Feature article
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Where you can’t eat
By Fred Sauceman
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| Addie and Harold Shersky ran Harold’s Kosher-Style Food Center in Knoxville for over 55 years. Photo by Fred Sauceman. |
Remembering with fondness 10 defunct dining spots
I’ve been mulling over this column idea for a good while, and it occurred to me that with the satiated appetites of Thanksgiving, now would be the best time to take a brief look at regional restaurants you can no longer visit.
The 2007 calendar now on sale by the Friends of the Archives at the Kingsport Public Library is a good source of nostalgia for those who were eating in and around Kingsport in the era of the 1940s. I came on the scene a few years later. Here are my personal top 10 defunct dining spots I’d most like to revisit, if a Christmas season fantasy wish were granted.
J.I. Reed’s, Kingsport
The late Wiley Cox, a coworker at WKPT television in the late 1970s, introduced me to this spot. J.I. understood well the connection between food and fellowship. His tiny restaurant was covered in photographs. There was an entire wall devoted to pictures of his friends, one devoted to his family, and one to his church. We moved away from this area in 1980, to Roane County and then Knoxville. Returning for family visits, we always tried to work in some counter time at J.I.’s, where the grilled hamburgers featured cubed onions.
The Camelot Room, Greeneville
In the fall of the year, all the rooms at King Arthur’s Court, just down Tusculum Boulevard from our house, would be filled with tobacco buyers. At one time, Greeneville was the largest tobacco market in the world, and selling season in the fall enlivened the town and created a booming economy. For tobacco tycoons then, the steakhouse of choice was The Camelot Room, in the bottom of King Arthur’s.
S & W Cafeteria, Knoxville
At this Art Deco cafeteria built in 1936, your tray was whisked to your table by white-jacketed waiters, to the tune of live organ music. In the 1960s, when the University of Tennessee Volunteers were playing at home, the S & W and the Athletic House were mandatory downtown stops, first for a plate of roast beef and gravy with rice, then for a piece of orange clothing on game day.
Harold’s Kosher-Style Food Center, Knoxville
Harold and Addie Shersky ran this Jewish deli together for over 55 years. Once part of a thriving Jewish business district, Harold’s managed to hang on amid pawn shops and rescue missions, encircled by the smell of roasting coffee from the JFG plant up the street. Smoked tongue sandwiches, hot pastrami, potato latkes, knishes, scrambled eggs with lox and onions for breakfast, and horseradish tinted with beet juice kept this Gay Street institution packed with people all day.
Peroulas, Knoxville
The Greek influence on Knoxville cuisine has been profound over the years, but slowly places like The Varsity on Cumberland and Pero’s on Kingston Pike have died away. So has Peroulas, once located on Market Square, where gyro meat revolved on a vertical spit in the front window.
Jones-Vance Drugstore, Johnson City
This place went far beyond standard drugstore lunch counter fare like pimento cheese and chicken salad. Road Company actors, city employees, university students and all manner of folk gathered there for meat and vegetables.
The Parson’s Table, Jonesborough
When Jimmy Neil Smith first opened this restaurant in the 1870s-era First Christian Church, the menu paid tribute to the region. Country ham from Johnson County and apple fritters were served family style with bowls of vegetables, all preceded by a fruit drink called Witch’s Brew. Later owners abandoned all regional ties in favor of dishes like scallops and shrimp, and the business died.
Ham’s Drive-In, Greeneville
The building is completely gone now, victim to road expansion. Once it was crowned with a neon-ringed ham sign. Hamburgers always came with fries, giving you the illusion that you were getting them for free. And they were served on wood-toned paper plates by car hops.
Ike’s International, Asheville
With mutton-chop sideburns and a five-string banjo on his lap, “Ike” oversaw this Turkish restaurant that sat behind the Merrimon Avenue Rose’s store. He served the basic foods of his homeland, shepherd’s salad, rice pilaf and shish kofte, which are Turkish ground meat kebabs.
The Bahou, Knoxville
It was here where we first came to love the interplay of olive oil, garlic and lemon juice. Fuad Bahou taught art at Knoxville College, and his brother Shawqi was a banker. Their creative, Middle-Eastern-influenced menu offered dishes like Eggplant Royale. Sliced eggplant was topped with onions, garlic, mushrooms, flank steak and mozzarella cheese. This restaurant closed at a strange time, in the summer of 1982, when Knoxville was hosting the World’s Fair.
Fortunately, we had the foresight to purchase the “Bahou Brothers Cookbook,” still one of our favorites.
RECIPE
Chicken Amandine from The Bahou
½ stick of butter
1 clove garlic, minced
¼ teaspoon each of salt and pepper
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
2 ounces dry white wine
1 fresh lemon
4 large chicken breast halves
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
¼ cup slivered almonds
¼ cup chopped parsley
Melt butter in a heavy skillet. Add garlic, salt, pepper and nutmeg, and stir. Add wine and stir. Add juice of lemon and stir. Place chicken breasts in the simmering sauce, turning only once until done. Serve chicken with pan juices, garnished with Parmesan cheese, almonds and parsley.
--------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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