Feature article
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Dude’s Drive-In remains a ‘people place’
By Fred Sauceman
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Dude Griffith (left) and his son Blake run Dude’s Drive-In, known for its red hot dogs topped with chili made from a schoolhouse recipe. (Fred Sauceman photo).
Dude’s Drive-In
LOCATION: 1505 Roanoke Street, Christiansburg, Virginia
CONTACT: 540-382-7901 |
“People come here for good food. They don’t come here for health food,” says Blake Griffith, co-owner of the saladless Dude’s Drive-In on Lee Highway in Christiansburg, Virginia.
Almost no one in Christiansburg knows Blake’s dad Palmer L. Griffith by that name. Palmer’s been “Dude” ever since he was a toddler and his grandmother, Annie Griffith, called him her “little Dudey boy.”
Dude has a hamburger named after him at the drive-in that has borne his name since 1978. It’s a quarter pound of meat ground fresh every day at Wade’s Supermarket. Dude tells me he isn’t “formally educated,” but he knows politics (he once served as vice mayor), he knows business, and above all, he knows, understands and appreciates people. He spends hours with his elbows on the doors of pickup trucks, talking to customers.
After high school, Dude started out working for Richardson Funeral Home. Back then, funeral homes ran ambulance calls. At one time or another, Dude figures he was in every home in Christiansburg. So when he decided to get into the convenience store business, the whole town knew Dude. His eight-year-old daughter added to his reputation when she suggested he call his place Dude’s Foods. That was in 1966. It was the biggest Pepsi and beer stop from Roanoke to Bristol. In the back of the store, Dude ran a Burger Shack.
When the convenience store business started slowing, he bought what became Dude’s Drive-In, at first a place with a gravel driveway, no air-conditioning and two little heaters.
“Now we have 15 tons of air,” says Blake.
The day I met Dude Griffith, he was stirring 35 pounds of hamburger meat, some tomato juice, and chili powder — a two-hour cooking job that happens at least three times a week at Dude’s. It’s a chili recipe with its own history, played out in a schoolhouse. Blake’s uncle, the late Bob Griffith, picked it up from a cafeteria worker at Christiansburg High School.
“There’s very little tomato taste,” says Dude. “We hold that down. A lot of people use catsup in chili, but we don’t. We use tomato juice.”
The result isn’t served as chili. You can’t buy a bowl of it. Instead, it dresses Dude’s red hot dogs and about five percent of the hamburgers. And the tater tot special, for the employees up the road at Shelor’s Motor Mile: tater tots deep-fried, then chopped up with grilled green peppers, onions and ham with, as Blake says, “a big ole spoonful of chili and cheese on top of that.”
Blake and Dude are willing to create just about anything for a customer, but Blake drew the line once when a mother asked that her child’s hot dog be skinned.
Dude’s occupies a spot on what I’ve come to call the “Red Hot Dog Corridor,” a swath of Northeast Tennessee, Western North Carolina and Southwest Virginia where tastes were shaped by the Valleydale company and its plant in Bristol. Despite the closure of the plant, red hot dogs held on. The ones at Dude’s now come from the Jesse Jones company.
“I tried one time switching to something that didn’t have all the dye in it, more of an all-beef hot dog, but our customers kept complaining that the wienies were not done,” recalls Blake. “I tried to explain that the wienies are pre-cooked at the factory and all you do is heat them. But the texture is a little different. The red ones are softer, and we had to switch back. When I was a kid, all you had in any store were the red wienies.”
Despite competition from fast-food chains, business has continually increased at Dude’s. That’s due in large part to employee longevity. Pat Berry and Wanda Carrol have been cooking there from the beginning and Janey Rasnake close to that long. Darlene Reed’s been car-hopping there for about 25 years.
“They’re dedicated employees who take the business seriously,” says Blake. “We don’t do just one thing here, and I’m no exception.”
That may mean giving out information about the evening’s feature film at the Starlite Drive-In, a business right behind Dude’s that Richard Beasley and his family have operated since 1950. Callers sometimes assume that the drive-in and the movie theater are owned by the same people, and they’ll call Dude’s to ask about showtimes.
“We can look out there at the sign and tell them what’s playing and when,” says Blake. “And we do.”
On a typical Friday, Dude’s serves about 525 cars. Car hops record license numbers on order pads and radio the orders back to the kitchen.
“I don’t know of any place around that has the curb service like we do,” says Dude. “We have a whole lot more personal contact with our customers. Customers will hold up one, two fingers, and the girls will know exactly what they want. At least 95 percent of our business is repeat trade. For the dollar invested, this is the best thing I’ve ever been in.”
Dude grew up on Lee Highway, a short piece from where the drive-in now stands. His brother, Red Griffith, once hunted rabbits on the property.
“My dad ended up making his living a hundred yards from where he grew up,” says Blake. “It’s kind of funny how things work out.”
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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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