Episode 3929

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

- [Announcer] 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.

- [Announcer] 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.

- [Announcer] 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.

- [Host] This week we'll find out what's brewing in Donelson, go on a Southern safari, sample Chicago-style pizza, and explore a Tennessee state park. Speaking of Tennessee, thanks for tuning in to "Tennessee Crossroads." I'm Ketch Secor, welcome. Well, imagine opening up a brewery and restaurant right when the COVID pandemic shut down the world, but it not only survived, it continues to thrive. Laura Faber takes us to lunch at TennFold, where the craft beer is creative, and the food is elevated. There's something for everyone at this Donelson favorite.

- [Laura] It is 11:00 AM on a Friday in hip Donelson, just outside Nashville, and it doesn't take long for the lunch crowd to fill the place up.

- TennFold is just the heart of Donelson, the restaurant, brewery. I would say that we're right in the center of it. We're at the trailhead of Nashville.

- [Laura] The staff has been prepping for hours and is ready.

- [Bruce] Well, we're a pizza-forward restaurant. We do have a lot of selections though. We have chef-curated bowls. We've got some great appetizers.

- [Laura] TennFold Brewing has become a favorite of the locals, part of a burgeoning food scene here.

- We're a local brewery and restaurant and it's very much like Donelson's living room. We want everyone to feel comfortable.

- Pizza.

- [Laura] This is just one Donelson establishment owned and operated by Hunter Hackinson and Bruce Fields. They worked together for 20 years in the hospitality industry before opening their own, first, Nectar Cantina, then TennFold.

- Well, you can see the two restaurants from each other, so Hunter and I were standing on the back landing at Nectar, right outside the back door, and he looked over at the space where TennFold sits now and said, "If we don't put a restaurant in that space, someone's going to."

- [Hunter] Love craft beer, love the hospitality business, so I felt like it was a good fit, and I thought the Donelson community would appreciate it.

- [Laura] Donelson did appreciate it, so much so, TennFold, which opened a week before the COVID pandemic shut down the world, never missed a beat and has become a place the locals love.

- [Hunter] We just decided like, hey, to go beer and to go pizza is both travel very well. The community was really supportive in that they wanted to see us, and at that time it was kind of like, hey, like we need to support local, and they did, they really did.

- [Laura] The food is a fantastic surprise, far from typical bar food, says general manager Connor Morrie.

- Our pizza's exceptional. It's really lovely, but we have amazing other dishes too, like our handcrafted bowls, all made from scratch. Those are outstanding. We have super fun, playful appetizers. Like that's what I love about the food here is that it's, you know, we give it the same attention to detail that you would with fine dining.

- [Laura] Where else can you get a bacon and dill pickle pizza, or shaved ribeye with truffle fries, or coconut curry chicken?

- [Laura] Okay, the wings, aren't wings just wings?

- [Connor] Not ours, so ours are never fried. They're smoked and they're delicious. We make our house, we make a wing sauce from scratch. It's amazing.

- [Laura] Customers go crazy for the unique calamari appetizer.

- [Connor] So it's calamari steaks and we cut those up, they're flash fried, and the key, there's a secret at TennFold for the calamari. Always ask for a side of our red sauce. It's a game-changer.

- At TennFold, the food is James Beard level quality from their pizzas and wings, their seasonal bowls, their calamari appetizer is famous, but it all started with the beer. Thank you, Bryce. Made every day on-site with the freshest ingredients

- [Sean] During fermentation, it's creating both alcohol and CO2.

- [Laura] Sean Cassidy is the head brewer. Grain to glass, everything beer-related is all him.

- [Sean] Generally got like five staples at any given time, but we've probably got at least three seasonals at any given time and those are kind of just constantly changing out. If one is really popular, I'll rebrew it.

- [Laura] Sean brews everything from crispy lagers to a variety of IPAs, classic malts and fruity sour beers.

- I mean, our IPAs definitely move very quickly. We've got a West Coast IPA that's almost always on. Our year round hazy IPA. And then our top seller though is Feast with Friends, which is an American lager. It's basically our version of, it's like a craft domestic lager, I guess. It's Tennessee barley and Tennessee corn, so back to the local topic, local ingredients, and we sell a lot of that. They've given me a lot of creative freedom, which is awesome. And I think there's an element of trust there. I'm making sure that it's, that the tap list is always, there's something for everybody. It's super fulfilling 'cause put a lot of work in and then at the end of the day, get to see this place filled with people that are enjoying it, so I count myself lucky for sure.

- [Laura] As for the name, TennFold is threefold. Both Hunter and Bruce have deep Tennessee and Southwest Virginia roots, so it's a combo of Tennessee, the Appalachian fold where communities gather, and the way pizza slices are supposed to be folded to eat.

- The Fold, for me is a gathering place, so where everybody can come. Tennessee, we're go balls, like he said, like that's how we roll.

- [Laura] While some regulars come for the beer, others for the food, it seems they all come for the hospitality. There is a welcoming feel here that Donelson has claimed.

- [Hunter] Making a guest feel seen, heard and valued as they walk in is very important to us. It's definitely something that we like to hang our hat on.

- [Bruce] Having the right team has been very, very paramount to everything that we do.

- [Hunter] My favorite thing is being in the community and someone coming up to me and saying, "Hey, we was at your spot last night and had the best time and got taken care of very well." It just, it means something and it's something to be proud of.

- [Bruce] We just want them to be leaving here going, "Hey, that's the place that I wanna go to when I have something special going on."

- It's hard to be the best, but we wanna be everybody's favorite.

- Thank you, Laura. You know, it's not uncommon to see beautiful wildlife here in Tennessee. In our next story, Miranda Cohen travels to Yuma to find residents that are a little more exotic than usual and tells us how you can see them too.

- [Miranda] The landscape looks like a scene from a movie, or an animal documentary, lush acres filled with rare and exotic animals from all over the world, but this is not in Asia or in Africa. You will find all of this beauty in Yuma, Tennessee, at Southland Safari Guided Tours.

- So we've got about 135 acres. We've got about 700 animals, 56 different species of animals now. Now, it didn't happen overnight. It certainly was many years of hard labor and love, and over time we've just built it and grown it into what it is today.

- [Miranda] Tosha Gurley and her husband, Chris, dreamed of working and living with exotic animals. They started out with a small herd of buffalo on a patch of land here in Carroll County.

- [Tosha] We are a breeding facility and that's how we started 20 years ago was raising buffalo.

- [Miranda] And one magnificent creature led to another, and that's when the Gurleys started Southland Safari as a way of allowing people to learn more about animals. The guided tours at the Southland Safari are very different than a zoo or enclosure.

- Eddie, you're gonna sit right up here up front with me, okay, dog? You too. I want y'all to climb in the back back here like a pair of lemurs. Y'all know what lemurs are, don't ya? They look like a monkey with a ring tail on 'em. Y'all are part lemur, I believe it.

- [Miranda] You will climb aboard the safari wagon, and from here on the people are enclosed and the animals are not. The majestic wildlife is roaming freely, and if you're lucky, they will come and see you.

- [Michael] Now Benny here is a baby Indian rhino.

- [Miranda] Michael Avery, or Mr. Michael, is one of the very experienced tour guides. He knows every one of his babies by name. He loves them, and the feeling is mutual.

- You're gonna see the kangaroos, the sloths, the giraffes, the zebras, the main staples of any facility, but you're also gonna see some animals you wouldn't see at a lot of different places like the Indian muntjac, the Ard wolves that are out here, and not only that, you're gonna see the amount of love that these animals are getting taken care of every single day.

- [Tosha] So we do offer a guided safari tour, so you do have a private guide with you. The tour is both educational and entertaining. You're gonna go out on the safari and do the petting zoo about an hour and a half long. During that moment, you are interacting with animals. You're getting to touch, feed all sorts of animals out on the safari.

- For parts of the tour, you gently ride along in a Jeep and listen to a very knowledgeable tour guide, but for the very best part of the tour, you get to get up close and personal with the animals, and we do mean personal. Just look at Griffin.

- [Tosha] The most impressive animals that people love is doing the up-close encounters, the kangaroos, getting to get nose-to-nose with a giraffe. The sloth is definitely a fan favorite. Everybody loves the sloth.

- [Miranda] Southland Safari boasts more than 60 different species of animals, including a rare white rhino named Chopper, and an endangered Indian rhino named Benny. Plenty of buffalo, kangaroo, and friendly emus who know just where to find the goodies hidden in the safari wagon.

- We have a lot of African hoof stock, kudu, impala, buffalo, ostrich, rheas.

- [Miranda] And it is most important to the Gurleys and their staff that people learn and appreciate the beauty of the animals in their natural habitat, and learn the importance of conservation.

- [Tosha] But the most important thing is you're learning something about those animals. You're not just seeing an animal and wondering what it is. Your private guide is gonna be there to give you information that maybe you didn't know before you arrived at Southland Safari. The majority of our time, we are making sure that our animals are healthy and taken care of and because we do have a lot of land, it provides a natural environment for those animals and so that improves their breeding here at Southland Safari.

- [Miranda] Their breeding program is hugely successful. They welcome hundreds of newborns every year, including new baby giraffes. And if you don't want your experience to end at sundown, it doesn't have to. The Southland Safari offers a unique experience for spending even more time with the animals.

- [Tosha] We do have seven cabins. All of them are named after animals that we actually have here on the safari park, so if people are looking for lodging, they can choose to stay in a cabin and also do the tour and encounters with us as well.

- Every one of the staff is knowledgeable and helpful, answering any questions. It's just a beautiful place. Our tour guide was definitely the most knowledgeable, smartest guy in the world I've ever met, so I mean, you can ask him anything about any animal. He knows every one of 'em by name and you just don't get that kind of experience anywhere.

- [Chris] We're very, very much more of a more personal experience. We'd like for you to get up close and personal with 'em. We'd like for the buffalo to come in and give you those sweet kisses. We like for you to see all these different animals and all their little different personalities.

- [Tosha] The beauty of it is watching families, grandparents, parents watch those little ones enjoy and learn about animals, but most importantly, they're learning to respect animals, they're learning to care for those animals and I think that's what I take away as most enjoyable.

- Thanks, Miranda. Well, Nashville may be Music City, but it's also become quite a foodie capital as well. You can find great options for just about any style cuisine you can imagine, including a delicacy inspired by Chicago's Little Italy. Cindy Carter shows us what's cooking at 312 Pizza.

- [Cindy] Almost 500 miles separate Nashville from Chicago, but distance disappears once you step inside the 312 Pizza Company.

- [Kimberly] There's no greater feeling when you see a review that says, "I'm from Chicago and this is the real deal."

- Right.

- And that was our goal. It's like we just wanted people that miss home to be able to come and taste it and say, "Okay, yes, I found it outside of Chicago."

- [Cindy] Owners, Kimberly Wolff and Aras Alexander run this family-owned pizza joint in Nashville's Germantown neighborhood. And rest assured, all the signature dishes from the Windy City, deep dish pizza, Italian beef sandwiches, Chicago-style hotdogs, they're all on the menu.

- [Kimberly] But I will say like we do have to train the people that aren't from Chicago like the experience of eating Chicago deep dish and the first thing we always say is how long it's gonna take to get your pizza, 'cause if you're not from Chicago, you're probably not used to coming in and waiting 45 minutes for a deep dish, so that's the first thing we say is, "Hey, welcome, our thin crust takes at least 30 minutes, our deep dish takes at least 45 minutes, so let's get you started with some appetizers.

- [Cindy] Aras Kimberly are always happy to educate the uninitiated in Chicago-style cuisine, especially when it comes to their signature deep dish and thin crust pizzas.

- But actually, deep dish pizza didn't start until the late '70s, early '80s, and it's actually-

- Like a celebratory pizza.

- A celebratory pizza or a touristy pizza. In a deep dish pizza, it's less dough, more cheese, so you've got about a pound of cheese in a deep dish pizza.

- [Cindy] Aras says, when making a deep dish, the pepperoni goes on top, but all other toppings are cooked underneath the sauce, making that deep dive into deep dish all the more special.

- [Kimberly] Deep dish is so filling that you just can't eat it all the time so a lot of people think Chicago pizza, oh, deep dish, but if you're from Chicago, it's the thin crust.

- Thin crust.

- [Kimberly] It's cut tavern style, or party cut, as they say, so it's in squares, it's shareable, and that's something that it's really thin cracker crust, so you should hear like a snap when you break into our crust, and that is why you eat it with people, like on the regular.

- [Cindy] Most of the restaurant's recipes are family recipes, three generations of testing and perfecting.

- [Kimberly] So it started with my grandma. She lived in the little Italy neighborhood of Chicago and all the Italian ladies taught her how to cook Italian food and that's why like growing up, even though my grandma's family's like from the South, we had really good marinara, we had really good spaghetti sauce because she learned it from the Italian ladies.

- [Cindy] Which made me wonder if I could learn how to master the Chicago thin crust from a patient Aras, especially since I don't know how to cook at all.

- So first things first, grab yourself some onions.

- All right.

- Mm-hmm.

- [Cindy] Aras patiently took me through each step, emphasizing the importance of using fresh ingredients, locally sourced, absolutely no artificial food coloring or preservatives, and in my case, plenty of positive reinforcement.

- At an angle, push and pull, all right?

- [Cindy] Oh, this should be interesting.

- Right, so just keep your arm, yep.

- [Cindy] Push and pull. Oh, to the edge.

- Yeah, it's okay. We can fix that. What you're gonna do it put all, you threw all the pepperoni.

- Pepperoni down.

- Pepperoni down, yeah.

- Pepperoni, down. Okay, so appearance-wise, my pizza does not look good, but the true test is in how does it taste? I did pretty good. I'm gonna go make some hot dogs, but I just wanted to stop by and thanks for coming and hanging out.

- [Cindy] Ah, yes, those Chicago-style hot dogs. Representing the South Side is the Comiskey with relish, onions, and mustard. Representing the North Side, Wrigley Field with tomatoes, relish, onions, peppers, yellow mustard, sport peppers, pickle and celery salt, the works. And if you've never had an Italian beef sandwich, you're missing out on a true Chicago classic.

- [Aras] Well fluffy, not stuffy, all right. You know, you've got the meat, the bun, you have either hot or sweet peppers, you know, it's just amazing.

- It should be juicy. I mean, most people like it juicy, but usually like in Chicago, they call it the Italian beef stance where you lean against the table, you hold your beef, and you're like this because it's dripping down your arms.

- [Aras] Because you dip that whole sandwich into juice.

- [Kimberly] Into the juice, yeah.

- [Cindy] Wall to wall, high and low, everywhere you look, 312 Pizza Company pulls you into the Chicago experience, but it also pulls you into a family experience.

- [Kimberly] We want you to come in, we wanna know your name.

- [Aras] This restaurant is extension of our home, so people will come in, they're not customers here, they're guests at our house.

- [Cindy] It's that Nashville neighborhood spot that doesn't feel like Nashville at all.

- That was our goal. It's like we just wanted people that miss home to be able to come and taste it and say, "Okay, yes, I found it outside of Chicago," and I think we nailed it.

- Yum. Thanks, Cindy. Well, we'll wrap things up with another installment of "John Guider's Tennessee State Park Series." Now this time John takes us to Cumberland Mountain State Park in Crossville.

- We have a living history here that is second to none. You cannot tell the Cumberland Homestead story without telling the park story. My name is Mark Houston. I'm a park manager here at Cumberland Mountain State Park. So Cumberland Mountain is a park that's up here on the Cumberland Plateau. We offer a lot, we're about 10 miles from Interstate 40, so that allows us to have a visitation of somewhere around a million visitors per year in the park. We just acquired the Homestead Tower. This tower is a eight-story magnificent feature that you're gonna see when you come into the Cumberland Homesteads. This park was built for those Cumberland homesteaders. There were 252 families who were coming out of the Great Depression and they were needing a park to recreate in and this area is just about 0.8 of a mile from the actual heart of the Cumberland Homestead and that tower. So as families worked hard all week, they were learning new trades, coming in with their labor, just coming out of the coal mines for the Great Depression. So those homesteads, as the families would get done working throughout the week, they would come down into the park and we were most known for water recreation. We have a 50-acre lake, it's called Bird Lake. It was damned up and made by the CCC. One of the main draws to the park and what we're most known for is the Civilian Conservation Court Bridge. It's the largest masonry bridge that the CCC has built in the country. So the CCC boys we're in all 50 states so it's pretty amazing to think that our bridge is the largest non-steel reinforced bridge that they ever built and it's still standing to this day. ♪ I'm a jack of all trades ♪ ♪ I can wield that steel ♪ ♪ Got a nine-pound hammer ♪ ♪ Ain't got no wheel ♪ ♪ If I was called lucky ♪ ♪ I'd know I got her made ♪ ♪ And what you can't handle ♪ ♪ I'm a jack of all trades ♪

- That CCC bridge was built by Company 3464. Those young men came into the park and they were taught by locally experienced men to learn a trade and a lot of 'em learned how to use rock work and how to use stone and that masonry skill allowed them to, after the CCC concluded, allowed them to have a skill that they could take in their life and have a good living and teach their children and family. Cumberland Mountain is a traditional park. It's got 145 campsites, 37 cabins. It's got a restaurant that's country-style food on a buffet. It's very, very delicious buffet bar. We have a museum, an aviary, Olympic sized swimming pool, we have a nice visitor center. We've got about 16 miles of hiking trails. So, as I patrol out here, we obviously have a lot of our state mammals in the sense of the raccoons. I see a lot of opossums, skunks. We do have a lot of deer. The squirrels are rampant around here, we see a lot of that, and your ground squirrels, these chipmunks, but just recently we have had some black bear come through the area. Bird lake, it's a very popular fishing destination in the sense that the locals and the visitor, they come in, stay in the cabins or the campground, so we are lucky to have TWRA will come through every December and January, they will put some blue channel catfish in. They'll put smallmouth bass. We've got crappie, brim, and we'll have some shellcrackers, but during the real cold winter months, they will bring in rainbow trout and sometimes brown trout. So I have a lot of love for this park, and then this being my home community, I'm blessed to be the park manager here. I never dreamed of even being any more than a park ranger, but having the ability to be the park manager and oversee everybody else's love of the park, it's just rewarding.

- Wow, what beautiful scenery. Thanks, John. Well, we're out of time, but please visit our website at TennesseeCrossroads.org. Watch us anytime with the PBS app and thanks again. Tune in next week. Thanks for watching.

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

- [Announcer] Students across Tennessee have benefited from over $7.5 billion we've raised for education, providing more than two million scholarships and grants. The Tennessee Lottery, game-changing, life-changing fun.

- [Announcer] 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.