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Feature article
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Eating for a higher cause
By Fred Sauceman
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Dining at VFW yields fine comfort fare, and a good bit more
This column, two days before Veterans Day, is about eating for a higher cause. Having a meal at the VFW in Colonial Heights makes a statement.
Ordering up a salad, steak, and baked potato at Charles DeWitt Byrd Post 3382 isn’t just satisfying hunger. It says you care. About the mission of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. About the military personnel in our community who have given up huge chunks of their lives, and sometimes life itself, so that we can continue to make free choices. About the widows, orphans, and dependents of deceased, disabled and needy veterans.
I mentioned to someone the other day that I was writing about the food at the VFW. He began to tell me where I could find a better steak or plank of fish. Maybe that’s true. But I didn’t visit the VFW in search of gourmet fare.
Living through election season and hearing Americans labeled unpatriotic for their honest expressions of opinion and concern about their country underscored my desire to visit a place where people don’t worry much about defining patriotism. They’ve spelled it out with their lives. I noted the death date of one American patriot memorialized on the VFW wall: December 7, 1941.
One of the elements of the VFW’s mission is “to promote Americanism through education in patriotism and constructive service to the communities in which we live.”
A sign below the cash register in the VFW’s Tony Montrose Dining Room urges customers to tip waitresses generously, since they work voluntarily. And they are called waitresses at the VFW. Not servers. Not wait staff.
“Hot coffee, soft butter and cold water,” announced one of those waitresses as she brought out the beginnings of the night’s meal. Then she talked proudly of the pecan pie she’d made fresh that day.
The VFW’s ad in a regional tabloid jokes that it’s the “best post by a dam site.” The brick building is situated on a hill not far from the Hammond Bridge and Fort Patrick Henry Dam.
The pine-paneled dining room hearkens back to the supper clubs of the 1960s and the Friday night fish fries of my youth.
Ted McCown’s enthralled with the servings of country ham. He and I marveled at the two platter-covering slabs he’d been served last Friday night. His wife Jane has discovered that even though the Friday night fish fry is all-you-can-eat, half-orders are permissible.
Ribeyes, filets, chicken breasts, Alaskan whitefish, flounder, hamburgers, chicken livers with peppers and onions, bulging salads, foil-wrapped baked potatoes, and shrimp cocktail all echo the fare of 40 years ago. Thursday evenings mean all-you-can-eat fried chicken. On Saturday nights, there’s an all-you-can-eat buffet, with such offerings as smoked sausage, country fried steak and gravy, fried chicken, six different vegetables, and five desserts. All at very modest prices.
Throughout the week at the VFW, folks shoot pool, dance and buy lottery tickets. Seriousness is cast aside for a while, but always on the wall is the reminder, “Under This Emblem Gather the Bravest Men in the World.” And women, too.
VFW Post 3382
LOCATION: 130 VFW Road, Kingsport, Tennessee (Colonial Heights)
Phone: 423-239-9461
HOURS: Dining room open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, 5 to 9 p.m.
SAMPLE PRICES: Friday night fish fry, $6.95;
Saturday night buffet, $6.99;
8-ounce ribeye dinner, $11.95;
country ham dinner, $7.95
--------GoTriCities--------
Food writer Fred Sauceman, author of the book “The Place Setting: Timeless Tastes of the Mountain South — from Bright Hope to Frog Level,” is senior writer and executive assistant to the president for public affairs at East Tennessee State University. E-mail him at sauceman@etsu.edu.
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