Dry Pond Cafe-Stuart-Wins Blue Ridge Country Award
September 24, 2012
Dry Pond Cafe Wins Blue Ridge Country award for the "Ju-Ju" Burger. See this story.
Congratulations to Patrick County, Virginia's Dry Pond Cafe and their Ju-Ju Burger for winning Blue Ridge Country Magazine's Foodie Tour Part 2 series. Patrick County is now in the running to win a feature article in Blue Ridge Country Magazine's feature article for their Jan/Feb 2013 issue. Final Four voting begins today, September 24, 2012. To vote for the Dry Pond Cafe, go to http://forms.blueridgecountry.com/foodieballot.
The article that was published in last months issue follows.
Happy Reading,
Denise Stirewalt
Administrative Professional
County of Patrick
Patrick County, VA: Dry Pond Cafe’s Ju-Ju Burger
My quest for oddly named hamburgers took us to the Dry Pond Café in Patrick County, Va., near the North Carolina line, despite the best efforts of our GPS device to steer us into someone’s driveway.
“GPS’s don’t work very good around here,” says regular customer Patsy Oakley, who remembers when there actually was a pond at Dry Pond – a “swampy thing,” she calls it, that eventually dried up.
The Dry Pond Café is a business without a sign. Nothing on Highway 103 says you’re there. The restaurant’s name is only painted on two windows.
“It’s a little brick building,” owner Shvonda Cockram tells me over the phone as we plan our trip to Patrick County.
“You’d think it was a house. It’s a pretty big business considering how small it is and no sign.”
Dry Pond Café is the home of the Ju-Ju Burger. Its name was a child’s term of endearment.
Cockram’s parents owned the café from 1996 to 2010. “The kids my mama used to babysit called my dad, Junior Lankford, Ju-Ju,” she says. “He died in 2005, and we’ve kept the name of the burger in his memory.”
A Ju-Ju Burger is a bacon double cheeseburger – a half pound of meat and two pieces of cheese.
While cooks at the Dry Pond Café construct Ju-Ju Burgers, they’re also smashing baked potatoes with a wooden mallet and loading them with cheese, bacon, ham, grilled onions, peppers and mushrooms.
Meanwhile, Bonnie Brown is making intensely colored sweet potato pie out of fresh sweet potatoes.
The Dry Pond Café is easy to overlook, but for travelers through this part of Virginia seeking good food and fellowship with local folks, it’s a must stop.
The Dry Pond Café, 2156 Dry Pond Highway, near Stuart, Va., 276-694-6055.
