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Feature article
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Piggy’s and Harry’s: Diners get a double treat
By Fred Sauceman
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Piggy’s & Harry’s
LOCATION: 102 Duncan Hill Road, Hendersonville, N.C.; across the street from Lowe’s just off Highway 64, west of the I-26 Highway 64 exit
HOURS: Open 11 a.m. daily, closed Sundays
PHONE: 828-692-1995 |
Piggy’s and Harry’s in Hendersonville, North Carolina, represent the high watermark of Southern kitsch.
The ice cream half of the business, Piggy’s, opened in 1980. Piggy is Sallie Thompson’s nickname. Once the ice cream business caught on, Sallie’s husband Harry talked her into building an adjoining restaurant, but Harry died before the construction was completed. Sallie and her three sons, Jeff, Todd and Michael, named the place in memory of Harry when it opened in 1993, on his birthday.
A Deluxe Burger at Harry’s is dressed with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise; an All-the-Way with mustard, chili, and onion; and an Everything with all of the above. The chili is homemade, with the same grade of ground chuck used for hamburgers.
“We’re from South Carolina, so we always had chili on hamburgers,” says Sallie’s oldest son Todd.
The line of summer campers and Boy Scouts clamoring for hamburgers, footlong hot dogs, barbecue and other short order delights circles past statues of Colonel Sanders and Ronald McDonald and underneath a suspended Mt. Olive pickle. A pawn-shop-salvaged Spiderman grips the ceiling above the ice cream counter. Yogi Bear and Boo Boo stand guard outside, rescued from the old Hungry Bear Restaurant in Lake Lure. On top of the Thompsons’ antique shop next door lurks a pink elephant that once marked a Charlotte strip club.
The Thompsons’ neon pig used to light the way into “a barbecue place between Gastonia and Charlotte,” Todd remembers. The Esso tiger from an old gasoline promotion was purchased from Clemson University. The Hooterville Jail was once an attraction at Silver Dollar City. In short, the Thompsons have raided every source imaginable to decorate, some say clutter, the interior and exterior of Piggy’s and Harry’s. They’re quick to point out, though, that the “Welcome to North Carolina” sign was not stolen off the road but rather purchased at an auction.
Walk through Piggy’s and Harry’s and you learn that the Biltmore Estates in Asheville once ran a dairy and that Roy Acuff once ran for governor of Tennessee. The Biltmore cow is suspended high over the parking lot, and an Acuff campaign poster is mounted on a hallway wall.
Singer Perry Como was a regular ice cream consumer at Piggy’s, as was early television personality “Howdy Doody,” Bob Smith. His son Christopher, student intervention specialist for the local school system, is a burger patron.
The Thompsons have made Hendersonville food history for well over a hundred years. Before getting into shakes and chili-bathed burgers, they ran Thompson Produce and Poultry.
Todd says when the family travels in search of more memorabilia for the walls, roofs and parking lots at Piggy’s and Harry’s, they always stop at restaurants with police cars, ambulances and fire trucks in the parking lot.
“There were 12 Highway Patrol cars in our lot the other night,” he proudly proclaims. As his voice breaks with a recollection of his father, he adds, “There is no way a place like this could ever be duplicated.”
--------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. E-mail him at sauceman@etsu.edu.
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