Feature article
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Ralph’s reputation built on its burger
By Fred Sauceman
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Kool-Aid, biscuits and brown gravy among bar’s other menu choices
In the shadows of Christ the King Motel, on the eastern edge of Kingsport, where businesses start to give way to pasture fields and farms, sits Ralph’s. Restaurant Ralph’s, as the sign on top of the building says.
There’s another sign there, too. It proclaims “Biggest & Best Burger ’Round Here!”
It was the burger that first lured me to Ralph’s, on Highway 11W, East Stone Drive, and it’s the friendliness and hospitality of the staff and customers that have led me to return again and again.
Ralph’s has a reputation, built mainly on the burger trade. Consequently, folks view it as a lunch and dinner place.
I talked burgers for a while with the owners, Ralph and Linda Barrett, and then we turned to the topic of breakfast. Six days a week — every day except Sunday — Ralph and Linda put out a breakfast buffet and charge a pittance for it.
They clean out the kitchen pantry, putting out all the boxes of cereal they have on hand, jars of jams and jellies, and fresh fruit. On the buffet, you might find country ham one day, fried pork tenderloin, bacon, sausage, hash browns, biscuits, freshly grilled doughnuts and scratch-made gravy. Make that brown gravy.
“I make the best gravy in town, with ham and bacon grease,” announces Ralph. “It’s brown. I don’t like white.”
Ralph says some people eat at his place three, even four, times a day. “They’re in and out of here all the time.”
What you won’t find on that breakfast buffet are eggs. And that seeming omission is an indication of the pride the Barretts and their staff take in the food they serve. They cook your eggs to order, so they won’t sit and stiffen over buffet heat.
Ralph’s opened in 1978. Ralph had worked at Hawkins County’s Holliston Mills. Linda, from Church Hill, was a Dairy Cup veteran.
They happily host motorcyclists, baby showers and weddings. Sometimes, in “The Pit” out back, Ralph smokes hams, ribs and turkeys, and hosts horseshoe tournaments.
On Thanksgiving Day, Ralph and Linda say they put out a “spread,” as a way of saying thank-you to their customers. Yet some guests, despite the bounty of the fall feast, insist on ordering those hamburgers.
“There’s plenty of meat on that hamburger,” says Ralph. “It’s ground chuck, a good grade, and I get it ground down at the K-Mart every morning. We go through about 50 pounds of meat a day.”
In addition to various soft drinks and brews, Ralph’s menu lists Kool-Aid as a drink option.
“That’s kind of unusual on a restaurant menu, isn’t it?” I ask Ralph.
“Yeah, especially in a bar. I’m diabetic and started buying the sugar-free Kool-Aid for myself,” Ralph explains. “People got to drinking it, and now we go through about five gallons a day, of cherry and grape.”
The Barretts have kept their food simple and consistent over the years. Ralph and Linda want folks to know they can expect a good meal at a good price, from early morning tenderloin to noontime spaghetti to late-night hamburger, all served up with the hospitality of home.
Ralph’s
LOCATION: 2764 East Stone Drive, Kingsport, Tennessee
PHONE: 423-288-6492
HOURS: Open seven days a week
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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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