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Feature article
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Jaw and chow down at Erwin's top Dari Ace
By Fred Sauceman
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| Left to right: Olivia Peake, Danette Adkins, and Malissa Harris serve time-tested Dari Ace fare. Fred Sauceman photo. |
Enter Erwin’s Dari Ace and you’re immediately impressed with the cleanliness of the place. In fact, it’s one of the cleanest restaurants I’ve ever seen.
That impression was made long before I sat down at the white, horseshoe-shaped counter and talked short orders with Junior Garland.
He’s a respected restaurateur around Unicoi County. Johnson City hairdresser Shirley Whaley, once Junior’s competitor when she ran the deli at JD’s Market nearby on Jackson-Love Highway in Erwin, says he’s “the hardest working person I’ve ever known.”
Whereas some restaurants close in the month of July for a vacation, the Dari Ace shuts down to intensify the labor. It may be a week, 10 days, two weeks. However long it takes to get the job done. What the Dari Ace closes for is to clean.
Junior removes his entire plate collection, down to every Elvis, every commemorative motorcycle plate. He and his staff repaint and scrub.
And it shows. The Dari Ace gleams.
All year long, it’s Walter Robinson’s job to keep the premises spotless, to retrieve any stray milkshake tops from the parking lot, any lost napkins off the floor.
The Dari Ace deals in short orders, and it has since 1960. The menu has hardly changed. Roller-grilled hot dogs are still dressed with the late Bill Seagroves’ original chili recipe, now nearing half a century in use.
Junior’s history with the business goes back to 1970. He was in and out of it for a few years, but the Dari Ace has been in his hands continuously since 1979.
A Dari Ace trademark is the use of chopped red onions on the hamburgers and hot dogs. Junior can trace the practice at least back to 1970.
“Sometimes they’re strong, but I like them better,” he says.
Platters of chicken, fish, shrimp and oysters, biscuits and gravy at breakfast time, sundaes, and hot fudge cakes are the fare of the Dari Ace, managed by Malissa Harris and staffed by two of her sisters, Susan and Danette Adkins.
The Dari Ace’s most dominant and most remembered furnishing is that horseshoe-shaped counter. It seats a dozen people. Sit on the left side and you can see the Unaka Mountain range that rings the county.
That counter is a long, tight “U,” and the stools are close together. The arrangement means you can’t eat at the Dari Ace without getting to know your fellow diners. There are no solitary corner tables. Loneliness is impossible. It’s community eating, and that’s the way folks in Erwin like it.
“That counter gets people to talking,” says Junior. “They can jaw and have some chow, too.”
The walls start conversation as well. Junior has two garages full of Coca-Cola memorabilia, and some of it has overflowed into the restaurant, like his stainless steel, airtight Coke picnic box from 1940.
Junior’s proudest of his set of patches from NASA flights. He ended the collection with a patch from Challenger, January 28, 1986.
Lessons from the past line the walls. Trays from the 1964 World’s Fair. A plate from Expo ’67. Plates adorned with finned antique cars.
Between two vintage motorcycle plates is a sign intended to halt some forms of conversation around the horseshoe counter. In stark red letters, it reads, “NO PROFANITY.”
The Dari Ace is cash only, and a little of it takes you a long way through the menu, with change left over for a piece of hot fudge cake or one of 15 milkshake flavors. Reese Cup shakes lead the sales list. Lemon milkshakes take the top prize for peculiarity. They’re made with vanilla ice cream and a lemon syrup.
No one knows exactly what Bill Seagroves had in mind when he chose the word “Ace” to name his restaurant in 1960, but the history of the Dari Ace bears out Merriam-Webster definition number five, “one that excels.”
The Dari Ace
LOCATION: 1105 Jackson-Love Highway,
Erwin, Tennessee
DIRECTIONS: Heading east on I-26, take the Jackson-Love Highway
exit and turn left, back toward Erwin. The Dari Ace is on the left.
HOURS: Open Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
--------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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