Restaurant Scene: Plating for perfection at St. John’s Restaurant in Chattanooga

“There’s one that likes to tug at your belt loop,” sous chef Philippe Van Grit said about a certain “ghost” as he meticulously sliced a 15-pound Alaskan halibut the size of a doormat into smaller 5 ounce-ish fillets.

Van Grit, originally from San Francisco, started his odyssey into food and beverage via Napa Valley, California, doing front-of-house duties before creeping into the kitchen where he “felt more at home with the hooligans.”

Executive chef Patrick Sawyer backs up Van Grit’s claim of paranormal activity inside St. John’s Restaurant, telling me about one night when a champagne flute fell out of nowhere and crashed to the ground into countless shards. Before the other prep cook, Tony “The Butcher” Miralles, could chime in with his ghost encounter, I changed the subject to Wu-Tang Clan.

I’m not one to delve into supernatural conspiracy theories, but there’s no way this place doesn’t have ghosts from the past lingering around. During its illustrious 109-year life, it accommodated the upper crust, the underbelly and everything in between: railroad tycoons, bootleggers, vagabonds, silver screen starlets, murderers, pimps etc. If these walls could talk, they simply wouldn’t just talk, they’d whisper, chuckle and scream — in secret, in jubilance or in fear.