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Feature article
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Kingsport’s Best Burgers lives up to name
By Fred Sauceman
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Leroy Jackson has been known to drive all the way from Kingsport to Asheville for a box of tomatoes.
If you bill your restaurant as Kingsport’s Best Burgers, living up to that claim sometimes makes it necessary to go to extremes.
K.B. Burgers notched 20 years in business in 2006. The cinderblock hut hugs Memorial Boulevard on the outskirts of Kingsport. It was once a grocery store and a bus stop.
Neutral-colored and unassuming, the building’s easy to overlook. And Leroy rarely advertises. He doesn’t need to. Buzz about his burgers, hot dogs, fries, shakes, sundaes and hot fudge cake brings customers in from Colonial Heights, Church Hill, all over, really, to fill the eight round tables inside and to curl around the building in a drive-through line.
A native of Middlesboro, Kentucky, Leroy came back to Southern Appalachia after retiring from the transportation business in Michigan. His wife Brenda, who hails from Pennington Gap, Virginia, is a beautician by trade. Now she tends the hamburger grill, and Leroy says K.B.’s is really her business.
He takes orders and handles money. She fries hamburgers on a chrome-surfaced grill at 450 degrees.
“She checks every single burger to make sure it’s done,” says Leroy. “She’s real particular.”
It’s a family trait. Leroy insists on only Spanish sweet onions for the restaurant’s hamburgers.
“I love onions, good fresh onions. Good produce is becoming hard to get, though.” Hence his trips over the mountain on I-26 in search of pristine tomatoes.
Fresh meat bought locally and cooked quickly is the defining quality of a K.B. burger. Crisp lettuce, bright tomatoes and those sweet onions are just as vital. Mayonnaise, mustard and pickle are standard, too.
“Nothing here is cooked ahead,” Leroy adds. “You wait on every order as I get it. We do it right then.”
K.B.’s hot dogs are dressed in Brenda’s homemade chili, a moist style made with ground chuck and no beans.
For the first four years, the Jacksons called their business The Ice Cream Hut. Although they changed the name and converted to hyping hamburgers, soft-serve vanilla custard remains a 20-plus-year tradition, in cones or cups, in sundaes, shakes from chocolate to pineapple and as the centerpiece in a serving of hot fudge cake. A small order comes with one square of chocolate cake, a large with two.
One advantage of using the custard in hot fudge cake is the fact that it doesn’t melt quickly. Butterfat content is five percent.
From ham and cheese sandwiches to butterscotch sundaes, K.B.’s short order array is priced so that anyone can afford a full and satisfying meal. A quart-sized cup of iced tea at K.B.’s rings up at less than a dollar.
Leroy says the old bus stop spot is a good location for a hamburger stand. “It’s become heavily populated around here, with Cooks Valley growing and all the condominium development that has occurred.”
I put a lot of faith in cinderblock. It’s one of those indicators that point me to good food served straight up and true. It’s that architectural clue that first attracted me to K.B. Burgers, a solid business in every sense.
K.B. Burgers
LOCATION: 3813 Memorial Boulevard, Kingsport, Tennessee
PHONE: (423) 246-1954
HOURS: Open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Sunday and Monday.
MISCELLANY: Cash and checks only
SAMPLE PRICES: Large cheeseburger, $2.99; bacon double cheeseburger, $3.79; slaw dog, $1.35; large fries, $1.19; small hot fudge cake, $1.65; milkshake, $1.65.
--------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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