INGALLS — In the quiet sleepy towns between Kalmia, NC and Ingalls, is an abandoned famous restaurant known for American and Chinese food. Residents in the Mitchell and Avery counties particularly knew its roots and the story of how it was named.

One might not know it started in a different location below Joe Howell’s store coming toward Spruce Pine, known as the Rock House Grill before and eventually came to its permanent spot at Riverhill Road. It sat at a pivotal point as one side was dry and one wet (and I’m not talking weather.)

Ramey and Essie Beam had a bar and grill in approximately the late 1930s. My aunt knew about the place because she lived in Brushy Creek and I remember the family saying the steaks were wonderful. I tried to talk with a family member to get more of their stories but was declined the interview, so I’m going on what I knew as a child growing up in the 50s and our family going there all the time off and on until my late teens.

As the restaurant became known for good food, one thing I remember about it was the salad with the special secret dressing, with always a green olive on top. Our family sat in the very back in a circular table big enough to hold a family of six, then later seven. Essie hated to see us coming because two of the boys would sneak out and look at her chicken coop behind the restaurant and they wanted to set the chickens free to fly away, they thought. She would run out and yell, ”Oh no, you Duncan kids!”

I usually went upstairs where they had an open living room with a color TV and watched it. Sometimes Essie would come up and watch it with me, but my older brother and I liked to stay at the table staring at the big round jukebox on the wall behind us. It would light up with such beautiful colors made of cut glass, almost psychedelic, but no music came out of it though.

Later, it became what it was best known for when one of the girls married into a Chinese family and decided to offer Chinese food. That’s when it became, ”Beams American Chinese” restaurant. Now, most of us had never experienced Chinese food, but our family fell in love with it immediately and ordered take out all the time as teens.

My sister played a trick on a friend of ours who was our dinner guest. She told him the little packet of mustard was sweet and that you had to put a lot on to taste it. It was actually the hot mustard and he grabbed everything he could drink at the time to cool his mouth off.

She loved the sweet and sour soup and egg rolls and in her teen years, Richard Eng, the part owner’s, nieces became her friends. She spent the night with them and said they woke up early Saturday to go to the restaurant to roll the egg rolls! Even though the egg rolls and moo goo gai pan and egg drop soup were favorites, you could never go wrong because “everything” was wonderful thanks to Richard Eng the cook, family member, and eventual owner.

As nostalgic as the place was, it entertained many a celebrity, including Billy Graham and his wife Ruth, Lloyd Bridges, and Lulu Belle and Scotty Wiseman, just to name a few. But it was known throughout the US and was actually a Jeopardy question, saying it was the best Chinese restaurant in America.

It had its heyday for many decades and it is sad to see its remains off of 19E and the famous sign now gone. Like everything else, it must come to an end. But as for the family that lived there and ran it, there were no harder workers, I assure you that! Ramey lived to be in his eighties and Essie in her nineties, and both are buried in cemeteries in Avery County, but my memories will always live on as I remember the nuances of the people that ran one of the most successful American and Chinese restaurants in the country.