Feature article
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Chimney Top: feeds physical, spiritual hunger
By Fred Sauceman
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| Tina Bassett |
Fall Branch is a town hugged by cattle-grazed hills. It’s a Masonic Lodge town. A town of monthly fire department barbecues. About 40 people work in Fall Branch proper, not counting the school.
Jimmy and Tina Bassett figured if they could draw about that many folks into a restaurant five days a week, they could make it in this tiny hamlet.
Try 80 patrons. Sometimes even 100. The first day The Chimney Top Diner opened, in the middle of January 2007, Jimmy and Tina ran out of ice cream.
There’s a calling list for Tina’s banana pudding. People like it so well they’ve signed up to be telephoned whenever she makes it.
By Tuesday’s end, Barbara Jackson’s chicken-celery-mushroom-soup-bound chicken casserole is cleaned out. Barbara is Tina’s mother, who vows she’s only cooking at The Chimney Top long enough to get the place going. Those who try Barbara’s cabbage salad, an inheritance from her mother, Irene Hicks, contest that promise.
At The Chimney Top, named for the mountain that towers behind it, books of New Testament Psalms and Proverbs sit beside the salt shakers on every table, and the daily special on the Pepsi sign board is always preceded with a Bible verse.
Jimmy’s been playing Pilate in the Passion Play down at the Lamplight Theater on Horton Highway, at least when he’s not making spaghetti sauce
He’s up to about four gallons at a time now for the Thursday spaghetti special. His sauce is full of lean ground hamburger, whole tomatoes, onions, and garlic. The furtive herb is dill.
In the winter, Jimmy calls on a physician friend, Dr. Keith Pratt, to make the restaurant’s bean-and-beef chili.
“Most chemists and most doctors are good cooks,” Jimmy asserts. He’s an Eastman Chemical Co. retiree, an expert on polymers who once ran the polymer school at the University of Southern Mississippi.
After the death of his first wife, Jimmy met Tina, and with their marriage, he welcomed a new family of four boys — Zachary, Jonathan, Shannon and Leslie. Along with a strapping brood, Tina brought to the marriage a devotion to Elvis and a burning desire to open a restaurant. It was her idea to decorate The Chimney Top in the style of the 1950s, although she’s far too young to have direct knowledge of that decade.
Old hubcaps gild the walls and 45 rpm records, with labels like Decca, Dot and Epic, dangle from the ceiling. Sometimes Jimmy will demonstrate to children how to play a record.
“When they see the old 45s and 78s on a turntable, their mouths drop,” says Jimmy.
The building formerly housed the Fall Branch post office, then fell into disrepair, used mainly as a site for yard sales. Jimmy and Tina tinned some walls, applied fire-engine-red paint to others, and stuck a nearly life-sized Elvis on the back of the front door. They hauled in a Wurlitzer jukebox and spread around plenty of red-and-white oilcloth and gingham, in preparation for daily visits from customers like the guys down at County Line Auto, going for Black Angus burgers and grilled ham sandwiches with two slices of cheddar cheese.
Jimmy bought a special grill with grooves in it, not only to create nice sear marks on the burgers and the buttery bread for ham and cheese but also to allow fat to drain away.
“We eat here, too, and cook as healthy as we can,” says Jimmy. “We’ve always watched fat content. Our oil contains zero trans fat, although it’s three times higher in price than regular cooking oil.”
While Jimmy’s spicing spaghetti sauce, Tina’s assembling coconut pies and blueberry cobblers and baking hot fudge cake layers, a nightly event. The meatloaf’s her recipe, too.
For the Bassetts, The Chimney Top’s a business with a mission. Jimmy and Tina say they’re especially proud of the fact that they feed their customers spiritually, with Sloppy Joes and a scripture lesson on the menu every day.
The Chimney Top Diner
LOCATION: 1602 Highway 93, Fall Branch, Tennessee
PHONE: 423-677-0168
HOURS: 11 a.m.-7 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.,
Friday and Saturday; closed Sunday and Monday
MISCELLANY: Cash only
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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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