The kids stopped by Bluegrass Grill on Main Street with Mom for breakfast before school. Owner Father Jonas Worsham, his wife Joan Marie, and their children Nina Rose and Ben, are shown. Click to enlarge.
photo by Hannah Campbell
The Bluegrass Grill on E. Main Street opened for its first breakfast Wednesday. Alison Krauss and Union Station music played in the corner, and I took my server’s suggestion and ordered a warm bran-carrot muffin with whipped cream on top and sat at the lunch counter.
Owners Father Jonas Worsham, an Orthodox Church in America priest, and his wife, Joan Marie, have done this before.
“I used to cook in a Greek restaurant in Ohio, and I’ve been cooking Greek food ever since, for over 30 years,” said Father Worsham, known as Father Jonas, who does all Bluegrass Grill’s cooking. His favorite food? “Gyros. I love gyros, I always have,” he said. The menu has definite Greek influence with a healthy balance of Southern food like home fries, grits and cobbler thrown in.
“I describe it as homey,” said Father Jonas. “We like that. We like people to feel at home, to come in and relax.”
“I pick out mugs for people once I get to know them,” said Mrs. Worsham, displaying her eclectic assortment of mugs.
Mrs. Worsham said Father Jonas was an Oklahoma Cherokee and she was a Navy brat when they met at church in Atlanta and got married. They opened a Brother Juniper’s restaurant there; she baked and he cooked. The Brother Juniper’s restaurant circuit, or BJ’s for short, is named after St. Francis of Assisi’s jolly little cook and serves as a Orthodox restaurant/church ministry that stretches across the nation.
Next the church sent them to Memphis where they opened another BJ’s with the help of Father Jonas’s parish. They stayed in Memphis for 13 years, and Brother Juniper’s has won numerous dining awards in Memphis, including Best of Memphis.
The Worshams made their way through a BJ’s in Charlottesville, Va., a native Alaskan boys’ boarding school in Kodiak, and a family emergency shelter in San Francisco, the Rafael House. The Rafael House owned a hospital with the kitchen in the basement, men’s and women’s floors, and a rooftop garden.
Chattanooga’s orthodox population was growing so fast the church sent Father Jonas here next. The Worshams have lived in Chattanooga for four years. Mrs. Worsham is in nursing school at Chattanooga State, she says because an RN is a valuable thing in the mission work they do.
Most of the Bluegrass Grill’s menu items were developed over the Worshams’ many years in the business. Vegetarian options abound including creative tofu, and Joan Marie’s spicy cream cheese-spinach-swiss-tomato omelet. The menu gets pretty fancy with a salmon frittata, blintzes and chorizo, but it’s like going to Paris where it’s only natural to order a delicate pastry for breakfast every day. Most full meal plates are between $5 and $7.
“We don’t have any glorified names,” said Mrs. Worsham. “I can’t do it as a server.” She said a restaurant-owner friend named a dish “lamb in a garden.”
Another specialty is home-baked bread and muffins. Bluegrass Grill caters breakfast biscuits and other items, and they bake Straun bread for the Orthodox holiday.
Bluegrass Grill is open for breakfast and lunch only, but customers can book a dinner party for $25.95 per person with at least 10 people. The Worshams will treat the group to five courses of an absolute Greek feast.
One Brother Juniper’s website described the original BJ this way: “Like Jack Benny, he's a sort of undefeated underdog. If things go well, he's pleased; if they go ill, he's delighted. BJ is, in a word, unsinkable!” Father Jonas has apparently mastered this.
Bluegrass Grill opened Tuesday at about 10:30 a.m. after the health inspector came and the power went out - twice. “But you know, you just have to roll with the punches,” said Father Jonas.