The Fall 2022 issue of Food & Dining Magazine (#75) is now available in all the familiar places: Louisville area eateries and food shops, newsstands and online. Go here for a preview of the features, profiles and columns, with links to the new edition at issuu.
Kevin Gibson grew up in Clarksville, Indiana.
During the 1960s, Clarksville’s pancake-flat, easily transformed terrain and proximity to the interstate highway made it ideally suited to become Southern Indiana’s first iteration of what we’d now call “sprawl,” but at the time was celebrated simply as “progress.”
In culinary terms, Clarksville soon became the area epicenter for chain and franchise restaurants. One of them was Po Folks, which Kevin considers in today’s installment of “The Taste Bud.”
The Taste Bud: Revisiting Memories of Po Folks Restaurant
Who remembers Po Folks restaurant? I recently got into a conversation with a friend about the place and later decided to do a little research. You know what? Po Folks still exists.
More on that later.
For the uninitiated, Po Folks was sort of a Cracker Barrel clone and was named after the 1961 country song of the same name by artist Bill Anderson. (Interestingly, the owner of the chain didn’t acquire rights to use the name Po Folks; at one point Anderson threatened to sue the chain but later would become a spokesperson. Ain’t it great when life works out?)
Merely clink the title link to finish reading. Photo credit? That’s Po Folks.
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Kevin Gibson has been a professional writer for more than three decades, having written about restaurants, beer, bourbon, sports, night life, music and plenty more. He has won numerous awards from The Associated Press, Society of Professional Journalists and Indiana State Press Association, among others, but can’t remember where he put most of them. In addition, he has written for publications like LEO Weekly, Bourbon+ magazine, Thrillist, Alcohol Professor, Louisville Magazine and many more, including various newspapers. When he’s not busy writing books or stories about Louisville, he’s likely hanging out at a brewery with his dog, Atticus.
