The Old Time Way - Benton's Country Ham

“Y’all smell like Benton’s,” said the waitress as we eased up to the hostess station at The Mudpuppy, a marina bar on Tellico Lake. We did smell like Benton’s, because one of us was a Benton, Darrell Benton, and we had just come from his shop where his family has been curing, smoking, and slinging ham for over 50 years.

The old waitress’ tone was tough to decipher. Was she ribbing Darrell? I couldn’t tell if she knew him. I didn’t know him. I had just arrived for a self-assigned SCOF story. I didn’t know what kind of celebrity this guy had in his home town. Was the waitress fond of the smell? The hickory smoke on our clothes was pretty pungent, but it’s the signature scent of some seriously comforting food. I got the answer to my questions later when she came by the table and told us, “Y’all tell Mr. Benton hullo for me. I worked for him for 12 years.” She knew Darrell’s father Allan, not him, and the smell had brought her back to a time when she wasn’t working in an open-air dock-side restaurant on one of the prettiest lakes in East Tennessee, and when Darrell was stuck in a radiology reading room in Knoxville trying not to think about bacon.

Darrell came back to the family business after growing up in it and leaving for a smoke-free environment. He went to medical school, got married and had a couple kids, learned how to fly fish, and maybe always knew in the back of his mind that one day he would be drawn back to the nucleus of his life, a wood stove in Madisonville. Life in that valley, it seems to me, orbits around his dad’s plume of brown smoke. Not the life that drives too fast to Gatlinburg, but the life that drives back home and gets on a four wheeler to chase sheep with a border collie.

For some, Benton’s Country Ham is a treat to be savored every once in a while, and for others, it is the foundation of their food pyramid. While we were touring the facility (no press pass required, just ask for one) Darrell showed me a package he had just received from a grateful customer who wrote in a cursive handwriting you might find on an old-timey love letter, “[I] humbly thank y’all for giving me the opportunity to be a customer. Please know my heart of gratitude. Benton’s Bacon has really helped my health.” Enclosed with the letter was a raccoon hide he had tanned, and oversized photographs of the customer with a “legendary fur trapper” named Mr. Davis (87 years old) who had taught him a lot about “the Old Time Way”.

So why do the Bentons get this kind of feedback? You’d probably come to understand if you sat on the church pew by the deli counter and watched the steady stream of hill-folk coming for their weekly sustenance. It’s because both Darrell and his dad greet them at the door, and treat them like doctors treat their patients.

Darrell’s background in medicine probably has something to do with a lifelong belief that serving people is honorable work, and his bedside manner was almost certainly cast in the mold his dad made, busting his back to move product, and never once putting profit on a pedestal. Allan only ever cared that the product was world class, and that people left his shop feeling anointed. Darrell, since 2023, is gracefully keeping those values alive – and even still doctoring a little on the side. He told me he gets asked to look at bumps and rashes at least once a week.

The ham really is a blessing. It’s being served in the best restaurants from LA to New York, and there are food fanatics everywhere now that want a piece. You can get the bacon unsmoked, smoked, thick cut, thin cut, or peppered. The country ham comes two ways – aged, or very aged (prosciutto style). If you want it any other way, all you have to do is ask. They do custom work, too, even though they definitely lose money doing it. Darrell showed us a rack of Ossabaw jowls he was aging for a chef in the low country. It’s not about the money for the Bentons. It’s all about making really good ham, and serving really good people.

Coincidentally, Dave Fason, our photographer, had his first taste of Benton’s 15 years ago, around the same time Darrell started reading SCOF. When I learned Darrell was a subscriber, and that Dave was a Benton’s fan, I knew we had to put a trip together and try to have some fun, the Old Time Way. We decided we’d fish the reservoir for carp with some long rods and Panther Branch Bugs.

Fly fishing, and the fine foods industry, are all about who you know. Our conversations weaved back and forth between the two subjects, like a water ski slalom through the names of everyone we had in common. Dave and Darrell talked about the chefs they have photographed or sold ham to, comparing notes. I chimed in every once in a while when they mentioned a restaurant I’ve been to, or a chef I’ve seen on TV. I got to add the name Trevor Stockton to my rolodex when Darrell bought me one of his miso-glazed pork chops at RT Lodge the night before fishing. It was exceptional. We also talked about our favorite fly fishermen and women, the trips we’ve taken to see them and the stories they’ve written for the magazine. Only once did a phone come out to show off a really big trout. And one other time to check a baby monitor.

Between casts, we talked about fatherhood and fishing, how the choices we made about our lives were in some ways reactive to the homes our fathers made for us. Darrell’s dad was rarely home, understandably, since he was trying to keep a business alive for the sake of a product that was too good to fail, and the sake of his family who now enjoys a better than modest amount of comfort, and a lot more time with Dad. Allan and Darrell got to visit Spain and Italy to see how their country hams are made, and are planning a trip to China for more curing recon. That time together, Darrell told me, has been redemptive. Dave, a child of divorce, flew the coop for a career in professional paintball, and spent his golden years signing autographs in France, Spain and Belgium. Now he cooks international cuisines for his COVID baby and travels to photograph like-minded people, people more similar to his father than his younger self may have liked, but can now love. I became a fish doctor, not the kind of doctor my father expected me to be, but one that he showed me I could be if I put myself out there, like he did moving to Belgium to meet my mother. The three of us fishing were global citizens, each with overlapping passions that converged at the end of a Towee skiff on Tellico Lake. It was a beautiful thing.

The willow flies were out, and the sunrise was magic the way it can only be on the west slope of the Unicoi Mountains. We thought for sure the fish would be excited for breakfast. Not as tasty as ours (bacon with fried grit cakes and jammy eggs) but plentiful and accessible. Their thick pulsing bodies rippled the surface in all directions. Some white bass were excited, but finding a carp proved difficult until we got a tip from another SCOFer who just so happened to be casting from a Hog Island in a nearby spot that I shit you not is called Bacon Bend (sorry Bobby, but the unbelievable coincidence must supersede secrecy this time). Until we couldn’t take it anymore we cast to dozens of smallmouth buffalo who were apparently too tired from their annual migration up the creek to jump on our Carp Kwans. We wound up calling it early so we could go eat more bacon. I’m telling you, it really is that good.

Back at the shop, Dave made us lunch with some 20-month prosciutto-style ham and snapped some more shots of the well smoked interior – every square inch of that building gets smoked the tags, labels, and even the merch. I sat on the famous pew and admired the quaint signage and the age of everything. Darrell answered the phone, helped customers, and filled orders at a disciplined, but not urgent tempo. Allan sat outside and listened to bear hunting stories. He still comes to the shop almost every day. I thought I saw Darrell in the back with a stethoscope at one point, but it was just a piece of rope they use to hold one of the closet doors closed. They’ve built out additional space when they’ve needed it over the years, but like everything in the mountains, they try to make what they have last as long as possible. That’s why they cure their meat, take care of their people, and feed their carp. It’s the Old Time Way.