Feature article
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Big Indian key to Pratt’s brand
By Fred Sauceman
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| Jonathan Pratt |
Had anyone mentioned “branding” to Honest John Barker, I’m sure his mind would have turned to cows, cowboys, and irons.
Honest John ran a kitschy gift shop on Kingsport’s Stone Drive when there wasn’t much else around, when Highway 11W was the only route to Knoxville.
He sold a gaudy array of Southern souvenirs, a lot full of hand-poured concrete statuary, pocket knives, T-shirts. I’m told he kept a loaded shotgun by his bed as he slept on the premises, a silent sentry ready to strike should an overnight intruder threaten his mother lode.
Today, Honest John’s former bedroom is ham-aromatic, the honey-glazed, spiral-sliced variety baked in the basement of Pratt’s Restaurant.
John’s legacy survives as T-shirts stuffed in milk cartons in the Pratt’s gift shop, shirts that depict a squadron of cows, in their own barnyard Iwo Jima, hoisting a flag. Shirts captioned “United Steaks of America.”
Honest John would approve of the gradual transformation of his roadside emporium from souvenir stop to restaurant and barbecue house.
He wouldn’t talk the lingo, but he’d understand if he were to hear Jonathan Pratt, third-generation co-owner, speak of branding in the context of the Big Indian. The Indian’s an identity, a trademark that guests analyze as much as the restaurant’s ham and pork butt.
“Anyone that I talk to who doesn’t know how to get here, or isn’t familiar with the area, I tell to drive down 11W until you see the Big Indian and you’re here,” says Jonathan.
Honest John formed that Big Indian himself, all 32 feet of him, out of plaster and concrete and painted him in shades of Covergirl Advanced Radiance.
One could argue that it’s Kingsport’s, maybe even the Tri-Cities’, most identifiable restaurant icon, a rival of the Peerless steer in Johnson City or the former muffler salesman atop the Lynn Garden Drive Pal’s in Kingsport.
Not only is the Indian an unmistakable landmark, it’s also a lightning rod for mischief.
On several Halloweens, the staff at Pratt’s have had to remove bodily accoutrements. Jonathan believes having the Indian out front is worth the risk and the occasional cleanup job. “It’s our brand,” he says.
In 1971, Jonathan’s grandfather Frank sold his feedstore in downtown Kingsport and bought the 11W outpost from Honest John.
The first restaurant there served no barbecue. Jonathan describes the original fare as “a lot of fried stuff, a lot of butter and grease.”
Then in 1974, Jonathan’s father Tom purchased his first Southern Pride smoker and started filling it with turkeys.
That same smoker is still in use today, and Tom’s original barbecue sauce from 1974 hasn’t changed one iota, either. Jonathan says the Pratts have only replaced a few gears and belts on the old smoker, despite a heavy workload of pork butts, beef brisket, pork ribs and chicken.
Southern barbecue folks have come into the craft through some varied and circuitous routes, a fact reinforced for me during a recent study of Alabama barbecue.
Chuck Ferrell, who runs a place in Opelika, previously repaired looms. Leo Headrick, who opened the Green Top in Dora, once mined coal. Rudolph McCollum, founder of The Sparerib in Winfield, taught school 32 years. The Boar’s Butt in the same town was started by the local football coach. Gerald Atchison, owner of Sho’nuff BBQ in Alexander City, sold live bait before converting to barbecue. Bob Sykes, patriarch of Bessemer’s best-known barbecue joint, once worked a bread route.
Jonathan Pratt came into the business through family lineage, as many pitmasters do, but he holds a distinction I’ve come across nowhere else in the barbecue universe.
He’s the only barbecue man I’ve ever known with a degree from the Culinary Institute of America.
In part two of this column next week, we’ll look at how that sophisticated education married with the working class world of barbecue.
Pratt’s Restaurant
LOCATION: 1225 East Stone Drive, Kingsport, Tennessee
PHONE: 423-246-2500
--------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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