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| Burger with Egg from the Dixie Cafe |
Dixie Café in
Corbin, Kentucky is reviewed by our Indiana correspondent Ron Newlin.
Each year millions of Hoosiers and other Midwesterners blast
through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia on Interstate 75, trying to get to Florida as fast as they
can. Corbin, Kentucky, is one of
dozens of little towns that we blow by without even seeing, hidden by the
mountain ridges.
Probably all of them have a hidden treasure of a diner or
two, but a couple of things make Corbin more worthy of others of a brief
detour. If you’ve got an hour to
spare, it’s the town closest to Cumberland Falls, one of the great
under-appreciated natural wonders east of the Mississippi. And foodies may recognize Corbin as the
home of Colonel Sanders and birthplace of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
And indeed, you can still enjoy a meal as well as tour a
museum in the quaint refurbished cottage where Colonel Sanders started his
empire. But, this blog is not
called “Hoosier Chicken Boy.”
Or you can ask someone where to go for the local color. Odds are, they’ll be delighted to tell
you that the Dixie Café is open again.
The Dixie is a classic hole-in-the-wall main street diner,
serving breakfast and lunch, that dates back at least to my mother-in-law’s
childhood in the 1930s. A few
years ago it closed and the space briefly became an Italian restaurant, but in
the last year new owners bought it and restored/updated it to a version of its
former “glory.”
It’s still got the 2’x4’ acoustic ceiling and the
red-and-white tile floor, accompanied by new, no-nonsense booths and tables,
with a lunch counter in the back.
The walls are freshly painted in the red and gray colors of the local
high school, the Corbin Redhounds (hey, there’s another alternative nickname
for the Washington Professional Football Club), and adorned with a combination
of letter jackets, old sports calendars, and framed artwork of local landmarks
for sale, including a striking image of an L&N locomotive, a tribute to the
employer that kept my in-laws fed and shod through the Great Depression. You have to get close enough to read
the price tags to realize that the images are filtered and soft-focused
photographic prints. If they
had actually been paintings, I would have bought a couple for $105. I may still.
Whether your clientele is locals or tourists, if you’re down
the street from the original KFC, you need a gimmick. At the Dixie, it is the “chili bun” – a hot dog bun filled
with finely-ground beef in a chili sauce, with no frankfurter involved. The sauce has just a touch of
heat, seasoned primarily with black and cayenne pepper, and maybe a hint of
cumin. They come two to a platter
with a side for $4.25, and they are ample enough that my 14-year-old didn’t
need dessert afterwards.
Hoosier Burger Boy and I grew up in rural northern Indiana, where his family
raised beef cattle and my family’s blood money came from poultry, so I ordered
the Dixie Eggburger for $5.65, plus a 50-cent upgrade to onion rings. The onion rings were of the
frozen variety, but of good quality for that kind, well-drained so they weren’t
greasy, and plentiful.
The burgers at the Dixie are fresh and hand-made. No perfect circles here – mine was
bigger than 6 ounces but not a half-pound, and bore a striking resemblance to a
map of Ireland. It was thick
enough that they probably should have asked how I wanted it done. It came out medium-rare, which was
perfect for my tastes, but maybe too pink for some. They did ask me how I wanted the egg, and they nailed the
“over-medium”, with just enough yolk to drip some on the plate without getting
the large, white-bread bun soggy.
The burger lacked any kind of seasoning to make it truly memorable, but
was more than satisfying for the price.
Despite the antique coke machine inside the front door, the
Dixie offers Pepsi products and both sweetened and unsweetened tea, which is a
pleasure. In this part of the
country, if you order iced tea without asking, you’re probably going to get
“swait tay.”
I don’t think you need to be accompanied by a delighted
Corbin expatriate to enjoy the Dixie, but that was surely part of the
pleasure. Every household at my
wife’s family reunion made a detour from the state park into town to have at
least one meal at the Dixie. With
or without a Corbinite (Corbinian?
Corbinaria?), a trip to the Dixie feels like a homecoming.
Burger 3 Spatulas out of 5
Onions Rings 2.5 Spatulas
Dixie Cafe
208 S. Main St.
Corbin, KY 40701
606-523-6270
