Episode 3928

- [Announcer] "Tennessee Crossroads" is brought to you in part by.

- [Spokesperson 1] Some of our biggest checks have also made the biggest difference. The Tennessee Lottery, proud to have raised more than $7.5 billion for education. Now that's some game-changing, life-changing fun.

- [Spokesperson 2] Discover Tennessee Trails & Byways, where adventure, cuisine, and history come together. With 16 scenic driving trails, you can discover why Tennessee sounds perfect. Trips can be [email protected].

- [Spokesperson 3] Middle Tennessee State University College of Liberal Arts helps students explore the world, engage minds, enrich lives, and earn a living. More at mtsu.edu/cla.

- This week we'll find great sandwiches in the Great Smoky Mountains, visit a Granville museum, sample some special cupcakes, and find out what Italian ice cream is doing in Tullahoma. Buongiorno, I'm Ketch Secor welcoming you to "Tennessee Crossroads". Gatlinburg, Tennessee, known for the Great Smoky Mountains, stunning views, and amazing wildlife. But did you know it's home to one of the country's most famous and complicated sandwiches? Well, Miranda Cohen travels east in search of, of all things, the perfect Reuben sandwich.

- [Chris] We are Tennessee Jed's in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

- [Miranda] Savory stacked deli sandwiches may not be the first thing you think of when you think Great Smoky Mountain cuisine, but once you've had Tennessee Jed's, you will think of nothing else.

- [Chris] Mojo's a Cuban marinade made with orange juice and sour oranges, oregano, garlic, cilantro, cumin.

- [Miranda] Under the watchful eye of chef owner, Chris Geisz, in the heart of Gatlinburg, the Tennessee native and his staff are crafting flavor packed masterpieces tucked between slices of aromatic bread.

- So we came in here and I just tried to think of some classic, really good sandwiches from, you know, American style sandwiches. So we came up with the list of sandwiches and then cooked the food before the sandwiches. 'Cause we fresh roast all the meats that go on everything.

- [Miranda] All of the meats are slow roasted in-house and carefully seasoned with special blends of spices. The mile high concoctions of perfectly seasoned turkey, pork, and barbecue may have brought them to the table, but it is the Northern inspired Reuben sandwich that has put Tennessee Jed's on the map. So just for the people that don't know, tell us what is a Reuben?

- [Chris] Reuben is corned beef on rye with Thousand Island or Russian dressing, sauerkraut, and Swiss cheese.

- [Miranda] Such an odd combination.

- It's a lot of stuff in one. And the kraut goes with the fattiness of the meat and it just all comes out great. We braise the corned beef here and it cooks overnight, usually for about 12 hours on average. And then we cook 'em overnight and we get 'em out in the morning and serve 'em for lunch the next day.

- [Miranda] The Tennessee Jed's Reuben is famous. It is consistently voted one of the very best in the country and for good reason.

- [Chris] When I said I was gonna have a Reuben on this menu, I was like, it's gotta be something that's epic. And so we put a lot of time into making it that way.

- Well, number one, the Reuben is life-changing.

- [Chris] Most people are blown away. They'll stick their head back in the kitchen. I mean, today, almost everybody that buys a Reuben will come back and tell us it's the best they've ever had.

- [Miranda] Yeah.

- [Chris] And so that's kind of amazing and it's good on the morale for the staff. Everybody loves to hear it.

- Just above the busy downtown streets with quirky decor and a name that is easy to remember. Now, if you're going to have a successful restaurant in Gatlinburg, you've got to have great merch because people absolutely love it. Take a look at this T-shirt and the graphic details. And if you're a music fan, you will know exactly what inspired the name Tennessee Jed's. Where did the name Tennessee Jed's come from?

- [Chris] It's a Grateful Dead reference to a song that they have. And it's about a guy and his dog moving back to Tennessee. Yes, we got plenty of memorabilia and things from other bands as well. We're a small place, so it's packed in here.

- [Miranda] With plenty of outdoor seating to soak in the sights, Tennessee Jed's has unique and eclectic menu items for breakfast and lunch, including house made sauces and freshly made desserts. Lots of choices, all handmade with fresh, often local and seasonal ingredients.

- So we have the Reuben, the Turkey Bacon Ranch. We have, we call it Classic Barbecue and we do a Cubano sandwich, Ham and Swiss, BLT.

- [Miranda] And perhaps one of the best and most unique offerings is a Spicy Grilled Tofu.

- And then another real popular oddball sandwich for a meat centric shop is we have a tofu sandwich, which is for people that like a vegetarian sandwich. It's amazing. We roast the tofu and then we slice it up and put it on the flat top and cook it in the special sauce that we have for it, which is made with peaches and habaneros, and super flavorful.

- [Miranda] And every great sandwich needs a sidekick.

- So the potato salad has something in it. I don't know exactly what it is, but it's unlike any potato salad I've ever had. It's creamy. It almost has a buttery flavor to it. It's so good.

- [Miranda] And a nod to nachos with a Tennessee twist.

- So a Frito Pie is your Frito base. And then we put a homemade all beef chili and cheese is your basic one. And then you get a Loaded Frito Pie with the sour cream, onions, tomatoes, jalapenos. It's kinda like a nacho plate but on Fritos.

- We came yesterday and it was so phenomenal that after we went hiking this morning, we said, let's come back. So we just swapped sandwiches from yesterday.

- [Miranda] Jed's is proud to make the foodie lists of the best of the best, but they are most proud to be highly recommended by the locals.

- [Chris] Once they ate our food, they're the ones telling everybody to come in here every day and every, you know, half the customers that come in today, probably they asked somebody where to eat and the local told them where to come.

- I tell people, if you're coming to Gatlinburg, come to Tennessee Jed's the first day. Because if you come here on the second or the third day and you find out you missed a day, you might be upset with yourself.

- [Miranda] That's right.

- And try 'em all.

- [Miranda] And once the word is out, you're hooked and stuffed, and happy to plan your next trip around a stop or two to Tennessee Jed's.

- Thanks, Miranda. Well, if you haven't been, the town of Granville in Jackson County, Tennessee is a perfect weekend visit. Laura Faber discovered that it has a collection of whiskey decanters that is the largest of its kind in the world.

- Our story is a follow-up to and a combination of two old crossroads stories. One on the Pioneer Village, which is found here in town, historic Granville, and the other, a Joe Elmore story about a man who collected Jim Beam whiskey decanters. That collection has found its way here to Granville and helped create what is now the largest collection of whiskey decanters in the world. There was a time when Randall Clemons didn't know a thing about whiskey decanters. Though that's changed. Randall does know everything there is to know about the town of Granville, a place where you find a simpler life, slower pace, and quiet pleasures. He was born and raised here, was head of the local bank for years, and continues to volunteer as president of the Historic Granville Museum.

- We are a town of yesteryear that has been preserved and restored and it has that Mayberry feel to it where you can walk down the street. Everybody knows everybody. And we've become a major tourist attraction because we have 10 different venues.

- [Laura] Whether it's the general store, its Saturday night bluegrass shows, the Lucy Museum, or any of the others in town, Clover Street is the street to visit when you come here. Rob Wilds featured Granville's Pioneer Village a while back. A place to see olden craft skills still taking place. But the newest attraction in Granville exists thanks to a Joe Elmore story.

- [Randall] We actually got interested in it because of a friend of Mr. Barrett's giving us the "Tennessee Crossroads" show. And we watched it and began our journey with decanters.

- [Laura] Back in 2019, Joe featured a man named Charles Barrett, a Church of Christ preacher. He didn't drink, but he had a Smithsonian level collection of Jim Beam decanters. Thousands of them collected over 30 years. After his wife passed, Mr. Barrett began looking for a home for his collection. But the town of Granville wasn't interested at first.

- [Randall] Didn't realize the work of art that they actually are until we went to Mr. Barrett's home and saw the wonderful collection he had and the passion that he had for keeping his collection together. And he was such an invaluable asset on his knowledge as well as he moved every decanter that you see here today and helped us place them.

- [Laura] Liz Bennett, also born in Granville, is also a volunteer and gives tours of the museum. She says these decanters are much more than a vessel for whiskey.

- It's an art museum. The name on the windows say Decanter Museum, Jim Beam Whiskey Decanters. But actually when you walk in here, you realize that you're in an art museum. All of the decanters are porcelain. Or most of them are porcelain. It is the largest collection of registered, hand painted, limited edition decanters in the world.

- [Laura] Decanters became a thing in the early fifties to help boost lagging sales of bourbon. Created more for the container than the contents.

- [Liz] That's the Elvis in the Hound Dog.

- [Laura] So this is your favorite. Barrett's collection isn't what made the museum the world's biggest. It took adding a second collection to do that.

- [Randall] And he had a friend in Cookville by the name of Joe Miller that he had become friends over collecting decanters. Mr. Miller saw what had happened to Mr. Barrett's collection and he wanted the same to happen to his.

- We were invited to go visit Joe and Gussie Miller in their home. And I've never seen anything like it. We thought we had seen decanters when we saw all of Mr. Barrett's collection. But then when you saw the diversity in Mr. Miller and Gussie's collection, it was just so different. So it made us kind of think, yeah, that would be nice to have that.

- [Laura] Charles Barrett talked a generous patron into donating funds to expand the museum and get all 5,000 decanters in the building. Now they represent everything and everyone, cars, trains, telephones, animals, political parties, even college football.

- [Randall] They tell a story. What I tell people is, regardless of what your passion in life is, you're gonna find a decanter in here that represents that. And they are a work of art.

- Once people come, they're just blown away. They can't believe. And the most common thing we hear is just what we heard from you. Are you sure whiskey was in these things?

- [Laura] Made by the Ski Country Company, the Majestic Eagle decanter is the largest one ever made, weighing in at 14 pounds empty. It holds a gallon of liquid sunshine. And this 1964 Jim Beam decanter is one of only 117 made.

- [Liz] In fact, Jim Beam doesn't even have this and they have tried to purchase this from us, but Mr. Barrett says it belongs here in Granville.

- So you turned them down cold.

- That's right, that's right.

- [Laura] While these decanters are now dry, they at least have a home where anyone can visit to appreciate the beauty, artistry, and some history too. Mark Twain wrote, too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough. Too many whiskey decanters in Granville? Barely enough.

- Well thanks, Laura. Is it dessert or a work of art? Many of our stories on culinary crafts blur the lines between the two. And our next segment is no exception. Vicki Yates brings us the heartwarming and taste-tempting tale behind Blooming Kupcakes.

- Hi, come on in. Can I have you drop off your bag in there.

- Yeah.

- And then use the restroom to wash your hands.

- [Vicki] Today we're at the Gallatin home of Katherine and Andy Halbeck. Joining them are six inquisitive, creative students who are hoping to learn at the table of the master.

- I'm Katherine, my husband Andy. Andy has taken over the baking, so he makes our yummy cupcakes and prepares all our buttercream. So I just color 'em and pipe them for you all.

- [Vicki] Piping is defined as ornamentation on food, consisting of lines of icing, whipped cream, et cetera. Katherine first learned about piping online and is now teaching her students how to make beautiful, delicious cupcakes that look as if they were exquisite flowers. Better known now as Blooming Kupcakes.

- So open up your hands and definitely do this at home too before you start working out. I mean, because your hands will get extremely tired.

- [Vicki] Katherine got involved with creating cupcakes after her career in the medical and legal profession was quickly put on the back burner following the outbreak of COVID in 2020.

- Come May is when I got furloughed from work. And during that time I went ahead on Instagram one night, scrolling. I found a lady who was piping, then one click after another, I kept watching different videos. When you're piping a leaf, you wanted to make sure that this particular tip is vertical.

- [Vicki] The piping led Katherine to dig a little deeper into creating cupcakes.

- [Katherine] I bought some piping tips and I started practicing at home, tried different varieties of buttercream and different recipes of cupcakes. And within a couple weeks I realized I have a knack. I didn't know I had a hidden talent to pipe. And I was encouraged by the neighbors that I kept passing around the cupcakes and said, why don't you start a side business? So I did, and it just bloomed right after that. So it was pretty exciting. I kept getting constant inquiries from my followers. Are you gonna teach? Do you have any online classes? How can I learn what you're doing?

- [Vicki] Her expertise with buttercream and her floral creativity allowed Katherine and Andy to branch out, traveling across the pond to England for an international competition.

- So last year I competed at Cake International. It was my very first international competition. It was pretty big. And I went in completely novice in the cupcake division and I actually earned silver. So that was pretty exciting. And then this year in April, we competed domestically and got gold.

- [Vicki] Katherine did return to work her full-time job, but her new hobby was starting to create a concern.

- So for the first year, mind you, I worked full-time eight hours and I would rush home and bake and frost 'til one o'clock in the morning. It got to be quite tedious and overwhelming. So my husband told me, well why don't you teach me how to bake? And he started baking for me to offload those hours. And then we just said, well when do I quit my full-time job to do this full-time? And we figured, well let's go visit The Cupcake Collection with Mignon Francois.

- [Vicki] You may be familiar with Francois. She started her business selling cupcakes out of her front window using just $5 to get her start. The busy mother of seven is now the head of a business that has brought in more than $10 million in sales.

- I dropped off my business card and didn't hear from her for about a month. So one day during lunch I get a call and it was Mignon. She goes, I was reading Bible this morning. And she goes, I was studying Matthew 26 and God led me to go ahead and give you a call. Your business card was sitting on my desk and he told me I needed to call you. So when she said that, I started crying. The significance of that is I had a son who died. His name was Matthew. And so. Sorry. In my grieving process many years ago, I received a solicitation in the mail. I don't know who it came from, but it had the life verse Matthew 19:26. With God, all things are possible. So the fact that she called me and my life verse is Matthew 19:26 and she said that God led her to call me, it was a beautiful thing. It was kismet. And she spent an hour with me. She was only gonna spend five minutes with me on the phone. She spent an hour with me. She read scripture over me, she fed my cup, she gave me affirmation. She told me what I needed to do 'cause I was telling her I was struggling. When do I quit? When do I start going on my own? And she gave me lots of words of wisdom. And so I came home that weekend, spoke to my husband, and came to work on Monday and I resigned.

- [Vicki] Today's students like Cheryl and Jennifer are glad that she didn't give up her side job. And what do you think you'll do with what you've learned tonight?

- Try to outdo my mother-in-law, my other mother-in-law with birthday cakes.

- [Vicki] Her just kind of like a little?

- Oh, she does it so good. I'm just gonna try to, you know, compete a little bit with her.

- I thought the whole process was actually a lot easier than what I expected it to be because I've never done piping at all on anything. And so for, to be able to come in with having no experience and having these beautiful cupcakes at the end, it was so exciting.

- [Vicki] And what's next for Blooming Kupcakes?

- [Katherine] Well, we started creating online courses, so hopefully we'll start releasing those very shortly. And the hopes is that that does well enough where I can just become a content creator. And so the goal is to become a content creator and create more online classes and teach worldwide.

- [Photographer] Bogey. There you go.

- Great.

- Beautiful.

- Thank you.

- Thanks, Vicki. Well, you've probably heard the old rhyme, I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream. I don't know if there's a similar saying for gelato, but Cindy Carter is about to sing its praises at the Legacy Creamery in Tullahoma.

- [Cindy] Here's the scoop, the oh so delicious scoop, on a great place to cool off.

- So this is where we get our arm workout in, but I'm like a crab. It's just my right arm. My left arm is weak.

- [Cindy] Cassy Grow is working out some serious caramel brownie gelato, a labor she absolutely loves inside Tullahoma, Tennessee's only small batch gelatoria, Legacy Creamery.

- It's a feel-good thing all the way around and it's awesome also that it's a family thing.

- [Cindy] Cassy and her husband Tony opened Legacy Creamery in 2020, not 100% sure locals would take to it. After all, most people are much more familiar with gelato's first cousin, ice cream.

- [Cassy] It's literally the amount of heavy cream, which is the milk fat, and it's slower churned than ice cream. So that makes it a more dense product so it has less air. Gelato is able to be served at a much warmer temperature, so that allows you to taste the flavor when it first goes on your tongue. You're not so cold that you don't taste the flavor of the gelato.

- A few of these flavors aren't standard or seasonal, they're accidental. As in Cassy was making one thing and accidentally added the wrong ingredients and just decided to go for it. Such as Berry Berry White Chocolate, which is accidentally delicious.

- [Cassy] I feel abundantly blessed that I'm able to work in my small little space to create something that we think is delicious and amazing and one of a kind, especially in the state of Tennessee.

- [Cindy] And as the customers wait patiently for their one of a kind gelato, it's easy to spot the prominent photograph of Cassy and Tony's youngest of their four sons, Eli Grow.

- [Cassy] No, it's always an honor to talk about Eli. He was a great young man, first of all, and very respected in our community, a volunteer.

- [Cindy] Eli was also an athlete, number eight on his high school football team. Eli was training almost daily at an athletic facility in Franklin, Tennessee more than an hour away, preparing for his freshman year of football at Mississippi College when he died tragically after falling asleep driving home. Weeks prior to his death, Cassy says Eli told her that he hoped to someday be in a position to help young athletes in Tullahoma so they wouldn't have to drive as far as he did.

- [Cassy] So he said, I just want people in our community to be able to have the same kind of conditioning training that I'm getting and the same opportunities with equipment.

- [Cindy] Eli's wish became the Eli Grow Legacy Foundation, which supports high school and college athletics and 100% of the proceeds earned from this small gelatoria are donated to that foundation.

- [Cassy] And we chose Legacy Creamery because it is the connecting word between the Eli Grow Legacy Foundation and then the Legacy Creamery. So that way people could connect the two.

- [Cindy] Connection and purpose. It's what makes this family owned business extra sweet for both the Grows and their customers.

- [Cassy] I consider it for me a work of love and a way I can contribute.

- [Cindy] The Grows just keep growing their legacy. The creamery is open on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, but Monday through Thursday, they're packing and shipping their gelato to businesses across Tennessee.

- [Cassy] I really wanted to grow the business so that we could have a greater impact. Like I wanted the product to be amazing, one of a kind.

- [Cindy] And when customers come in to cool off with a one of a kind serving of that smooth and creamy gelato, they're often also treated to a smile, a friendly word, and even a hug. Because turns out, the coolest spot in town is also one of the warmest.

- For me, it was just a great opportunity to do something I love to do for someone that I love.

- Well, thank you, Cindy. Folks, that'll do it for this week. But be sure and check out our website at tennesseecrossroads.org. Watch us anytime with the PBS app and join us next time right here. Thanks for watching.

- [Announcer] "Tennessee Crossroads" is brought to you in part by.

- [Spokesperson 1] Students across Tennessee have benefited from over seven-and-a-half billion dollars we've raised for education, providing more than 2 million scholarships and grants. The Tennessee Lottery, game-changing, life-changing fun.

- [Spokesperson 2] Discover Tennessee Trails & Byways, where adventure, cuisine, and history come together. With 16 scenic driving trails, you can discover why Tennessee sounds perfect. Trips can be planned at tnvacation.com.