The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Blackberry Farm chef goes for a broader audience
Joseph Lenn branches out at Knoxville restaurant.
KNOXVILLE, TENN. — A big smile broke out on the chef Joseph Lenn’s face when an elderly woman with a cloud of platinum hair burst through the door and waved excitedly at him. “That’s Mary Evelyn,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I’m related to her. I’ll have to call my mom later and ask her how.”
Lenn, 40, has been cooking in and around his hometown, Knoxville, Tennesee, for 12 years. But this was the first time that Mary Evelyn — his grandmother’s cousin, as it turned out — would taste his food. Lenn spent his first decade at Blackberry Farm, the exclusive resort about 30 miles south of Knoxville that draws celebrities and elite food lovers who can afford to pay several hundred dollars for dinner, or some $1,500 to eat and stay overnight. In 2013, he won a James Beard Award for his cooking there. Two years later, he left to open his own place, one he hoped would be more accessible.
That restaurant, J.C. Holdway, opened last September. It is named for his greatuncle Joseph, who dined out for almost every meal and for whom Lenn is named. A painting of Holdway that hangs in the bar is captioned, “A very tall man, he loved eating at places where they remember you.”
Housed in a former photography studio in downtown Knoxville, J.C. Holdway has a different clientele, with a different budget, from Blackberry Farm’s. But it is visually and, perhaps unavoidably, culinarily linked. Lenn hired the same architecture firm that designed Blackberry’s spa, and its stoneware is made by the same potter, Leanne McQueen, who creates Blackberry’s tableware. His menu uses products from many of Blackberry’s famous purveyors, such as Allan Benton (ham and bacon) and Cruze Farm (buttermilk and other dairy).
Lenn’s connection to Blackberry Farm is both a blessing and a curse in Knoxville. “Some people think it’s a good thing because Blackberry is associated with quality,” he said. “But others reject it because it’s this fancy place.”
And so while his techniques and ingredients are rarefied, Lenn’s food is decidedly less luxe in Knoxville, designed to appeal to a broader audience. At Blackberry, he served poached North Carolina trout with a buttermilk consommé and watercress — a dish inspired by the Tennessee streams he waded in as a child. At J.C. Holdway, that trout is smoked and served over a kale salad with a creamy dressing. “People say, ‘Am I going to like that?’” he said. “I answer, ‘If you like Caesar salad, then yes.’”
His new menu also embraces international flavors that were implicitly forbidden at Blackberry Farm, which has built its brand as a home to all things Southern. Lenn remembers being encouraged not to use soy sauce until he managed to find one produced in Kentucky.
Nothing is off limits to him now. One of his most popular specials is a plate of fiery gochujang ribs topped with scallions and peanuts. The dish is ridiculously simple to make. Lenn quick-cures the ribs overnight in a mixture of salt, pepper and brown sugar, then smokes them in the wood-burning oven, where almost all of the restaurant’s food is cooked. The “mop sauce,” a mix of Heinz apple cider vinegar, brown sugar and spices, including smoked paprika, is whizzed in a blender (the heat dissolves the sugar), then pulsed with a generous dollop of the sweet-and-spicy Korean chile paste.
Lenn prefers to serve the ribs only at the bar. But he may one day have to add them to the regular menu: “People see them and they say, ‘Why can’t we have that at our table?’ So I say: ‘OK. I want to give them what they want.’”