Postcards From Nashville

this, my friends, is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen...

Pure Joy is grateful to be an invited member of a very special organization called the Leading Caterers of America, an exclusively selected group of the top caterers in the country, leaders in their markets and trendsetters in the industry. Another LCA catering company owner & I made fast friends at the LCA Summit in Charleston last year and she invited me to her place in Nashville! It was SUCH fun to get to go visit another caterer! Monica Holmes, a true Southern Master of Hospitality, started the Clean Plate Club in Nashville, Tennessee in 1980 while raising her son just like I did. Her son, Chris and his wife Lisa, now help run the show and they have a really exciting operation down there.

Being incredibly like minded wanderer-explorer-gatherers-of-culinary-and-otherwise-experience types the first place she took me to blew my mind; Prince’s Hot Chicken. Anecdotal evidence suggests that spicy fried chicken has been served in Nashville for generations. It is generally accepted that the originator of hot chicken is the family of Andre Prince Jeffries, owner of Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. Jeffries says the development of hot chicken was an accident. Her great-uncle Thornton was purportedly a womanizer, and after a particularly late night out his girlfriend at the time cooked him a fried chicken breakfast with extra pepper as revenge. Instead, Thornton decided he liked it so much that, by the mid-1930s, he and his brothers had created their own recipe and opened the BBQ Chicken Shack café.

Here at Pure Joy we do some pretty awesome Fried Chicken and Waffles, they’re a huge success family style or in miniature, we make tiny waffles that are just adorable, with fried chicken & pure maple butter and just a bit of heat. I brought back lots of spices though if anyone wants Hot Chicken here in Santa Barbara just give us a call!

Love, Lynette La Mere, Pure Joy Catering Executive Chef