Last summer, I drove through Tennessee chasing down stories of restaurants that have survived everything from the Great Depression to TikTok food trends.
What I found amazed me: family-owned joints where grandkids now flip the same burgers their great-grandparents perfected nearly a century ago.
These aren’t fancy farm-to-table spots with celebrity chefs—they’re real places where recipes get passed down like heirlooms and customers become part of the family…