Big Bad Breakfast

Acclaimed chefs don’t usually apply their talents to the meal practically everyone loves, breakfast. Not so for John Currence, the 2009 recipient of the James Beard Award for Best Chef South. He proves it at casual, moderately priced and quite tasty restaurants called Big Bad Breakfast in eight states. The original is in Oxford, Mississippi, but perhaps the most notable one is in tiny South Pittsburg, Tennessee, west of Chattanooga.

This location is noteworthy because it is attached to the Lodge Cast Iron Foundry and Museum. The destination tells the story of cast iron cookware, so having a meal where cookware sold internationally is manufactured takes on special significance. The museum’s most talked-about display is the World’s Largest Cast Iron Skillet. The behemoth is 12 feet in diameter, 2.5 feet deep and 18 feet long and weighs 14,360 pounds. If a heating element could be found to hold its weight, it could fry approximately 650 eggs.

Currence, of course, thinks of quality, not quantity. He drew on his Louisiana roots and kitchen experience in locations as diverse as a tugboat in the Gulf of Mexico to white-tablecloth restaurants in New Orleans for Big Bad Breakfast. He says he wants everything possible — biscuits, bacon, jellies, grits, just everything — to be made from scratch and come from carefully chosen suppliers. The goal was to elevate breakfast from the norm, giving guests who want something new a taste above a regular plate of scrambled eggs. 

That’s why menu hits include the Fried Shrimp Scramble, the Huevos Rancheros Grit Bowl and the Biscuit “Crumble” (a crumbled buttermilk biscuit, grits, tomato gravy, crumbled bacon, eggs and scallions). The Lodge location is the only one to offer the Cornbread Omelet, which honors South Pittsburg’s annual National Cornbread Festival. Wander the museum, then come hungry for breakfast or lunch. 220 Third St., South Pittsburg, Tennessee 37380, 423/228-5220, bigbadbreakfast.com