Papa’s Kitchen is an ad hoc commissary for many who work at the nearby Savannah River Site, which produces tritium for glow-in-the-dark watches and hydrogen bombs. It also is a small-town café frequented by locals, truckers traveling Atomic Road, and food-focused explorers who seek the upfront service and square meals of an American diner.
Outside, it doesn’t look like a restaurant. It could be a shed for keeping tractors and other heavy farm equipment. Other than a small neon sign in the window that blinks “OPEN,” it does nothing to attract customers.
Inside is another story: a cheerfully decorated little place where walls display slogans both silly and religious, and staffers greet familiar customers by name, making it their business to welcome strangers. Run by Jessica Davenport, whose father, Andy Virella (Papa) started the business in 2017, Papa’s Kitchen is a family enterprise that can feel like a family gathering.
The exterior and interior of Papa’s Kitchen
I’m nothing like a close relation, but when I walked in last month after a few years’ absence, waitress Jasmine Strang smiled as if she was a long-gone cousin and took me to the seat I had occupied two years before (at a table with good light for taking pictures), then brought the sweet tea she knew was my preferred beverage. When she delivered lunch of fried chicken and French fries, she said, “I know you don’t want ketchup,” recalling that I waved it away the last time she took care of me. I wish I could remember details of my life as well as Jasmine Strang does!
Not to disparage ketchup, but I suspect that a devoted French-fry lover would have a look at Papa’s fries and banish all potato enhancements except salt and pepper. They are beautiful, slender, skin-on standard cuts, many of them soft, a few droopy; and woven among the tangle are a few crisp twigs.
Danny Double Burger and chili cheeseburger
Good as the French fries are, they will be eclipsed if you get them with one of Papa’s extremely well-dressed hamburgers. Even the basic Papa Burger rises high on the plate when it is adorned with the usual lettuce, tomato, pickles, and grilled onions and presented on a puffy buttered bun. Order the immense, two-patty Danny Double Burger, which comes with all the same accoutrements, but twice as many of them (plus gobs of cheese), and you’ll barely see potatoes in the background. Beefy chili so dominates a chili cheeseburger that Papa’s elegant French fries aren’t up to the task of supportive side dish. In this case, barrel-shaped Tater Tots do the job.
A folksy menu with easy-wipe laminated pages features display ads for local enterprises: a septic service, an attorney, a welding company, and retirement insurance. Here you find country-fried steak, a dish that wins my heart even if I am obliged to describe it as an unnatural disk of fatty, pulverized meat in a brittle crumb wrap. As an unrepentant blue plate special smothered by 30-weight brown gravy, it won’t earn praise from a cardiologist, but it does satisfy in an illicit way that reminds me of deep-fried pork belly.
Right: Country-fried steak
Chalked onto a blackboard at the back of the dining room is a list of dishes that the waitstaff will assemble from what they call the hot bar. Choices can be as impressive as a full-blown Lowcountry boil or as homespun as chicken pot pie.
The menu board includes a roster of side dishes, among which are mashed potatoes with a sneaky shot of pepper (white pepper, so you don’t see it), mac-and-cheese that’s also got a faint pepper surprise among its soft noodles, and collard greens so brightly seasoned that added vinegar would be redundant. Field peas somehow realign my sensory system in such a crazy way that eating them delivers pleasure that is distinctly olfactory, like the sweet, smoky smell of new leather. To be clear: I am not saying they taste like leather! They taste rich and earthy … like good field peas.
Mid-week, the local legend known as Meechi BakinFORAiken brings cakes for dessert. I have forked up bright green Key Lime cake, nut-speckled carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, and pecan-pie pound cake, all of which are artisan-bakery exceptional. Recently I stopped in for lunch on Monday, when the cake hadn’t yet been delivered. Jessica Davenport offered to fry me up a packaged honey bun and top it with ice cream—a typically hospitable Papa’s Kitchen gesture, but one we both knew could not make up for the missing Meechi cake.
Right: Carrot cake
Papa’s Kitchen: 446 Steed Street, Jackson, South Carolina, 803-393-1211
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