything else on the menu that sounded particular and local was sold out. So I got ham. The sides were all made that day and everything was good, but nothing was exciting at all.
I think Josh was glad the restaurant was empty when he saw me take a picture of my food for the first time. Our verdict on the Roanoker was unanimous: good but not worth extra effort.
The next day we stopped at The Ridgewood in Bluff City, TN but it was closed. On Father's Day! We had heard about the Ridgewood from Tom, but also a food freak friend of Josh's who's from the South and said it was the best in the area. We had both avoided eating since the Roanoker the night before and it was late afternoon by the time we found the place. We stood in the empty parking lot and nearly cried. It was pitiful.
We ended up going to four different barbecue restaurants before we found one that was open, a place called Bradley's. I don't remember what town it was in, somewhere not too far South of Bristol on 81. We both got pulled pork and it came on a plain bun with a little bit of sauce and french fries on the side. The meat was tender and very, very smoky, striking a pretty obvious contrast with even my favorite barbecue restaurant in New York. I'm not sure Josh had ever eaten a piece of meat slow cooked completely in a smoker because he seemed totally bowled over. At this point I'm convinced that all the barbecue up North is either started or finished in an oven, because none of it tastes anything like Bradley's.
We made it to Chattanooga that night. We met a lot of cool people and had as good a time as you can have working all day and drinking all night. There wasn't time to eat anything interesting while we were there, but I did notice that the catering table had four different kinds of hot sauce next to a big cooler of sweet tea and a big cooler of lemonade. I learned the sublime pleasure of the Arnold Palmer while on set. I realize that's a big description for a drink, but after a full day in the Tennessee sun a nice icy drink takes on a whole new meaning.
On the way back we had one goal: The Ridgewood.
We spent all morning going back and forth on the walkie-talkie about all the crazy different kinds of carcass we were going to order, trying to plan out sampler plates that would leave no meat uneaten. When we got there we were stunned to find no ribs on the menu, no sausages, no birds of any kind. They had two kinds of barbecue, shaved beef and shaved pork, and smoked ham. Eat it or don't.
We ordered one beef, one pork and two sides of beans and just kind of sat there, happy but confused. I wanted some goddamn ribs.
The meat was great, but it came soaked in sauce, smothering any flavor from the dry rub and smoke. The sauce was good, not too sweet, there was just too much of it. We both agreed that our Bradley's experience was better because you got the full punch of the meat and could toss on sauce as you liked. The Ridgewood was worth the detour, but Bradley's had ribs.
We each bought a pound of shaved pork and a pound of ham on the way out. They came dry, sauce on the side, which improved the experience quite a bit. The ham was perfect.
The Ridgewood also had the most badass smokers I've ever seen:
They had no stovepipe. Just big metal boxes filled with smoke. I didn't see any way of air getting in or out and still don't really understand how they work. But they looked neat, like a well used cast-iron skillet. I tried to talk to an employee who was having a cigarette by the smoker cage but he was deaf/mute, so. Josh made fun of me for being the kind of dork that takes pictures of smokers (it took me like 10 tries to get a good one) to post on his cooking blog, but fuck him. These smokers deserved a picture.
We stopped that night about a half-hour South of Mrs. Rowe's in Staunton, Virginia. Our plan was to sleep in and start the last day with a big breakfast from what is apparently the Southern restaurant. Mrs. Rowe's did not disappoint.
Josh ordered a reasonable breakfast of biscuits with tenderloin gravy and a side of bacon. I got a half-order of biscuits and sausage gravy, a cinnamon roll, a side of grits, a side of bacon and a dish of fried apples, a small orange juice and a coffee. This was our last meal before we got back to the Northeast and I was in no mood to play around.
The cinnamon roll came first and it was easily the best cinnamon roll I've ever had. It actually made Josh giddy, like a high school kid smoking their first joint. He just sat there and giggled, eating little bites of this amazing lump of dough and sugar. The bread felt like a combination of a biscuit and a roll, which really worked. It wasn't as dense as cinnamon rolls usually are. The icing was buttery and heavy with cinnamon. It was warm. I've never had anything like it.
Breakfast was pretty much the perfect examples of each dish. The fried apples were the best I've had, by a long shot, like the cinnamon roll. The apples were so good I bought the Mrs. Rowe's restaurant cookbook before I left. There isn't a recipe for the cinnamon rolls in the book, a big disappointment, but there is a biscuit recipe, fried green tomatoes, Southern fried chicken, and pages of other classic Southern recipes.
Even the bacon was cured with apple cider. Good god.
Mrs. Rowe's was a huge success, as was the trip overall. Here I am after breakfast, stuffed like a pornstar and just as happy:
Thanks for the great suggestions Tom, and thank you Josh for letting me try everything you ordered. That's a road partner.
