Posted by Michael Stern
, July 07, 2010 18:55
I recently scanned a few thousand 35mm slides and as I look through the digital images, I am getting very nostalgic for some Roadfood landmarks that are no more. Hap Townes was Nashville’s premier plate lunch place for decades; our story about it in January, 1994, was the first column we wrote for Gourmet magazine (like Hap’s, gone). In that story, we described a meal of “big silk‑textured butter beans shimmering in their juices, peppery puffs of hominy, sheaves of limp steamed cabbage with a jolt of fatback flavor, tomatoes stewed with shreds of toasted bread and sugar until the whole mélange becomes a zesty relish, apples cooked with cinnamon so they transform into translucent caramel candy, diminutive crowder peas whose insides wanted to burst from their taut skin, real mashed potatoes seasoned and swirled into a lumpy mound, and toothsome stewed raisins. Of course there was cornbread (there is every day at Hap's) ‑‑ a griddle-cooked tan oval cake with a fetching sour tang of buttermilk; and for dessert there was hefty cherry cobbler dished out steaming hot with an orb of ice cream quickly turning into rivulets of cream on top. The meats included country fried steak smothered in gravy, roast beef smothered in gravy, and chicken 'n' dumplings served in a bowl of thick, sunny gravy.” The story concluded with a quote from Hap: “I tell you, the meat-and-three business is wide open today. There are so few people doing it, and so many who long for it. I've told those I helped open restaurants, 'It's wide open IF you serve good food. You've got to make that cornbread hot and serve it straight off the griddle. You've got to put the fatback in your cabbage. You've got to mash those potatoes every day.'” Amen, brother!
