When Dennis Kinsey took over as head chef at The Honors Course 33 years ago, his biggest challenge was getting the members of the Ooltewah golf club to stick around for a meal. To be sure, getting golfers to come to play the stunningly beautiful course was not a problem, but they were not impressed with the overly fancy items on the menu, which didn’t even include a sandwich of any kind, for heaven’s sake.
“You have to have chicken and tuna salad in the South, or you might as well close,” Kinsey says.
The course, which opened in 1983, had two highly trained “Yankee” chefs before Kinsey, and founder Jack Lupton was ready to give it one more try – or make a drastic decision.
“It was hemorrhaging money, the kitchen was, and when Mr. Lupton hired me, he said I had to either turn it around or he’d close it down,” Kinsey recalls.
Kinsey did turn it around, in part thanks to a chance encounter between four of the members – Ed Jolley, Mickey Soloff, Jerry Bogo and Bill Price – and kitchen staffer Mary Jane Brown, who was eating lunch on the patio.