REBEKAH TURSHEN: Cooking in Nashville since 1996

Dirty Page: Hot Cakes

photo: Andrea Behrends

Rebekah Turshen has been in the business long enough to spot a restaurant recipe the moment she sees one.

“I was looking for specific things my grandmother made,” she says of going through a collection of old family recipes. “There were all sorts of clippings and weird stuff, but one I hadn’t noticed before.”

It turns out the hot cakes recipe belonged to her maternal grandfather, Richard F. Haynes, who owned a place called Dan’s Truck Stop on Murfreesboro Pike between 1963 and 1973. While her grandfather made the hot cakes and waffles, her grandmother made the turkey and dressing.

“It’s weird thinking ‘Oh restaurants are in the family,’” she says. “I sort of forgot that for awhile. There’s also a candy shop in the family and I have a piece of marble from it.”

Rebekah has worked as a pastry chef at Nashville's City House for the past five years. And, on the morning of the Dirty Pages shoot, she made her grandfather’s hot cakes for the first time.

“It sort of connects you to a part of your history that’s gone,” she says. “I pictured he was at the stove just like I was. It’s cool to recreate things from a person who’s no longer there.”