Just past the halfway point from Atlanta to Nashville along I-24, the elevation begins to tick up toward Monteagle Mountain. And while, yes, it’s colloquially and not technically a mountain, the climb can sure feel like one. Head up the steep grade on this section of the Cumberland Plateau as fog rolls in, and it’s magically (and sometimes frighteningly) like driving into a cloud.
Even more reason to pause at the peak where treasures tuck into wooded mist. Head west off the interstate past signs for deer crossings and trail heads, and you’ll find Sewanee: The University of the South, founded in the mid-1800s with its Gothic architecture carved from local stone. Go east by South Cumberland State Park, and you pass the original site of Highlander Folk School, known for training labor movements and civil rights leaders such as Rosa Parks.
In either direction, you’ll find culinary gems, too, sparkling bright in the quiet of this region. Offerings run the gamut across three plateau towns — Tracy City to Monteagle and Sewanee — from the oldest bakery in Tennessee to a graceful new outpost from a nationally respected chef.
Credit: Emily Dorio
Credit: Emily Dorio
Judith
Chef Julia Sullivan helms one of Nashville’s finest restaurants, Henrietta Red. But less than 100 miles away in Sewanee, it’s a “whole new universe,” she says.
Sullivan opened Judith in November, naming it for the first woman to matriculate at the university. Rather than the bustle of Music City, out its door, tree frogs sing and stars glint overhead. Judith feels both warm and modern with its tobacco-colored leather banquettes under orbs of amber light. The spot even inspired Sullivan’s sourdough, a new endeavor after more than 20 years working in restaurants such as Per Se and Blue Hill at Stone Barns.
Slices come alongside a tuft of chicken liver mousse holding a nest of shallot jam, peppery sweetness reduced with red wine, brandy and green peppercorn. Also to start, a tuna rillette with Sullivan’s signature elegance in a bright aioli with feathers of dill, the pop of roe and house saltines.
Main dishes include folds of pappardelle in thyme-flecked cream with Mayday Mushrooms.
Sullivan’s father graduated from Sewanee in 1969 (the year Judith arrived); her godfather edited The Sewanee Review. Sullivan’s place here feels as natural as the environment.
36 Ball Park Road, Sewanee. 931-203-2737, judithtavern.com.
Credit: Mallory Grimm Tubbs and Trapp Tubbs
Credit: Mallory Grimm Tubbs and Trapp Tubbs
Lunch
“Every season,” says Lunch co-owner and chef Mallory Grimm Tubbs, “we think to ourselves, ‘This is the best part of the year for produce grown in our area.’”
These days, that means mountain strawberries, which thrive in plateau climes and weave into the tightly curated chalkboard menu — salads and dressings, galettes, jams, ice creams or stacked onto shortcakes. They’ll join frittatas and dishes like white bean-leek stew with herby pesto that tastes as fresh and bracing as a walk in the woods.
Located in a former bank, the cozy, stylish space at Lunch has a bar for perching and communal seating with mismatched farmhouse-style chairs. Tubbs and business partner-husband Trapp, both Sewanee alums, showcase artists and craftspeople of the region in a retail corner with hand-dyed napkins and other treats like seeds they’ve saved from their garden, house-made pickles and picnic provisions such as smoked trout dip, pimento cheese and granolas.
After lunch at Lunch, take a pastry for the road — Earl Grey shortbread with lemon glaze, citrus olive oil cake or peanut butter miso cookies.
24 University Ave., lunchsewanee.com
Credit: Jennifer Justus for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Jennifer Justus for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dutch-Maid Bakery
Cindy Day is only the third owner of this bakery, considered Tennessee’s oldest, since it opened in 1902.
“I’ve got one mixer from 1928 (used only for fruitcakes) and two from the 1930s,” she says. “I’ve got one from 2005, and another that’s from the 1970s. You know, it’s the 2005 mixer I’ve had to call Hobart to work on.”
Not a single recipe in 12 volumes of original books included instructions with the ingredients, but Day has had 20 years at the bakery to unravel the mysteries.
For lunch, the chicken salad (Day’s mother’s recipe) with garlic-herb seasoning, celery and onion on freshly baked bread delivers a nostalgic, homey bite in the café’s lovingly worn-in space with walls bedecked in sepia-toned newspaper clippings and photographs.
For the road, pack up some ginger cookies, a tin of cinnamon rolls and a loaf of the elusive Appalachian delicacy salt-rise bread. It’s a five-day fermenting process, which imparts, as Day aptly describes, an umami taste and aroma like a hunk of Parmesan.
109 Main St., Tracy City. 931-592-3171, dutchmaid.net
Credit: Danny Lyons
Credit: Danny Lyons
Mountain Top Restaurant & Catering
Closest to I-24 in Monteagle, visitors keep eyes peeled for this stealthy strip mall space.
Chef Danny Lyons has the Italian American heritage and a family with New York restaurant experience to bring these tastes to town in authentic ways. Though Lyons envisioned a life of business outside the restaurant industry, it eventually pulled him back in, first with nonprofit recovery work in Tennessee, which led to a meal delivery business that blossomed during the pandemic. He continues a catering business out of the restaurant’s open kitchen space today.
“I got mesmerized by the rolling hills of Tennessee,” he says.
Recommended for the road: the vodka parm chicken cutlet sandwiches piled on a roll.
1045 W. Main St., Monteagle. 931-924-3029, mountaintoptn.com.
Jennifer Justus is an Atlanta-based food and travel writer and an editor at Wildsam.
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