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Feature article
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Sonny's: Blowing Rock grill a ham biscuit holdout
By Fred Sauceman
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Sonny’s Grill
LOCATION: 1119 Main Street,
Blowing Rock, North Carolina
CONTACT: 828-295-7577 |
When Thomas Lee “Sonny” Klutz Sr. returned to the mountains of western North Carolina after World War II, he painted houses. But the seasonal work left him without much of an income between Labor Day and Memorial Day.
“He had to put an end to that,” says his son, Tommy. “Bower Williams owned the grill in Blowing Rock then, but Bower was not a cook. He’d cook a hot dog in a fry pan. Bower asked Dad if he’d be interested in running the place. Dad said he’d give it a whirl, but then he realized he couldn’t cook either.”
Sonny convinced his wife, Lavaughn, to teach him how, and on Dec. 13, 1954, Sonny’s Grill welcomed its first customers.
Storefronts in Blowing Rock today tout million-dollar homes, pricy antiques and boutique ice cream. Sonny’s promotes ham biscuits.
But they weren’t on Sonny Klutz’s original blue-plate, hamburger-hot dog menu. Credit the pharmacist next door for the ham biscuit idea, one that has resulted in sales of millions of the country-style sandwich.
“Bill Shaheen, who ran the drug store next door, was a golfing buddy of my Dad’s,” says Tommy. “Dad would pack 16 or 17 ham biscuits in his golf bag, and when they were good and starved, he and Bill would eat them.”
Bill suggested that Sonny augment the grill’s menu with ham biscuits, and they soon became the restaurant’s trademark, along with sweet potato pancakes that have been sold there since the 1960s and North Carolina glass-bottled soft drinks like Cheerwine, made in Salisbury since 1917. The country ham used at Sonny’s is cured in North Carolina. Livermush biscuits speak of the Tar Heel State’s Piedmont region.
Sonny died in 1999, but the ham biscuit survived. Tommy, a town councilman in Blowing Rock, credits his mother for getting the business through “trials and tribulations,” and it’s to honor her, he says, that he keeps the small diner open.
With its putty-colored cinderblock walls, its roll-up-your-sleeves menu, and its working-class prices, Sonny’s stands as a last outpost of realism in Blowing Rock and a stronghold of Southernness in an increasingly tourist-dominated town. The Eggplant Napoleon served down the street may be the trend, but so far at least, stacked food and starched tablecloths haven’t squeezed the simple ham biscuit from its rightful place on Main Street.
--------GoTriCities--------
Food writer Fred Sauceman, author of the book “The Place Setting: Timeless Tales 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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