Get in Loser, We're Going Chain Breaking

While writing about a trip to several different Ponderosas over three years ago, when there were still well over 100 Ponderosas and Bonanzas still in operation, I defined a broken chain as:

A business which, at some point in its history, had multiple, similarly-functioning, physical locations where a customer could purchase goods and/or services which presently has a significantly diminished presence and/or value as a brand compared to the same brand in its heyday. 

Today, there are closer to 22 Ponderosa/Bonanza locations left, but my working definition of a broken chain remains unchanged. I have, however, started throwing around a related term with friends and family that I have not yet used here until now:

chain breaking - the act of seeking out and visiting surviving location(s) of broken chains

Contrary to what the name implies, chain breaking has nothing to do with contributing to the downfall of a chain, rather it’s about celebrating what’s left of a broken chain. Motives for chain breaking can include, but are not limited to, a desire to experience or document an endangered brand or a location that is relatively untouched by time, to try unique and often difficult to find (fast) food items, or simply to have a flimsy excuse to take a road trip. For me, all of the above motivate my chain breaking expeditions, which are generally pretty straightforward. The steps usually look something like:

-Learn of a near defunct or endangered restaurant or retail brand from a friend, reader, or forum post.

-Research the history of that brand and track down anything resembling a holdout location. 

-Plan a trip to that holdout location or locations, usually including stops at other unrelated broken chain locations along the way, for efficiency’s sake.

-Visit, experience, and document that location. 

In carrying out these steps, I usually encounter few complications. Sure, I’ve gotten food poisoning on more than one occasion, and sometimes I'll visit a place expecting it to be open for business only to find it closed, the result of theoretical operating hours that were posted online not matching the actual operating hours in practice, but these obstacles standing in the way of a chain breaking mission are generally pretty easy to overcome when I encounter them. One chain breaking mission in particular, however, stands out as being especially fraught with obstacles, which leads me to another slang term for which, I thankfully cannot take credit:

The devil is beating his wife. - when it rains while the sun is out 

I’ve only ever heard the term used by people who, like me, grew up in Kentucky, which makes it a little ironic that the most memorable instance of this tenuous metaphor that needlessly invokes unsettling images of both the occult and domestic violence occurred in Tennessee. The brilliantly shining sun was just beginning to set as I was westbound on interstate 40 near Crossville at the tail end of a chain breaking trip across the south, when the rain suddenly began. The combination of the fresh rain and sunlight turned the road surface into a mirror, reflecting sunlight directly into the windshields of westbound traffic. Just as I realized that this was a potential recipe for disaster, a car directly in front of me swerved from the fast lane and plowed into the guard rail on the right shoulder, bouncing back across two lanes and into the median. It was all I could do to slow down and pull safely onto the shoulder in time to avoid contact with the out of control vehicle. The two 18 wheelers behind me weren’t as fortunate and collided with one another as I was dialing 911 to report the first incident. Thankfully, no one involved appeared to be injured, but it was quite a string of events to witness unfolding in real time. Shaken, but unharmed and as resolute as ever to complete my chain breaking mission, I continued onward after confirming with the 911 operator that I didn’t need to hang around. I took the next exit, and followed a series of two lane blacktops to McMinnville, Tennessee, home of the last operating Chicken Chef. 

Chicken Chef is a chain whose corporate parent seemingly faced myriad obstacles of its own, existing as a corporate entity only from 1968 to 1971. Near as I can tell, they were not related to Burger Chef. Locations were primarily in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Texas, but there may have been Chicken Chefs in other nearby states as well. It seems at least as likely as not that some franchised Chicken Chefs held on and operated independently past their parent company’s 1971 expiration date, but half a century on, the McMinnville Chicken Chef appears to be the sole survivor. 

An hour or so after witnessing a pileup on I-40, I arrived at the McMinnville Chicken Chef only to encounter a second obstacle, its parking lot. The little A-frame building sits a few feet below street level, and very close to the curb, allowing only for a few oddly-angled, downward-sloping, parking spaces out front, all of which were occupied, relegating me to the one remaining parking spot at the rear of the building. Once parked, I was almost immediately blocked in by a vehicle that pulled into the similarly idiosyncratic drive thru lane. It was a Sunday evening, and I hadn’t expected the place to be so busy at the dinner hour of the evening that I assumed the locals would be relaxing at home to enjoy the last of the weekend before the workweek began anew the following morning. I judged the place’s popularity at an off hour as being related to its unlikely long term survival, and carefully navigated my way around the car in the narrow drive thru lane to the front of the building where a third obstacle awaited me. 

The building’s front facade had two doors marked ENTER and EXIT. I pulled on the ENTER door and it wouldn’t budge. Pushing yielded a similar result. I checked the posted hours on the door and found I had arrived at a comfortable interval before the purported closing time, and I could see through the glass doors that the tiny dining area was full of happy patrons. I tried the ENTER door a second time and only gained entry to the building when a sympathetic diner witnessed my plight and opened the fully unlocked and functional EXIT door for me to enter as if I were wearing the type of raspberry beret one might find in a secondhand store. I got the impression that the ENTER door hadn’t been unlocked in years, and that in attempting to use it, I had immediately failed to pass as a local and had outed myself as a chain breaker. I felt as if the record needle of some unseen jukebox had been scratched across whatever disk was playing as I walked in, and all eyes on the place were upon me as I was shaking off the cold. 

Original menu board with late '60s ad copy; notice the chicken who is also a chef.

Flustered by the myriad slings and arrows I had encountered up to that point, I failed to read the room, which was full of diners eating from ceramic plates brought to their tables by servers. I clumsily walked up to what looked like an order counter where an employee, slightly puzzled by my less than graceful entrance, asked if I wanted to place a to go order. Feeling no small amount of implicit social pressure to not be difficult and making note of the complete lack of unoccupied tables in the dining room, I agreed, and ordered a three piece, two side, “Chef Dinner” from the ancient plastic menu board behind the counter, along with a 7Up, noticing too late that their house cola was not Coke or Pepsi, but Royal Crown. I was clearly off my chain breaking game, and it had cost me the opportunity to taste RC Cola not from a can or bottle, but from a fountain, something I had not seen in person in at least 15 years.

The tiny table where I awaited my cooked to order chicken

Once I had ordered, I did my best to stay out of everyone’s way in the absurdly small and bustling dining room, finally finding a seat at a recently vacated two-top table near the door, but not before making note of and photographically documenting the aforementioned menu board as well as a framed black and white photo that hung on the wall behind the counter showing what appeared the location’s opening day. It depicted several suited men and a Family Guy-esque giant chicken costume presumably with a person inside it standing outside those same glass doors whose riddle I had failed so miserably in deciphering. The date below the photo, January 20, 1968 indicated that this was likely one of the first Chicken Chefs to open. 

"People have got to know whether or not their chicken mascot is a cook. Well, I am not a cook. I'm a chef."

Coincidentally, the date was also one year to the day before Richard Nixon assumed the presidency, and while the Nixon administration would infamously be cut short, Chicken Chef corporate would meet its undoing long before Nixon would do the same. When most Chicken Chefs called it quits in 1971, the Watergate hotel and office complex that would forever be tied to Nixon’s downfall was still under construction. Fifty years on, the concept of a president's own party holding him to account for his misdeeds and forcing his resignation in the face of a likely impeachment seems as unlikely and quaint as one surviving Chicken Chef location remaining a popular dining spot, yet the latter is reality in a little town in Central Tennessee. The place must have been brilliantly managed over the past fifty years for it to maintain modern popularity despite operating out of a tiny and antiquated building with an inhospitable parking lot and restrooms that looked no more inviting, accessible only through narrow doors on the outside of the building on its rear wall. 

The rear of the building, note the restroom doors below the A/C unit of Damocles.

I mention those restroom doors specifically, because they were my view as I ate my to-go meal at the tail end of a dicey chain break, seated on the rear bumper of my car, an open tailgate providing shelter from the elements as I cursed my own missteps and misfortunes in a jowly Nixonian grumble. I wondered what horrors lurked behind those restroom doors and if they were left unlocked for customers, employees, and wandering vagrants to pass through to haphazardly perform their various bodily functions, or if accessing the vintage crappers required the use of a key chained to the exhaust manifold of a ‘64 Rambler. I decided it was best to leave all those questions unanswered and to focus on my dinner. The chicken, which had been fried to order, was my final obstacle, as it remained blisteringly hot from the fryer. I therefore opted to try the sides first. I found the mashed potatoes likely to have been cooked from instant flakes, but superior to the watery, allegedly potato-based product KFC foists upon its clientele these days. They were topped with an opaque, light yellow, chickeny gravy, which I suspect came from a can or jar, but nonetheless contributed positively to the experience. The coleslaw was chunky, but otherwise unremarkable, and the bread was a store bought roll. With the sides thoroughly examined and mostly devoured, and the chicken at a manageable temperature, I finally gave it the evaluation it deserved. 

Slaw

Taters and gravy

In the dimming light of a summer’s evening in a parking lot illuminated by the flickering halogen bulbs at the rear of the little A-frame restaurant and the headlights of the occasional vehicle in the makeshift drive thru lane, the already orangish hue of the chicken’s breading appeared a little oranger. The seasoning blend was a simple one, and the primary flavor was that of Lawry’s Seasoned Salt or a facsimile thereof. It was, however, applied perfectly to enhance the flavor of the chicken without overpowering it, and the breast, leg, and thigh were all perfectly cooked, an ample reward for enduring the myriad obstacles, setbacks, and indignities involved in chain breaking at the world’s last Chicken Chef. 

The main event, made by, or perhaps from the Chicken Chef himself

Should you read this post and feel inspired to venture upon your own chain breaking expedition to Chicken Chef, I implore you to learn from my mistakes, drive safely, and relieve yourself elsewhere. Come to think of it, that’s good advice for visiting most of the places I’ve experienced and written about here, though the Rax in Joliet, Illinois does have a weirdly pleasant bathroom. That seems like as good a place as any for me to leave you. Go forth and chain break. 

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Another Tray, Another Post

Another Tray, another post

The Thoroughblades, are now just ghosts. 

The chain is broken, The Mask says, "Smokin!"

To Macon Whoopee

I have little interest in sports, but I can appreciate a cleverly-named team as much as I can ironically enjoy a not so cleverly named team, which is to say, a nontrivial amount in either case. I feel roughly equal amounts of delight at the names of two minor league hockey teams that similarly popped up in small southern cities in the ‘90s, but for different reasons, as their respective names occupy opposite ends of the cleverness spectrum. 

The seemingly carelessly named Lexington Thoroughblades were the new local hockey team during my youth in Central Kentucky. They played downtown in Rupp Arena, named for the University of Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp (born 1901). The Thoroughblades’ name was seemingly a portmanteau of “Thoroughbred,” a nod to the thoroughbred racehorses that are raised in the rolling verdant pastures on the outskirts of Lexington, and “Blades,” which are the sharp metal dealies on the bottoms of ice skates. During my middle school years Thoroughblades games at Rupp Arena were heavily marketed, and at most, moderately attended by Lexington’s tens of hockey fans. Somewhat fittingly, the Thouroughblades had something in common with Adolph Rupp starting in his mid 30s, an unfortunate name. The general consensus among my peers at the time was that “Thoroughblades” was a stupid, contrived name, and my opinion hasn’t changed in the two odd decades since. The clunky half-pun of a team name evoking the incongruous image of a horse precariously balanced on two pairs of ice skates, one hip check away from a broken leg and a bullet between its big brown eyes did little to interest Lexingtonians, myself included, in hockey, but a clever team name does not a successful hockey team make. 

It's the bee. You know, from nature. 

A day’s drive down I-75 in Macon, Georgia, however, another minor league hockey team came into existence in 1996, the same year as the Thoroughblades, but unlike their Lexington counterpart, Macon’s hockey team had the best name for a sports team I’ve ever heard. Their mascot was a whooping crane, and they were known as The Macon Whoopee. (Get it?) Furthermore, their team insignia featured both a whooping crane and a bee, evoking “The birds and the bees” in a second punny nod to 1970s game show-friendly sexual euphemisms. Despite an infinitely more clever and endearing name, the Macon Whoopee folded in 2001, along with the Thoroghblades, almost as if there are other, more complex factors beyond a name that make a successful hockey team. 

This of course isn’t a blog about extinct hockey teams. There’s a whole subreddit for that, but I had the Macon Whoopee and their contemporary nomenclatural antithesis on my mind a few weeks back when I was in not Macon, nor Lexington, but another small, southern city,  Knoxville, Tennessee, where I ate at a surviving S&S Cafeteria location. S&S Cafeteria’s corporate offices, like the Whoopee are based in Macon, Georgia, and like Adolph Rupp, namesake of the one-time home ice of the Thoroughblades, have a name that was innocuous at their inception, but became unfortunate at around the same time and for the same reasons. 

Smitty Somebody (He was #1.)

J.A. “Smitty” Smith Junior opened the first S&S Cafeteria in Columbus, Georgia in 1936. S&S stands for “Smith and Sons,” and fittingly, Smitty’s descendents are still involved with the company today. Near as I can tell, the small, regional chain peaked at somewhere north of 20 locations in the mid 1980s, and six survive today, qualifying it as a broken chain. After visiting surviving Sign of the Beefcarver, Morrison’s, Piccadilly, and MCL locations, I’ve come to appreciate old fashioned cafeteria dining experiences, that are increasingly difficult to find, as cafeterias, and the malls they are often attached to, fall out of favor. 

I arrived at the Knoxville S&S for an early dinner on a Sunday afternoon. The exterior of the inconspicuous building with neocolonial touches had the familiar funeral home aesthetic that is common to cafeterias. Just as I was nearing the front door, a grandmother with all of her young grandchildren, and all of her young grandchildrens’ best friends piled out of the Chevy HHR into which they had been implausibly crammed. Not wanting to be stuck in the cafeteria line behind a large group of children who were likely to be both unruly and picky about the food they received in the serving line, I took a moment to appreciate the dated aesthetic of the weathered, but still eye catching signage outside, taking a leisurely course through the parking lot, lobby, and into the serving line where I was afforded a buffer of several adult customers separating me from the throng of kids supervised by a lone matriarch. As I worked my way through the labyrinthine path of brown tile flanked by painted brick and wallpaper, I took the time to appreciate the displays in the bay windows along the way that featured both a patriotic themed tableau and another created in tribute to the local (non hockey) sports team. 

Some context: It was Memorial Day weekend when I visited. 

The Ut Vols are my favorite squadron. 

I hate to overuse the word, "Kubrickian," but how else would one describe this corridor?

The day's menu offerings

It was in between peak meal hours, and the line was both short and fast-moving, and in no time at all, I was greeted by a stack of vivid blue-green cafeteria trays that looked roughly as modern as the sign on the building. I picked one up along with some matching blue Jello, and some deviled eggs as I shuffled down the serving line. I selected chicken Tampico as my entree after deciding against the turkey and dressing, as the white cream sauce in which it was floating looked questionable, and bore little resemblance to turkey gravy. The real-life equivalent of the Squeaky-Voiced Teen on The Simpsons was working the entrees portion of the serving line, and asked if I wanted some of that same sauce on top of my chicken. I wasn’t sure it belonged on the chicken, but my curiosity was both piqued and morbid, so I asked for it on the side. Some baked squash and mac and cheese found their way onto my tray when the guy working the sides portion of the line, who incidentally had the appearance and bearing of an actor portraying a rascally southern senator in some forgotten political thriller, asked what he could serve me in a Foghorn Leghornish Tennessee drawl. 

Various cold salads

Apps and 'zerts

Various Entrees

Corn won't grow at all at S&S. Parking lot's too rocky by far. That's why all the folks at S&S get their corn from a jar. 

I made those selections after noting a good many of the vegetables on display had the pallid, overcooked appearance of something that had spent time sealed in a large, industrial-sized can, and not prepared fresh in the manner of the various cafeterias I had visited in the past. I selected foods that required preparation beyond opening a can and adding heat in hopes of finding side dishes greater than the sum of their respective parts. 

My tray, fully loaded

As I was patting myself on the back for choosing my side dishes wisely, a slice of pecan pie somehow materialized on my plate, and I reached the end of the serving line. When someone I took to be a cashier printed out a ticket with my selections and a total price, I reached for my wallet, but she informed me that I was expected to pay at the epilogue of my meal, not at the end of the table of contents where I was standing. Making a mental note of this to prevent another inadvertent dine and dash faux pas like the one I had after enjoying a succulent steakhouse meal at Western Sizzlin, I thanked her, and informed her it was my first time there. In response, she produced a soggy flyer from her apron with a detachable punch card on the end and told me I’d get a free meal once the card had reached a sufficiently swiss cheese-like state. I thanked her and proceeded onward. 

A soggy souvenir. 

I walked, with my loaded tray, to the dining room, which was adorned with large artificial trees scraping the top of the high drop ceiling just above the railings of a seemingly inaccessible mezzanine. I’m not sure of the aesthetic they were attempting to evoke with this decor package, but it felt both distinctive and anachronistic. I doubt it had changed much in half a century, give or take a decade, and I’m glad that it hadn’t. I found a table far from the aforementioned grandma and her throng of grandchildren, both biological and honorary, and my server quickly appeared and introduced herself, returning with some butter for the roll that had apparently also materialized on my tray. 

It felt a little like a Mark Twainian riverboat, if riverboats had trees.

With one notable exception, the food was inoffensive. The chicken Tampico, unlike most iterations of the dish that are doused in a cheesy sauce, was simply topped with jalapenos and melted cheese. The addition of the questionable cream sauce lent it a more conventional texture however, and the pickled pimentos floating in the sauce echoed the flavor of the Jalapenos. The deviled eggs and blue Jello were an adequate appetizer and palate cleanser, respectively, and the pecan pie, while not the best I’ve ever had, was far from the worst. The baked squash casserole lived up to my low to moderate squashy expectations, but it was the macaroni and cheese that was the real standout. 

Longtime Broken Chains readers may recall that I always get macaroni and cheese at cafeterias hoping that what I find will come close to the perfection that is the macaroni and cheese at Morrison’s cafeteria, and so far, not one cafeteria’s mac and cheese has even come close to being a contender for Morrison’s title. If Morrison’s mac and cheese were a minor league hockey team name, it would be the Macon Whoopee. Sadly, the mac and cheese at S&S was more of a Lexington Thoroughblades situation. What should have been a creamy cheese sauce had separated into lumpy curds and grease separating dry, chewy noodles. Not to be outdone by the texture, the flavor was unpleasantly pungent and salty. My findings were confirmed by the woman sitting two tables over who flagged down her server to ask to exchange her mac and cheese for another side. Unsure of which canned vegetable I’d select to replace my mac and cheese, I declined to follow suit. 

They cater!

And they know what they're about.

As a frequenter of cafeterias and a sucker for the subtle marketing of food presentation, I rarely find myself leaving a cafeteria less than $25 poorer. When I concluded my meal and paid the actual cashier situated in a little booth by the exit door, I was pleased to find that my meal had come to $16 and change. (I was also amused when the cashier tried, and failed, to punch a hole in my newly acquired and still-moist punch card.) It was then I understood the appeal of S&S. The food is passable, just, and there are certainly better places to eat, but S&S knows what it is and sets its prices accordingly. Had I skipped dessert and drank water instead of Diet Pepsi, I could have been out the door for ten bucks before tip. I don’t know that I’d go out of my way to eat at S&S again, but I’m glad I experienced it once. The charmingly antiquated atmosphere made the meal memorable, if not overly palatable. I think that’s the magic of S&S. Like so many of the places I visit, it’s a time portal back to when people cared less about fresh food, and a couple of oversized artificial trees and a fake atrium were all that was needed to make a meal of canned vegetables and dolled up chicken breast feel premium. If this is all you go in expecting, you won’t be disappointed, and it’s worth experiencing at least once, likely the way a Thoroughblades or Macon Whoopee game would have been back in the late ‘90s. I suspect that S&S is getting by on the nostalgia of people who grew up eating there, which won’t last forever, so it’s well worth experiencing while you can. 

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The (Nonspecific) Chef

In a couple of weeks, I'll have been travelling in pursuit of broken chain experiences for a full year. In that year, I've made some unexpected discoveries that I found truly surprising. The outlets of otherwise extinct, or at least rapidly disappearing chains I thought I'd never have the opportunity to visit make me constantly recall the title of my very first blog post. With every holdout business I stumble upon with help from my loyal readers and Google, I repeat it like a mantra.

You'd be surprised at what still exists. 

I've consistently been surprised and impressed with the places that are still open for business as usual, decades after the majority of their sister locations have closed up shop. Just when I think I've discovered everything within a reasonable driving distance, I turn over more rocks and find more places that call to me with the siren song of obsolescence.

Once a Burger Chef, always a Burger Chef

Over the summer, I visited a place called Suzi's Hamburgers located in South Charleston, West Virginia, and found it to be a relatively faithful recreation of a mid 1970s Burger Chef including operating out of an era-appropriate Burger Chef building. I had previously assumed Burger Chef to be completely extinct. In my excitement, I composed a blog post that, in retrospect, I realize discusses the history of the chain a bit too much, and my experience at that specific location not quite enough. A few months later, to my ever-increasing surprise, I would be afforded a second chance to write about Burger Chef. 

This is The Chef. In addition to reasonably-priced chicken biscuits, he makes burgers. 

While I was in the Volunteer State visiting Central Park locations, I found myself in Cleveland, Tennessee, a town whose Central Park is situated just around the corner from a restaurant called The Chef. I had known about The Chef for years thanks to the building's familiar pentagonal front facade, and cryptic posts about it on old Burger Chef fan sites. While the building is a 1966 vintage Burger Chef structure, and the name of the restaurant's name evokes the building's original purpose, I couldn't find any evidence on any website of it having anything resembling Burger Chef food. Through the lens of Yelp or Google, it looks like a generally well-regarded breakfast and lunch joint operating out of an old Burger Chef building. I figured I'd stop by for an early lunch on my way out of town just to check the building out. I didn't hold out much hope for the menu to retain any Burger Chef items. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was wrong, and that much of the lunch menu was true to not only Burger Chef, but the era of Burger Chef in which the building was constructed. 

It's at this point that should probably provide you with a little history. I'll try my best to keep it brief. Burger Chef was founded in the early 1950s as a subsidiary of a restaurant equipment company based in Indianapolis. The chain grew quickly by franchising during the postwar fast food boom, eventually becoming the #2 fast food chain behind McDonalds. Cashflow issues led to Burger Chef being acquired by General Foods in 1968. Lacking experience in the restaurant business, General Foods implemented sweeping changes across the chain with mixed results. (They also owned, and similarly mismanaged Rax and Ponderosa around the same time.) Building designs were updated. Marketing strategies and logos changed frequently. In the 1970's a Roy Rogers style topping bar was added, and flame broilers were discarded in favor of electric griddles. General Foods' mismanagement of Burger Chef led to Hardee's acquiring the brand in 1982, and quickly converting corporate-owned Burger Chef locations to Hardee's locations. The few remaining franchised Burger Chefs closed up shop over the next 14 years as franchise agreements were allowed to expire. The last restaurant to use the Burger Chef name closed in 1996. Fans of the chain regarded Schroeder's Drive-In in Danville, Illinois, a Burger Chef that changed its name, but not its operations when its franchise agreement expired, as the last true Burger Chef. Sadly Schroeder's closed in 2015.

In present-day West Virginia, Suzi's is probably best known for it's various breakfast biscuit sandwiches that rival Tudor's Biscuit World, West Virginia's homegrown chain, known for all things biscuit-related, but their lunch menu is the closest thing to the 1970s iteration of the Burger Chef menu that you'll be likely to find anywhere. Hamburgers are cooked on an electric griddle, and are prepared and topped as they would have been in the Burger Chef days. Close analogs of later menu additions like the Chicken Club sandwich and Fisherman's Fillet are available. The topping bar is present in the lobby, and appears to be an original Burger Chef unit. In fact most everything about the building is '70s era Burger Chef, including not only the structure itself, but the indoor and drive thru menu boards. In my mind it's less a fast food joint, and more a fast food museum, a glimpse into the past to an era when Burger Chef was still a major force in the fast food industry, but was clearly in decline, and trying desperately to reinvent the concept to stay relevant in an industry where its market share was shrinking. 

Modern order counter under a distinctively Burger Chef vaulted ceiling

If Suzi's is the best surviving example of a 1970s era Burger Chef, then The Chef is easily the best surviving example of a 1960s era Burger Chef. It's building has had some updates over the years, but all the trappings of a second-generation Burger Chef building, known internally as a "Cosmopolitan II" design, which retains the basic shape of the earlier Burger Chef building design, but adds an L-shaped indoor dining room flanking the kitchen. I stopped by during the transition from breakfast to lunch on a weekday. The original Burger Chef menu boards are long gone here, and have been replaced with a couple of flatscreen monitors. I ordered a drink and sat in the lobby, staring intently at the menu screens until they changed over from breakfast to lunch. After taking a minute to parse the names of the burgers in an effort to determine what Burger Chef items they might bear similarity to, I returned to the order counter and requested what the menu called a Big Deluxe and a Super Deluxe, suspecting the words "Big" and "Super" might indicate they are copycats of the Big Shef and Super Shef, which were fixtures of the Burger Chef menu.

Modern-day Big Shef, perhaps my favorite Big Boy imitator. I just love that tangy zip, y'all!

Within a few minutes, my order was ready, and with cautious optimism, I unwrapped the first sandwich. Sure enough, it was a double deck burger on a three-piece bun with a pair of two-ish ounce patties, a single slice of cheese, shredded lettuce, and a chunky white sauce. It was a renamed Big Shef, Burger Chef's knockoff of Bob Wian's Big Boy, which beat McDonald's knockoff, the Big Mac, to market. My first bite confirms the sandwich's true identity. As with the Big Shef I had at Suzi's, (They call theirs the Double Decker.) the sauce had the unmistakably tangy zip of Miracle Whip, which served as the base for the special sauce Burger Chef put on the Big Shef. Unlike Suzi's however, this Big Shef had the flavor of the 1960s, as the patties had been cooked in a flame broiler as they would have prior to the General Foods era. You've gotta love food that's era-appropriate to the building. If Suzi's is the 1970's exhibit in a hypothetical Burger Chef museum, The Chef is its 1960s counterpart. 

and a modern-day Super Shef; Add some sesame seeds to that bun, and it could pass for a Whopper.

I then gave my Super Deluxe, aka Super Shef a try. This is my first Super Shef, as I usually opt for a Chicken Club of Fisherman's Fillet as my second sandwich in addition to my customary Big Shef when I visit Suzi's. The original Super Shef was a deluxe burger with all the typical toppings garnishing a quarter-pound patty, essentially, Burger Chef's answer to Burger King's Whopper. Unsurprisingly, with it's flame broiled patty, The Chef's version of the Super Shef tastes strikingly similar to a Whopper. Given the ingredients, this is unsurprising. Likewise, Burger Chef's historic relationship to Burger King also contributed to my utter lack of surprise over the flavor of the Super Shef. General Equipment, Burger Chef's initial parent company supplied Burger King with flame broilers during the King's early days in business. Burger Chef, then a subsidiary of General Equipment used the same broilers. It's therefore no great mystery why the flavor of the Super Shef is so similar to the Whopper. 

When I build my dream house, I want it to have a room that looks just like this. 

As I finished up eating, I took a stroll around the dining room to bask in the vaulted ceiling glory of a historic Burger Chef structure. I was pleased to find framed pictures of the building as it looked in full Burger Chef regalia as well as a photo of the original menu board featuring the Big Shef and Super Shef at 1966 prices. The management here isn't shy about the business's heritage. Like Suzi's, they've expanded the breakfast menu for wider appeal. The building's interior has been modernized, but it's clear they're proud to be a former Burger Chef. They've preserved the Burger Chef menu, building, and brand to the greatest extent that they could given the legal and logistical constraints of outliving the Burger Chef brand by 37 years and counting. After a year on the road, The Chef gives me hope. 

The same building, 52 years ago

Sadly, The Chef serves Coke products rather than RC Cola these days. In many ways, RC Cola is the Burger Chef of colas. 

I dread the day that I run out of places to visit and write about for Broken Chains. I've recently found myself casting a wider net and travelling farther in search of places that are still operating under their original names. Places like The Chef, Suzis, and indeed, Fowlerville Farms and Farmstead, give me hope that there are more holdouts of broken chains nearby hiding in plain sight, doing business as they always have, but under new names so as not to arouse the legal teams of whatever corporate entities control their brand names today. Though they rarely use it, Hardee's parent company, CKE, is very protective of the Burger Chef name, hence the necessity of former locations disguising their true identity. I look forward to the prospect of tracking down other holdout businesses conducting business as usual under new names. When I find other broken chain locations that have entered witness protection, I'll be sure to out them here. Hopefully my writing will serve to increase their foot traffic without getting them sued. 

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Googleproof

There are multiple motivating factors that keep me on the road in pursuit of broken chains, but one of the big ones is chasing down my vague childhood memories. Whether I’m going to Jerry’s, Omelet Shoppe, G.D. Ritzy’s, or Darryl’s, I’m attempting to experience something that interested me decades ago that I didn’t get a chance to fully explore at the time. Up until now, the earliest and vaguest of those early vague memories has eluded me.

The fast food row of my early childhood in late 1980s Central Kentucky consisted of an Imasco-era Hardee’s, an Arby’s in a former Burger Queen/Druther’s, and a Fazoli’s in a heavily modified former KFC. All of these structures still stand today, (though the Fazoli’s is now a Dairy Queen) but another fast food joint in the area was leveled and forgotten decades ago.

I didn’t even remember the name of the place, but I remembered the building. It seemed impossibly tall and impossibly narrow to my preschool-aged eyes, with its bright mansard roof topped with a four-sided sign whose letters meant little to me at a time in my development that I was just beginning ponder the concept of written language. I was probably attracted to the bright colors and ornate trim. It was also the first fast food place with no inside dining area that I remember being aware of. My family and I never ate there when it was open, and it had been closed and demolished for a solid decade by the time I was old enough to drive.

With no restaurant name to Google, and with friends and family from the area unable to recall what the place was called, I had all but given up on researching the place more to see if there were any of them left open anywhere. That is, at least until I was browsing roadarch.com and found their entry for a chain called Central Park. Upon seeing the pictures of the double drive thru buildings with a tiny footprint, standing a good three and a half stories tall including the four sided sign on the roofs, I was 90% sure I had found more examples of that near forgotten building of my late toddlerhood. (I chalk up the 10% uncertainty to the fact that this is one of my earliest fast food memories.) Furthermore, I was ecstatic to learn of a handful of locations still open, mostly in East Tennessee.

Double drive thru in action. 

In fact, the first Central Park opened in Chattanooga in 1982, an early entrant in the then-crowded field of second-wave, no-frills fast food chains that sought to forego the salad bar and playground-laden excess that fast food had become, and take it back to its stripped-down roots, with limited menus, no inside seating, and dirt cheap prices. Checkers/Rally’s is a still thriving chain born of this boom. The all but defunct Hot ‘n Now is a relic of the same era, as are other defunct or near defunct chains like Snapp’s and Zipp’s. Even my beloved G.D. Ritzy’s tried to get in on the action with their short-lived Daddy-O’s concept. Most of these chains employed a double drive thru ordering system with two separate ordering lanes and windows as a way to maximize efficiency.

At their peak, Central Park had around 60 locations, mostly in the south, plus a few in Utah thanks to a lone franchisee in Salt Lake City. Like many other regional double drive thru chains, Central Park declined in the ‘90s, and locations, including the one I grew up near, gradually closed. Their name makes them difficult to Google, but constantly adjusting search terms and dragging the map away from Manhattan shows five Central Park locations open today, three of which are in their original 1980s-era buildings, another in an larger, presumably newer building, and a fifth operating out of a former Hardee's complete with inside seating. On a recent run to Tennessee, I stopped by a couple of the locations operating in their original structures.

My first stop was at Knoxville’s only surviving Central Park location, tucked on a tiny lot just off I-640. It was lunchtime, and the place was doing a brisk business. Upon my arrival, I noted there was no customer parking in the lot. As with many double drive thru chains of this era, you're expected to get your food and leave. The setup made taking pictures tricky, as I couldn't exit my car, but the drive thru lane that went all the way around the back of the building was helpful. When it was my turn at the order speaker, I asked for what seems to be the chain's signature burger, the Big Bubba, along with fries, and a sweet tea, as is my preference when checking out southern chains. I made the unusually short drive from the speaker to the window, paid, and received my order which I drove down the street to a gas station parking lot to examine and enjoy. 

I would totally hang a giant burger and fries in a conspicuous spot in my house.

 I can't help but think that the Big Bubba was inspired by the Rally's, and later Checkers Big Buford, or perhaps it was the other way around since Central Park predates both Rally's and Checkers. Like the Big Buford, the Big Bubba had two quarter pound patties, a couple slices of cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles, and the regular condiments. As with the Big Buford, the Big Bubba is also completely forgettable. It's not an especially good burger, but it's also not especially bad. It's free of any unusual or unique toppings or flavors. It reminds me of a burger I could make at home, especially since I'm fairly sure that the beef patties were the type that you can buy in boxes of 50 at Sam's Club or Costco. Again, like Checkers/Rally's the fries were straight, but seasoned, though the seasoning wasn't as strong. They were closer to Arby's fries than Checkers/Rally's in flavor. Regardless of its shortcomings, the food was fresh and hot, and met the basic requirements I expected of a fast food meal. I was disappointed that it all came in generic packaging, as signage on the building showed branded drink and fry containers. I had hoped to take a branded cup or fry box home to add to my collection. Likewise, the price was a bit of a shocker, north of $10 for a large combo. For that much, I'd expect a place to sit and eat on site with a roof over my head, but they have to do what's necessary to survive, and the pricing hasn't scared off the locals.

The Big Bubba comes wrapped in plain foil. 

A generic Styrofoam cup of what I suspect are straightened curly fries

 Later that day, I stopped by a second Central Park in Cleveland, Tennesee, and found it to be less busy, though it was mid-afternoon by the time I got there. This location, while housed in the signature tall structure, had some differences. There were no intercoms. Instead you ordered, paid, and received your food all from the same window. This location also offered shakes, which weren't present in Knoxville. Having grazed all day, I wasn't terribly hungry, so I ordered only a chili dog and a Diet Coke. This time around, there was parking nearby, so I headed that way to enjoy my order. As before, the chili dog was well prepared, tasting hot and fresh, topped with mustard and onions. Maybe I've become too used to the Detroit style Coney dogs of my adopted home, but I found Central Park's chili to have an odd aftertaste that lingered an hour after eating, as if a bit too much of some seasoning had been added to the chili. Still, I take that as an indication the chili sauce was at least made from scratch, though it's tough for me to have strong feelings about it one way or another.

Cleveland rocks. 

Acceptable, but unremarkable chili dog

I spent that night in Chattanooga, Central Park's birthplace and home to two of the surviving locations. I attempted to have a third Central Park meal while in town, but found the location nearest my Airbnb closed at 7 PM despite Google indicating they were open until 9, forcing me to conclude that the Central Park brand is Googleproof, or at least Google-resistant.

 While I can't confirm it's the case, I don't see any evidence of corporate support for the remaining Central Park franchisees. Signage is weathered and dated, branded packaging is nonexistent, and there's no official website for the brand that I can find, though searching for Central Park invariably lands me in the famous greenspace in New York City far from the odd tall-small burger joints in Tennessee and Georgia. On the one hand, the lack of brand evolution is charming given that some of the surviving locations are dead ringers for the long gone Central Park that I vaguely recall from 30 years ago, but in an age where even the major fast food players are offering five and six dollar deals, a no frills chain like Central Park could thrive by undercutting them the way Checkers/Rally's does. While I didn't find the food at Central Park to be anything special in terms of uniqueness or price, it was at least decently prepared. The main attraction was always finally finding operating locations of what is perhaps my earliest memory of a broken chain a solid three decades after my first Central Park encounter, scratching an itch that I'd had for far too long. 

5/8/2020 Edit:

I guess should have trusted my gut and given my 10% uncertainty a little more attention. It's recently come to my attention that the fast food joint of my vague childhood memories was not a Central Park at all. The double drive thru burger stand that once stood on South Main Street in Nicholasville, Kentucky, near what is now Ollie's Bargain Outlet (and what was then Kroger) was an architecturally and conceptually similar Grand Junction Hamburger Station. The building and operation look to have been very similar to Central Park's, but it's tough to say who came first, and who was imitating whom. In the double drive thru fad of the 1980s, everyone was imitating everyone else to some extent. Information about Grand Junction online is scant, and the chain appears to be completely extinct. I'm disappointed that I never got to experience a whistle stop at the Grand Junction Hamburger Station, but I'm glad my fuzzy recollections of Grand Junction led me off the rails down the Central Park rabbit hole.