- This time on Tennessee Crossroads we take you to The Gulch in Nashville for a biscuit style love story.

Ken Wilshire takes you to Murfreesboro to discover some modern day blacksmiths, then it's off to the Coke Oven Museum at Dunlap with Rob Wilds.

Finally, we go to Goodlettsville with Tammi Arender to sample the Brittle Brothers gourmet candy.

That's our Tennessee Crossroads for this time, I'm Joe Elmore, welcome.

(light jazzy music) Apparently food trucks are much more than a fad nowadays, in fact, they're flourishing in cities like Nashville.

Well, this is the story of a food truck couple who always dreamed of their own farm-to-table restaurant.

Well, apparently hard work pays off because now they're parked at a place called Biscuit Love in a trendy part of Nashville.

If you haven't been to Nashville's Gulch recently, well, you won't recognize the place.

It's become the happening hangout for trendy bars and restaurants as well as high rise living.

Well, as you can see, and probably hear, The Gulch just keeps growing, and while most people know this as a nighttime destination, well, there's a daytime attraction that's packing 'em in all thanks to a love of great biscuits.

(upbeat folk music) This is where urban cool meets Southern comfort, food that is.

Biscuits get top billing, and they're made fresh just hours before they merge with other choice ingredients.

Biscuit Love is billed as a brunch restaurant, open daily from 7 am to 3 pm.

Karl and Sarah Worley are the owners.

After attending culinary school together, then marriage, the couple decided to launch their culinary careers in a food truck, but they seriously needed a niche.

- Yeah, I wanted to do a hot chicken food truck, and my wife, being the smart person, we discussed it for a little while, and I said, "Well, fine what would you do?"

- And I said, "Your biscuits," and we sort of had this "aha" like Southern driven food moment.

- The food truck was a vehicle to get my food out and kinda show the world what we could do.

This space came open, the right partners came open, and everything worked out.

The fried chicken biscuits are still the favorite.

We do a couple different ones.

We do one with just regular fried chicken and cheddar cheese and sausage gravy.

We do another one that's kind of a play on Nashville hot chicken.

On the truck they were our favorites and here, even though we've added a lot more, they're still the favorite.

- [Joe] The Worleys put a lot of creativity and work into coming up with the right menu, the right location, and the clean, simple decor.

Plus the philosophy they share with their employees.

- [Karl] Doing what you love, being passionate about it, keeping the same passion to them, and really showing what we can do and knowing everything that goes out to the guests, it's all about pleasing them.

- [Joe] Their food truck experience paid off in Nashville awards and positive media attention, but more importantly, it built a customer base of Biscuit Love lovers.

- [Sarah] One of the beautiful things about this is that we had a built-in customer base that followed us all around town, and now they know where to find us seven days a week, so it's great 'cause we see so many familiar faces in and out of here that were our food truck fans that are now just like our regular customers.

- [Joe] If you see a long line upon arrival, don't despair, Karl has adapted an ordering, paying, and serving style known as fast casual.

- You can decide what you want, pay up first, and then that way when you're done, you're done, you can get up and leave.

If you want to hang out, but you can get up whenever you want to you're not tied to somebody dictating when you can leave.

- [Joe] The place continually draws new customers from places beyond the old food truck stops, and no doubt many are soon to be regulars.

- I've never had hot chicken.

It was my first time doing that, and it was great.

The biscuit, the donuts, they were wonderful, wonderful.

- It was really good, it's been recommended by a ton of people, so I really enjoyed it.

- Delicious, very good, very tasty, perfect.

The Blood Mary's are probably the best I've ever had.

- [Joe] Here's an interesting aside, even though The Gulch has been a booming, lively locale for years now, it's still unchartered territory for even some locals.

- My favorite are the phone calls where people say, "Now, I've never heard of The Gulch, "where is The Gulch?"

And I'll say, "Well, it's like south of Broadway "on 12th Avenue," and they're like, "That's nothing but a parking lot down there."

But I mean, we really are in the heart of Nashville, and it's so great, it's been so great being here.

- [Joe] Well there's another Worley family member that plays a major role here.

Karl and Sarah's daughter Gert.

She's good with the customers.

- Did you try the biscuits?

- [Voiceover] I haven't tried the biscuits.

- [Joe] And at testing the menu items.

(light piano music) It may seem like the Worleys found instant success with Biscuit Love here in The Gulch, and in a way they did.

However, that success took an extra serving of talent, hard work, and commitment to making their brunch the best of the bunch.

- Unfortunately, my brain goes all the time, and so we're constantly looking at things that we can do different and things we can, improvements we can make.

- I want it to feel like home.

I want it to feel like you're coming...

It's brunch, so I feel like it's supposed to be this very comfortable, relaxed dining experience.

(upbeat folk music) - Back when horses were the main means of getting around, every town had at least one blacksmith shop.

Well, just as transportation has changed so has the role of the village smithy.

Ken Wilshire went to Cannonsburgh Village in Murfreesboro and discovered how some blacksmiths today are turning out more than just horseshoes.

- [Ken] It's dirty, dusty, deafening, and can be dangerous, and if this isn't enough, it's also smoky and smelly.

(light music) But these modern day blacksmiths love it.

- It's all about the fun and the camaraderie of the guys there enjoying it, enjoying the art of blacksmithing.

(hammer pounding on metal) - [Ken] Rutherford County Blacksmith Association President Clint Busby says it's a weekly event here at Cannonsburgh Village in Murfreesboro.

(hammer pounding metal) Students of this almost forgotten art come here to hone their metalsmithing skills.

- It's a state group, and we're one of the ten forges that belong to this organization.

There's groups all throughout the US, and the resurgence in blacksmithing, I'm not sure exactly why, but we are just, I got waiting lists of people waiting to join our group and learn how to do this.

- I'm not gonna hit it, I'm just gonna show ya.

You can take it and just get it hot... - [Ken] It's all hands on instruction by some of the most talented and experienced blacksmiths in this part of the country.

- And if it's the color of the fire, that's good, you can work with that.

Just roll, roll, gentle, roll.

Yeah, and then work your way down to the point.

You're getting there.

And then we need that little tip on the end, and you may end up with a little bit of a flat spot, but that's okay.

- You process through ten projects.

You do the S hooks, then you do a pot rack and hot dog forks, a fire poker, and a big door knocker, and things like this, and so on the different projects you make, you come out learning that technique, so when you're all done, you have the basics to say, you won't get hurt, and you kinda know what you're doing a little bit.

That's amazing.

- That's one of the beautiful things about this.

They're all volunteers here, you know, everybody's here for the craft.

Professionals taking time out from their jobs and will spend the weekend teaching us their techniques.

It's a wonderful thing.

- [Ken] There really is something alluring about working with white hot steel, and I just had to find out what it is.

- What you're trying to do is you're trying to bring that metal from parallel to a taper, a four-sided taper.

- And that's most all blacksmithing that's how it all starts.

- I can't stand here right now and think of anything that I would start blacksmithing that I would not start with a taper.

- Well, let's give it a shot here, here we go.

- [Man] Now, it might be a real different taper, but... - Yeah, with me doing it, it will be different.

- I mean a different type of taper, we would-- - Yeah it will be a different... (both laughing) (hammer hitting metal) - [Man] Come back on the anvil a little bit.

There you go, you got the right pitch in the hammer.

Exactly right, if I could teach all of my new students to do that I'd be in business.

But you're letting the point get over, see it's putting a knob on it.

- Back here?

- When that happens, pull it back, lay it flat, and straighten this out.

- [Clint] Something happens at some point, and then you can see it just clicks.

It might be difficult for some, some catch on fast, some are slower, but at some point, they realize, "Wow, I've got it."

And when you see that spark and that "Wow," and they start doing things without you telling 'em.

If they show you a project they've done and they tell you what's wrong before you do, then you know you're doing something right.

- So I'm on my way to a chandelier.

- You're pretty far along.

(Ken laughs) Another 1,500 hours, you'll have it.

- Yeah really.

You won't find horses waiting to be shod or a farmer in need of a new plow.

Instead, when these craftsmen call it a day, (guitar music) there are candelabras, coat hooks, and metal creations galore, but it takes practice and patience.

- And you see the students that, you know, they had the hardest time making a simple S hook, and I told 'em, "Don't give up.

"It'll evolve and you're realize later on "it was really easy," and then they ended up making these beautiful pieces of art.

It makes you feel like this art of blacksmithing is gonna be saved 'cause they're gonna keep teaching, and everybody's gonna keep learning and teaching, and the more people that know, it won't be lost.

(metal clanging and chatter) - [Ken] Well, it may not be a glamorous art form with all its hazards and hard work, but for thousands of years, blacksmiths were as necessary as doctors and teachers.

So thanks to groups like the Rutherford County Blacksmith Association, we'll forge ahead with the clanging of hammers on hot steel and continue to enjoy the beautiful creations of this ancient art.

(light music) - Thanks, Ken.

I hope we don't lose him to a blacksmiths shop.

Well, next we take you to a Tennessee town with its own unique history.

In fact, it would be lost and forgotten, though, without some people dedicated to sustaining it.

Rob Wilds takes us just north of Chattanooga to the Dunlap Coke Museum.

(folk music) ♪ Early in the morning ♪ Til the sun goes down ♪ We fire the coke ovens ♪ Both white man and brown ♪ We toiled and we labored ♪ And no money could be saved ♪ Sun up to sun down ♪ I was a coke oven slave ♪ - [Rob] The music of Ed Brown and Billy Gaston is about the loudest thing you're likely to hear at the Coke Museum in Dunlap these days, but that wasn't always so according to Carson Camp of the Sequatchie Valley Historic Association.

- It would have been a very busy, noisy, smoky, smelly operation with 350 employees at their peak with Dunlap only having 700 people in the whole town.

So over half the population was involved in the mining operations here.

- [Rob] The mining and coke operations closed down in the 1920s and might've been lost forever if not for Carson and his family, who took a deep interest in a place that became covered with tons of garbage, as Carson explained in a documentary "Coke Oven Slaves," which was made about the park.

- [Carson] This was the town garbage dump.

This was the absolute worst place in Seequatchie County to visit.

- So this is what's left of the coke ovens.

- Of the outside.

- [Rob] Ed Brown and Bill McKee played big parts in the restoration and upkeep of the park.

Each artifact tells a story of a different time when even getting home from work would seem unusual to us.

- [Voiceover] One thing that's real unique are what is called "a rail horse."

This is a seat that a coal miner would sit on when he got off work in the evening and came down the mountain, and they could come down the old tram track very fast.

- [Rob] Sounds a little dangerous there, but fun maybe.

- They didn't lose any miners.

(laughing) - So many people does not know what coke is when you say that, what it refers to here.

You think of Coke cola and there's other, that word's used in other things too, but we have samples of what coke is, and it's just basically pure carbon, where the impurities have burned out of the coal by controlling the air flow to it, and so you wind up with what we call coke made from coal, and think of it the same thing as charcoal, charcoal's made from wood.

(light guitar music) - [Rob] The processes and machines are of interest to Carson Camp, who collected almost all of the things in the museum, but it's really the photos, and more importantly what they say that makes this place important.

- [Carson] There is a story behind every tool and implement and things that the miners used, and this was a working man's occupation, and those people have normally been forgotten in history, but they played a major role in the development of this area.

- [Rob] Carson doesn't have to look very far to find people who played a role at this place.

His own mother, Gladys Camp, still has vivid memories of how the place was when she was a little girl.

- I remember my brothers going to work when they were too young to go to work, but back when they was that, there weren't any rules.

I guess you just went to work whenever you could get a job at doing anything, and I remember them coming home so many nights with their britches legs or overalls wet to their knees where they had just knelt in water all day digging coal.

- [Rob] Carson has even conducted interviews of the folks whose families lived and worked here during the coal and coke boom.

Sadly, time is taking more and more of those people.

So as the people who lived their life here slip away, keeping the things they left behind becomes more important.

- [Carson] There were several hundred houses built up here at the time for the coal miners and coke oven workers to live in.

There was a total of about 350 employees at one time, and this began in 1899, and it actually, the company went busted in 1927.

But during that time, there was a lot of feeding the economy around here, the train come up in here and got the coke and carried it out and took it down the valley to Chattanooga is where the majority of it went to the foundries over there.

- [Voiceover] They had their own company store They had their own doctor, blacksmith, carpenters, veterinarian for the mules, and it was a culture unto itself, which no longer exists.

- [Rob] Except in memory, and in the carefully connected and lovingly preserved Coke and Coal Museum in Dunlap.

(folk music) ♪ Sun down I was a coke oven slave ♪ Sun up to sun down ♪ I was a coke oven slave ♪ - Well, if that's not enough to get you there, how 'bout the coke oven's Bluegrass Festival, coming up the first weekend in June.

You can find out more about that and anything you see here on Crossroads at our website tennesseecrossroads.org.

Say, what do you get when you combine the talents of a real estate agent and a chemical engineer?

Well, how 'bout a booming peanut brittle business?

Well, Tammi Arender discovered a couple of guys, who grew up together and together developed this tasty second career.

(guitar music) - Today is National Peanut Brittle Day.

What, you didn't know that?

- [Man] I didn't know that.

- Go figure, I thought everybody knew when National Peanut Brittle Day was.

(all laughing) - Christmas, Thanksgiving, National Peanut Brittle Day.

- The three biggies.

- [Tammi] John Spalding and Jay Lowenthal, owners of Brittle Brothers gourmet brittle, but they're brothers by business and bonding, not by blood.

- My silly partner likes the peanut best.

- [Tammi] John and Jay spend a Saturday afternoon at Whole Foods in Nashville persuading passers by to partake of their peanut, pecan, and cashew brittle.

This sweet snack is a far cry from your traditional teeth-chipping treat.

- This is the cashew, three ounces, ten ounces.

- [Tammi] And for first time taste testers like Nicole Tisdale, it's love at first bite.

- Okay, I want of these and one of these.

These two are not real sweet, and that's what I liked about 'em, they didn't, you know, you don't have all that sweetness, it's more like just the crunch with a peanut, but it's just a little different.

- Cashew brittle.

We also do peanut.

- (sign crashes) Holy cow!

- (chuckles) Yeah, he played basketball for Vanderbilt, does it show?

(man speaks indistinctly) - No reflexes?

That's okay, no harm done.

- [Tammi] Jay Lowenthal really did play basketball for Vanderbilt, that's what originally brought him to Nashville.

Then John got a job offer in Music City.

The two grew up five houses apart in Pontiac, Illinois.

Who knew they'd both end up here?

- Appreciate it.

- Thank you, Matt.

(sign crashes) Really?

- Who put that there?

- Really?

- I caught it this time.

- [John] Brittle Brothers.

- Blood brothers?

- We grew up in Illinois ever since we were four years old.

We couldn't be any more like brothers, we've fought, we've cussed, we've cried, we've laughed.

(woman laughing) We rekindled an old friendship.

John was in his kitchen one night, and we went up to Hendersonville just to tell some old war stories and laugh a little bit, and he was making peanut brittle, and we tasted it and went, "Holy toledo, "this stuff is fabulous."

And we ended up walking out with everything that he made that night.

- The Lowenthals would bring over dinner, the Spaldings would eat the dinner, and John would have to go in the kitchen and make brittle, brittle, brittle for Deb Lowenthal so she could take it home.

I got a pizza, she got two great big bags of brittle.

- Whoops!

(laughing) - [John] That's like six times you've dropped that thing, man.

- [Tammi] In 2008, after the two friends and their wives enjoyed dinner and peanut brittle, the childhoods chums started churning out brittle by the box full.

John who tweaked his mother's secret recipe and Jay with the business plan.

The two take time off their day jobs.

John, the chemical engineer, and Jay, the real estate agent, to become bakers of brittle.

- My stomach, right here is what makes me like brittle.

I mean, I grew up with it, I liked it, I could never find it.

- [Jay] We have the process down to a system, and we tell everybody that comes into the kitchen, don't deviate from it.

We've got it figured out.

John has worked I can't tell you how many hours to craft the recipe and make it as special as it is so there's no reason to change it.

So we make sure that everybody knows exactly what it is and what the steps are.

All you gotta do is follow the yellow brick road.

- Can you tell me without giving away all your secrets what we start with here?

- Well, we started with our peanuts and our mixture that you saw made over there earlier, and basically what we've gone into now is we're gonna throw in some butter, we're gonna throw in a little bit of vanilla, we're gonna stir it up, and then it goes back in the oven again.

- [Tammi] Then it's slathered on the marble slab to cool.

In just minutes, the buttery brittle becomes one large sheet of crunchy candy.

That's when the assembly line gets to work.

In the borrowed kitchen of the Good Naz Church in Goodlettsville, the employees get to work, breaking, weighing, bagging, labeling, and boxing.

All done by hand.

- No machinery, no equipment, no automation, none of that, this is all hand thrown, everything is done by hand because that's the way we want to do it.

- And that's really and truly the only way to keep that taste isn't it?

- There's no question.

Okay, the moment of truth, Tammi.

- John, I've been a really good girl, and you've seen me, I have not taste tested this yet, so I am so excited.

- And this is the cashew.

- This is the cashew, which is one of my favorite nuts.

All right, ready?

Oh my gosh.

- Isn't that good?

- [Tammi] Oh my gosh!

- [John] Isn't that crazy?

- I thought only a man could make my knees go weak.

- Oh!

(laughing) - Oh my gosh.

All righty, well, I really appreciate you guys.

- Hey, hey, hey, hey, security!

- [Tammi] I'm not the only one who's found a fondness for this confection.

The Grand Ole Opry, the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Opryland Hotel, just to name a few, all carry the bags of brittle, and now, it's being offered as celebrity sweets.

- [John] About a year and a half ago, the Country Music Awards picked us up, and they put us in what are called "swag bags."

The stars all get a bag when they go to the show, and that was great, it was very exciting for us, but it was such a hit a year ago that now the same company asked us to do the Country Music Awards, the Grammy Awards, the Academy Awards.

- [Tammi] While orders are pouring in from both celebrities and plain old fashioned nut lovers, John and Jay have a delicious dilemma on their hands.

How do they keep up with the demand?

For two people who have no background in cooking or retail, and full-time jobs, that could be a frightening future, but instead, it's thrilling.

- It's exciting.

Because I don't know what I'm doing, it's even more exciting, you know.

If I knew what I was doing, I'd probably be scared.

I have no clue, so how can you be scared.

I have no idea.

(light folk music) - Thank you Tammi.

Thank you folks for sharing the past 30 minutes with us, and here's a great idea, join us next time.

That's when we'll take you for a homemade taste of historic Bell Buckle.

Then it's off to Appleton with Rob Wilds and an old General Store that's now storing up on history.

Then off to Dandridge with Tressa Bush to take a walk through east Tennessee's history.

Finally, we go to Signal Mountain where Ken Wilshire discovers the work of a talented glass artist.

Our next Tennessee Crossroads, please join us.

We'll see you then.