If you go
› Fresh Pot Cafe5425 Highway 153, Suite B4805-3773› Marsha’s Backstreet Cafe5032 1/2 Brainerd Road, No. 12485-7911› Thai Esan4330 Ringgold Road, East Ridge668-8924› Café & Toast3536 Cummings Highway, Lookout Valley803-0493› La Bendicion Pupuseria Salvadorena307 Smith Industrial Blvd.Dalton, Ga.706-529-5239
Jimmy Bain helps run Marsha's Backstreet Cafe with his mother, Marsha.Popularity tucked away
Tucked a brown-frame building with a barely visible sign, Marsha’s Backstreet Cafe shares its building with a Brainerd Road liquor store.Inside, most customers are greeted by name and local artists’ work embellishes the walls. Early lunch arrivals eagerly take a place at the counter rather than tables so they can chat with owner Marsha Bain and her son Jimmy, who helps run the homey place.Regulars know to check the restaurant’s Facebook page for specials such as handcut chicken fingers and Chicken Parmesan. Regular items include such all-American favorites as burgers, barbecue and fried chicken.“There are some people who eat with us every day,” Marsha says.“I came all the way from Dalton,” customer Tommy Sisk says. “My favorite item on the menu is the pork chops. But no special is a bad special.”“We’ve survived here 17 years,” says Jimmy. “Even when times were tough, we didn’t let quality slip. During the 2007 recession, we decided we would rather go out with a great product than survive with a bad one.”
Fresh Pot Cafe sits in a Highway 153 strip mall in Hixson, flanked by Planet Fitness on one side and Cash Advance on the other. Electronics Express is a couple of doors down, and other storefronts include a nail place, a cellphone repair shop and a coin laundry.
In other words, a strip mall that looks like a thousand other strip malls.
But when customers walk through Fresh Pot's nondescript glass front, they find a different world. The cafe's walls are painted in cheery pumpkin and white. The intoxicating scents of Ecuadorian cuisine waft from the spotless kitchen.
"The Health Department gives us a 100 perfect rating for cleanliness," chef Blanca Mullo says proudly.
Mullo and her husband, Marco Garrido, are both chefs professionally trained in Ecuador who worked in the Back Inn in the Bluff View Arts District before opening their own restaurant 2 1/2 years ago. And sure, they can put a yummy New York strip, grilled salmon or shrimp and grits plate before a customer, but the little restaurant also can deliver one of the most vibrant and tasty cuisines south of the U.S. border.
Ecuador has become something of a retirement mecca for Americans due to its gentle climate, modest cost of living and splendid mountain landscapes. But the cuisine is also a draw. Fresh Pot has one menu of Ecuadorean dishes - fried plantains, yucca fries, black quinoa, for example - to supplement its traditional American menu. For true authenticity, Mullo's mother brings a jar of Ecuadorian spice rub whenever she flies in from Ecuador.
"We are always happy to explain how dishes are cooked and how spices taste. We say when you come in here, you are part of our family - and look, you are!" Mullo says, smiling as she waves past her daughter Gabi, a former Back Inn server who helps out at Fresh Pot. Mullo's son, Diego, helps out when he is not studying to be a physical therapist at Chattanooga State Community College.
All across Chattanooga, restaurants like Fresh Pot are jewels embedded in concrete ribbons of bail bondsmen, dry cleaners, Dollar Trees and Dollar Generals, nail salons and auto parts stores. The owners are aware that many folks may drive by without noticing their business, but they also say that strip malls have advantages.
Rent is usually less expensive than a downtown hotspot, they say, and the shopping centers also draw folks running errands in neighboring stores, shoppers who may be ready for a quick bite to eat. And while some have familiar fare, several eateries offer cuisine outside of Mexican and Southern dishes. Some include Ecuadorian, Thai, Peruvian, Vietnamese, Middle Eastern and Korean.
Nor are restaurant customers worried that a strip-mall restaurant will be uncomfortably formal or packed with supercilious hipsters. When guests are relaxed, the owners say, it's easier for them to be adventurous and sample unfamiliar dishes. And owners usually are willing to make customer-requested alterations to the dishes, something higher-end and chain restaurants may not be willing to do.
"If a guest says he would prefer chicken to an Ecuadorean dish that usually uses pork, we will substitute chicken," Mullo says. "You could do that at home. You can do that here."
Singapore
It's a trait that's handy at the newly opened Cafe & Toast, a Lookout Valley restaurant offering unique Singapore cuisine, something completely unfamiliar to many in the area. Owner Johnny G.N. Chiang Sing offers the same warm family welcome as the Mullos. His wife is the chef, and relatives who've lived in Lookout Valley for years drop in to help. He and his family are eager to help Chattanoogans discover new, authentic dishes - without unnerving them.
"There is a big Vietnamese influence on Singapore cuisine. If you enjoy Vietnamese food, you'll find similar dishes," Sing says. "But we also make dishes that are unique to Singapore."
He apologizes for not having all the English words in his vocabulary to give his food a fully faceted description, but among the offerings are grilled and seared shrimp rubbed and heaped with a secret spice and herb paste that includes basil, lemongrass, cumin and garlic.
Cooking is almost genetic for Sing.
"My parents were famous for the crispy noodle cart they managed in Singapore for years," he says, pointing to a framed article on the wall about his parents that ran in Singapore's biggest English language daily newspaper, The Straits Times.
"They also owned a Hong Kong restaurant," he continues. "I learned cooking from them. My wife learned from her family."
On a recent weekday, Sequatchie Cove Farm and Creamery owner Padgett Arnold is enjoying a bowl of pho - rice noodle soup with herbs and meat.
"I drive back and forth through Lookout Valley all the time. I was running an errand in the mall here and drove past this place and I wanted to try Singapore cuisine," Arnold says as she photographs the pho and pops it on her Facebook page.
"I am not one of those people who photographs her lunch and expects her friends to find it interesting," she insists, laughing. "But this is so delicious, I have to spread the word. I'll be back."
Thai
Thai Esan is wedged into a strip center named Town Square on Ringgold Road, sharing the center with a tax preparer, a couple of check-cashing places and bushinesses that wash dogs. Walk up to the restaurant door and you'll find a menu full of fresh-made dishes.
"We make the Thai sausage right here and all the curries - green, red, yellow - are freshly made here," says owner and chef Khamsing Khonchardy. "And the menu is not the whole story. I make lots of genuine Thai dishes that aren't on the menu."
Chattanoogans who have vacationed or lived in Thailand call him to describe a dish they tasted in Thailand, sometimes a snack cooked on a vendor's cart. Khonchardy usually knows immediately what dish they are trying to remember.
"And I can make it for them right away," he says.
Set back from the road a bit, Thai Esan is hard to see as cars whiz by, but it's gaining fans via social media.
"I hope more people find us," Khonchardy says. "If they find us once, I know they will be happy to come back again."
El Salvador
La Bendicion (The Blessing) Pupuseria Salvadorena, located in a shopping center in Dalton, Ga., has authentic dishes from El Salvador, and owner Olga Martinez says she likes having a location with plenty of parking. Customer have no trouble finding her restaurant, she says.
But they may have a problem finding someone on the staff who's fluent in enough English to help navigate the Spanish-language menu, which makes ordering something of a dining adventure.
Among the dishes are pupusa, a puffy cloud-like creation made from cornmeal and serving the same purpose as a tortilla. It is filled with spinach, chicken or queso and spices. The buds and flowers of loroco, a green plant described as tasting like a cross between broccoli and squash, also are used in pupusas.
Contact Lynda Edwards at ledwards@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6391.