The University of North Carolina Press

News Bytes

January/February 1999


The Loveless Motel & Cafe (on the outskirts of Nashville, TN)

An excerpt from, Southern Food: At Home on the Road, in History by John Egerton
Copyright (c) 1993 The University of North Carolina Press.
Reproduction or distribution is prohibited without the express permission of
the University of North Carolina Press. All rights Reserved.

The name was never meant to express humor or forlorn hope; it was simply what Lou Loveless thought he ought to call his little twelve-room tourist court when he built it in the 1950s. It was located on the old state road to Memphis, and the increasing mobility of Americans in the postwar years suggested to Loveless that a few rooms and a good cafe would make him a nice business. The survival of the cafe and even a few of the motel rooms under just three owners since then seems to have borne out his belief.

Little about the cafe has changed in that time. It is primarily a dinner place, even though the country ham and eggs and biscuits that head the menu are more closely associated with breakfast. The dinner entrees are limited to ham, fried chicken, chicken livers and gizzards, and a couple of steak specialties. On the weekends, the little cottage with seats for seventy-five people is crowded with customers from open to close. The wood floors creak under so many feet and the red-and-white-checkered tablecloths may support as many as 350 meals on a busy day.

On weekday mornings the pace is much less hectic. Donna McCabe is usually there--she's the owner now--and Elizabeth Roberts or Mary Lou Perry is in the kitchen, and Sherry Downing or Lisa Carter is waiting tables. The coffee is fresh and hot, the biscuits are homemade and right out of the oven, the peach and blackberry preserves are also cooked on the premises, and there's sorghum molasses and honey, butter and cream, eggs fixed any way you like them, bacon and sausage, and of course the country ham for which Loveless has long been known.

People who know country ham understand that its proper curing is at best an inexact science. The old-fashioned way involves covering fresh pork hindquarters in salt for a period of time during cold weather, then smoking and aging the resurrected hams through a subsequent period that must include hot weather. . . .Suffice it to say here that the old-fashioned way of preparing country hams has all but vanished, and it is a rare restaurant or market that offers genuine slow-cured country ham for sale.

The Loveless gets about as close to that standard as anyone. Donna McCabe buys as many as three thousand hams a year from a single Tennessee supplier who adheres to the dry-salt curing method and ages the meat for a minimum of six months. I have on occasion encountered a slice of Loveless country ham that was too salty or too tough for my taste (curing, as I said, is an inexact science), but most of the time it is just right—rich, tender, aromatic, and delicious, with an elixir of precious red-eye gravy on the side.

On cold winter days, the morning sun streams through the front window of the Loveless Cafe and bathes the table there in light and warmth. That's my favorite table, and my favorite time of day to eat. With a hot platter of choice ham and custom-cooked eggs, a pan of Elizabeth Roberts' made-from-scratch biscuits, some gravy, a little butter and jam, plenty of coffee, a good newspaper, and some time to tarry, I'm about as close to home as I can get--and as close to Southern comfort as a breakfast can be.

Southern Food is available at bookstores in paperback for $18.95, or from the University of North Carolina Press. Toll-free credit card orders: 1-800-848-6224. Secure ordering online: BUY NOW



Return to News Bytes || Return to UNC Press Online