Randy Rayburn

Fried Corn

Fried Corn is a published recipe by Phila Hach that’s very close to what my grandmother, Georgie Butler, made for us with the fresh corn coming from our one-acre garden on our 27-acre farm outside of Milan, Tennessee—where we grew and raised our vegetables, chicken and pork.

In 1981, I discovered Phila Hach’s restaurant/event center and home in Clarksville. My soon-to-be wife and I would drive up early on Saturday evenings for dinner and stay in one of her refurbished log cabins that dated back to the 1700s and early 1800s. We would have dinner, relax, and sleep in comfort away from the noise and grind of the restaurant world I worked in at the time. We would wake up and have brunch on her back porch made with products that came from her garden and animal pens. Pheasants, ducks, Guinea hens, goats, pigs, and others. A true menagerie of the original old school farm-to-table reality that fed me at home growing up.

We had our rehearsal dinner there for 40 people in 1983. People asked me, “Why so far away?” and I said that Phila reminded me so much of my own grandmother who raised me while mother worked—and she dressed like Granny Goose. What’s not to love?