Johnson - Lost Restaurants of Knoxville

Published by American Palate

A Division of The History Press

Charleston, SC

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2017 by Paula Johnson

All rights reserved

Cover image, top left: Peter Kern Building. The McClung Collection; top middle: Patrick Sullivans Saloon. Library of Congress; top right: S&W Cafeteria. The McClung Collection; bottom: The Inferno. The Tichnor Brothers Collection.

First published 2017

e-book edition 2017

ISBN 978.1.43966.365.3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017948483

print edition ISBN 978.1.62585.953.2

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is dedicatedto everyone who lived their dream.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

Wow-wee! Lost Restaurants is an amazing, thrilling ride through Knoxvilles hospitality history. Paula Johnson needs to be celebrated for completing what must have felt like an endurance test, the research required to write this book covering such a deliciously generous portion of Knoxvilles 227-year food service and hospitality history.

There is value in finding what has been lost. Paulas research helps to discover things about Knoxville restaurants and simultaneously uncovers and reconnects us to our history that may have otherwise remained lost. I believe you can really only learn what you almost already know. Although I have spent my life on the periphery of hearsay history and hospitality stories, this book helped me to learn that hearsay is not a very reliable source of history. I am grateful to Paula for taking on such a huge topic as reviewing the highlights of Knoxvilles restaurants over the last twenty-two and a half decades. These restaurants were born into our community, danced around with the diverse culinary and hospitality curiosity and insatiable appetites of our fellow Knoxvillians and visitors for a time and have since been relegated to a collection of tasty memories.

I enjoyed the first-person presentation style Paula chose for this book. Not only did she share historic facts that she found in numerous sources, but she also shared with us the added color she experienced from her business, Knoxville Food Tours. I am looking forward now to taking her tour very soon.

I shared the working draft of Lost Restaurants with my dad, Bill Regas, who was born in 1929 in Knoxville. He has invested all of his professional life, aside from his experience at Tennessee Military Institute and his service in the U.S. Army, in the wonderful world of hospitality in Knoxville. He also learned a great deal from Lost Restaurants and found the book hard to put down.

Today is the ninety-eighth anniversary of Regas Restaurants founding. As a third-generation Regas family member who has been around the legendary, historic stories of our familys business history as well as stories of restaurants, restaurant entrepreneurs and hospitality team members, I found Lost Restaurants to be quite enlightening. For example, I learned in that the S&W Cafeteria on Gay Street served up to seven hundred customers per hour. Wow! Thats amazing!

I really appreciated that Paula dedicated Lost Restaurants to everyone who lived their dream. The number of people in the hospitality industry whom everyone includes is unknown and unknowable. I learned in that the S&W Cafeteria required a staff of 250 people in order to operate on all cylinders. I wonder how many people were employed just at S&W over fifty-two years. Each of these staff members had a dream to pursue. Each of them had a story. I loved hearing about S&W server Tennyson Slim Dickson. I remember my mother, Elizabeth Frost Regas, introducing me to Slim and recall how nice he was to me. Each restaurant team member made individual contributions to the momentum of the restaurant and perhaps even to the ultimate fate of the restaurant of which they were a part. Most of those contributions were positive, while others may have proved injurious to the establishment. Perhaps in their own little way, some staff members contributed to the demise of their particular restaurant, adding yet another establishment to the list of lost restaurants. That part of restaurant history remains a mystery and the product of twisted hearsay passed around and around. I have learned again through this book that not all hospitality dreams are sweet; some become nightmares. Today, there are 1,400-plus restaurants in Knox County composed of the joyous dreams of hospitality entrepreneurs and team members alike, many inspired directly or indirectly by hospitality professions mentioned in Lost Restaurants. By taking advantage of Knoxvilles hospitality history lessons in Lost Restaurants, there is time to learn and still room to chase the sweet American dream by sharing delicious tastes and fond memories.

Thank you for helping us learn, Paula. Nice work!

Grady Regas

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A special thank-you to my parents for their love, support and encouragement.

Additional thanks to Jannelle Jones, Jenni Schaming, Harrison Schaming, Margaret Manley, Crystal Huskey, Jack Flinchem, Martha Boggs, Rex Jones, Flo Ullrich, Madeline Hassil, Peter Ullrich, Grady Regas, Jenny Williams, Bill Regas, Susan Witt, Mahasti Vafaie, Scott Partin, Frank Sparkman, Wesley Morgan, Steve Cotham and Eric Dawson.

INTRODUCTION

Knoxville, Tennessee, is a city unlike any otherwith a respect for its historic beginnings and old mountain ways mixed with new and modern business and trends. Rich farmland begins not far outside town and has produced nationally known food brands Bushs Beans and Mayfield Dairy, as well as renowned chef favorites Bentons Smoky Ham and Bacon and Cruze Dairy Farm. White Lily Flour and JFG Coffee both operated in Knoxville for over one hundred years.

Energy is a major focus in the city, with the proximity to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the nations largest power provider, the Tennessee Valley Authority. The entertainment industry plays a major role as well, with Scripps Networks and the Regal Entertainment Group both headquartered here. Knoxville is close to the tourist destination of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which is the most visited national park in the United States, as well as Blackberry Farm, one of this countrys most lauded luxury resorts. Students from all fifty states and over one hundred foreign countries come to study at the University of Tennessee, which reaches enrollment of over twenty-five thousand.

Knoxville has the distinction of having one of the highest numbers of restaurants per capita in the nation, and our central geographic location and steady economy contribute to an often-used test market for new restaurant concepts and food products. There are thousands of lost restaurants of Knoxville. Here Ive gathered a collection of highlights for your enjoyment and for your acclimation to our fair city.