They had a featured item on the menu, featured on the above TV show, called "Ham and Redeye gravy special". A "thick slice of tender ham, covered in redeye gravy", with hashbrowns, eggs cooked your way, and toast.
There may be different "dialects" of redeye gravy. Where I come up, we used the "Loozernanner/Georgie" version.
Grandpa told the story, assumed to be at least partially true, and as good as any, I reckon, was that redeye gravy started on the trail drives and wagon trains. The story goes that either the cook didn't have milk, or he wasn't totally sober and mistook coffee for milk. You would save meat drippings from the week. You would keep the big blue porcelein coffee pot sitting on the back of the wood stove. The coffee in there would get steadily stronger during the week, and would be boiled down to the consistency of paint by Saturday morning. You would use the meat drippings, make flour gravy with about a quarter of an inch of grease on top, using the thick coffee syrup instead of milk, followed by a couple squirts of hot sauce, and, if you had some handy, maybe a quarter cup of moonshine liquor. Then you would boil this down to the proper consistency and serve it over those big cat-head biscuits grandma made. Ham and eggs and "taters" would be the rest of the menu.
What they served as redeye gravy at the new restaurant was more like barbecue sauce with no flavor, maybe a teaspoon in all. Certainly NOTHING was "COVERED" in anything resembling redeye gravy. Real redeye gravy is greasy, bitter, spicy, dirty-tasting and an acquired taste. But it was something I loved and looked forward to every Saturday. There are many "injustices" in life we have to tolerate. But poor gravy and cold coffee are two that are intolerable.
