Appalachian Anomaly
Gourmet Veggie and Hiker's Surprise--two pizzas at the pinnacle
At the annual Table Rock Writers Workshop last week, our special guest was Emily Nunn, a native of southwest Virginia and author of The Comfort Food Diaries, published in 2017 by Simon & Schuster. Emily read from the memoir in which she discovers that comfort food is less about the dish and more about its preparation. Food can be a way to express the deepest care without saying a word. Cooking for others can be more comforting than eating itself.
After her presentation, Emily, who also created the “Table for Two” column in the New Yorker magazine when she worked there, revealed a recent discovery—a wood-fired pizza joint in an unlikely place—Roan Mountain, Tennessee, the little village at the base of the high peak that divides North Carolina and Tennessee. Back in the 19th century, the winding road to the top, then very narrow and precarious, allowed traffic in one direction (toward Tennessee) in the mornings and then became one way toward North Carolina in the afternoons. Hardscrabble mountain people made the passage on foot, by hack, and on horseback as they could.
Eventually, in 1894, a resort hotel called The Cloudland was built right on the state line near the peak at 6,286 feet. Travelers could rent rooms with spring mattresses, copper tubs, and steam heat for two dollars a night, a fee which also included three meals. The state line was painted on the dining room floor at the Cloudland, because those seated in Tennessee could order an alcoholic beverage to go with their meals, but those who were on the North Carolina side could not. The Mitchell County (NC) sheriff reportedly came often at dinnertime to patrol the border, hoping some of those imbibing in Tennessee might accidentally stumble across the state line into North Carolina, presumably then being forced to pay a fine as steep as the slopes of the Roan.
Anyway, I digress.
Emily’s report of the Roan Mountain pizza was so evocative that Donna Campbell and I set out at week’s end to sample it. I have reported here on Pie on the Mountain in Lansing, NC, and Big Ed’s Pizza in Oak Ridge, TN. Both restaurants feature righteously fresh ingredients, including the now-ubiquitous Benton’s Tennessee Bacon. However, the pinnacle of pizzas for me is in Carrboro, NC, where Gabe Barker–the son of James Beard Award-winning chefs Karen and Ben Barker–makes ten-inch Neapolitan miracles at his Pizzeria Mercato.
Gabe has developed a handcrafted thin yeast dough that blisters to perfection in his gas-fired oven. The Mercato toppings vary with the season–organic vegetables and meats from the Carrboro Farmer’s Market across the street and the finest imports of Castelvetrano olives, Italian cheeses, and dried Calabrian chiles. Gabe’s most sublime creation to date is a grilled sweet corn and Gorgonzola pizza topped with razor thin slices of Serrano pepper scattered sparsely enough to open the sinuses without numbing the tongue. But I digress again.
On the way to Tennessee Donna and I studied the Smoky Mountain Bakery’s online menu and agreed on the Gourmet Veggie and the Hiker’s Surprise. All of their pizzas are more-or-less 12 inches and range in price from ten to twelve dollars with a maximum of twelve toppings. When we arrived on Cloudland Drive, we couldn’t see the restaurant from the road, only a bank of sunflowers just beginning to bend toward autumn.
Ten years ago, Tim and Crystal Decker, both northern Californians and seasoned chefs, set up shop in a renovated barn to create this Appalachian anomaly. He is a European-style artisanal bread maker and she is a pastry expert. Their son Anton, a musician, also takes a turn in the kitchen
If Gabe Barker’s place in Carrboro is urban chic—concrete floors and recycled timber tables and benches—this place is shabby seventies. No frills, no fuss. A throwback to hippiedom.
Breakfast is still under way when we walk in, served until 10:45—omelets, biscuits and gravy, pancakes, Belgian waffles, and pastries. The pizza oven is blazing by 11:00. The line soon runs out the door, and inside you find yourself waiting amid stock storage—cardboard boxes piled high and to-go pizzas already stacked in boxes on a low bench for pick-up beside the cashier’s station. A glass cabinet holds cherry pinwheels, lemon crinkles, coconut macaroons, snicker doodles, blueberry scones, red velvet sandwich cookies filled with cream cheese, banana bran muffins, and little loaves of pumpkin bread laced with walnuts and cranberries. A sign above these treats reads: “Stressed is desserts spelled backwards.” On the opposite wall, a metal baker’s rack on wheels is heaped with chocolate chip cookies and sweet rolls in plastic bags to go.
Eight young people are navigating around the flour-covered worktable in the kitchen. Two are rolling out dough, another is chopping toppings. Another slathers on tomato sauce while the young man closest to the hot maw of the oven wields the pizza shovel with grace. The rest take turns taking orders and swiping credit cards through nothing more than an iPhone.
Down the line, salads of frisee, mesclun mix, luscious cherry tomatoes, and random red beans sit in closed clam shells on refrigerator shelves for the taking. Three bucks per salad or two for five, DIY. Commercial dressings, however, come sealed in packets at the ordering window—the only disappointment, as it turns out. On down the line, self-serve fountain drinks with free refills are two dollars. There are a few tables inside; many more outside on the wrap around deck.
We place our order, take a number, and find communal benches at a long picnic table out back in sunlight dappled by a half-dozen black walnut trees towering over two sides of the deck. There is a vegetable garden, now waning, in the sideyard. Trees up the hill beyond are rounded sculptures of kudzu. Tendrils trail down and wave in the breeze. A sudden waft of woodsmoke heightens my appetite. We prepare with paper plates, napkins, plastic cutlery, and condiments, including red chile flakes and a shaker of parmesan that doesn’t taste like sawdust. All of these acoutrements are anchored against the wind in plastic bins on each table. The service is surprisingly quick.
Gourmet Veggie and Hiker’s Surprise. All photos by Donna Campbell
The Gourmet Veggie pie comes first--backroad-Italian rustic--chunky onions, generous bites of artichoke, a heavy hand of cheese. Yet, the dominant taste is salty black Kalamata olives and sweet sundried tomatoes—both flavors intensified by the oven’s heat. I suspect the tomatoes are local and dried on the premises. Fantastic.
Next out, the Hiker’s Surprise lives up to its name immediately. What is that crunch? Besides the saltine-like crust, there are deliciously browned chunks of walnut. Wow. The walnut pieces have been laid down on a light brush of pesto and then slyly covered by slabs of mushroom, more sun-dried tomatoes and caramelized onions, and the silky melt of Gorgonzola. The only thing I can imagine that might add to this magic is a handful of sliced red grapes spread and roasted over the top. (I mention this addition only to work in another pizza joint recommendation in Fayetteville, West Virginia, near the New River Gorge. Pies and Pints is the name--Gorgonzola and Grape is the pizza’s appelation.)
So, Miss Emily Nunn, you do not disappoint. These pizzas are a rare find, an unusual amalgam of flavors in an even more unlikely place. But as you told us last week at the writing workshop, the comfort often comes in the odd mix at the table. Or as she put it near the end of her book:
Luckily, I had figured out that life was not a banquet at all but a potluck. A party celebrating nothing but the desire to be together, where everyone brings what they have, what they are able to at any given time, and it is accepted with equal love and equanimity.
That’s how it was for us at the writing workshop–sharing what we had brought unvarnished, both our manuscripts and our personal stories, mostly told at table when we stopped long enough to eat. And so it was at this Appalachian anomaly—Californians making pizzas and pastries on the side of an ancient mountain. We declared our gratitude in the moment, delighting in the many tastes unfolding, bite after bite, on a not-exactly-round but satisfying crust.