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BJ’s Diner and McWatering Hole add flavor to Ashville’s food and beverage mix

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Graham Hadley and submitted

Two women returning to their rural roots now run businesses in Ashville, one serving coffee and sweet treats, the other full Southern meals. Bonita Johnson and Ashley McWaters are part of the growing list of female-owned businesses now thriving in the city.

Johnson opened BJ’s Diner in Ashville Plaza on U.S. 231 in January. It was the brainchild of her husband, Darrin, who saw it as a way to repay her for all she did for him during a lengthy illness a few years ago.

“My husband has been a chef for 30 years,” Johnson says. “He was at Flemming’s, Perry’s and other upscale places around Birmingham. Chef Dee is his professional name, and I met him when he worked at Whole Foods on Highway 280. At Whole Foods, you picked your own foods from the grocery section, and he prepared it for you. I would not eat there when he wasn’t cooking. He stopped working there in 2017.”

When they met, she told him she would be rich one day and would hire him to cook for her. “He said he would cook for me for free,” she points out. They married in 2017, and within three or four days of their wedding, Darrin went into kidney failure. Bonita nursed him back to health.

The couple lived in Birmingham during the first few years they were married but wanted to get back to their rural roots. “I’m from Boligee, and he’s from Greenville,” she says. “We live in Oneonta now.”

Their hallmark is Southern foods made from scratch using as many locally sourced ingredients as possible. “Our recipes are from watching our grandmothers cook and tweaking their recipes,” Johnson says. “We buy fresh foods as much as possible, and our goal is to serve no canned foods at all. Our salmon croquettes are from canned salmon, but the croquettes are made by hand. We are connected with local growers on Sand Mountain, in Blount County, and at area farmers’ markets.”

Their entrees and veggies change daily, except for one particular dish. “The only thing that does not change is the ‘liquid gold,’ which is our mac-and-cheese,” Johnson says. “We always have some kind of greens and some kind of beans, too.”

Other dishes include meatloaf, beef stew, fried or blackened catfish filets, fried or blackened Gulf shrimp, catfish nuggets, grilled or fried pork chops and D’s Crack Fried Chicken. They serve traditional sides such as potato salad, corn or onion hushpuppies, garlic mashed potatoes and several types of greens, plus their own Hawaiian coleslaw, which has pineapples in it. Desserts include peach cobbler and banana pudding. They’ll soon be adding homemade ice cream to that mix.

They start prepping as early as 8 a.m. “This isn’t fast food,” Johnson says. “It takes time to hand-cut fries. It takes four hours to make our chicken and dumplings because we roll out our own dough. We also make chicken and dressing. Our veggie menu changes depending on which fresh ones we can get that day. We do have to import some due to seasonality.”

She says Darrin does not season vegetables with meat but has his own special seasonings. He prepares purple potatoes when they can get them out of Pennsylvania.

BJ’s is decorated like an old-timey diner, too, from vintage tin signs advertising RC Cola, Dr. Pepper, Shoney’s Big Boy and various old service stations. She has a juke box on order. The diner seats 75 people and has truck parking available. A big sign is slated to go up next to the road soon.

The printing on BJ’s door says, “Open 7 days a week,” but in truth, it isn’t open every Sunday. “We’re here one Sunday per month,” Johnson says. “We put a sign on the door and post on our Facebook page which Sunday.”

Employees are part-timers who the Johnsons consider family. They also like to bring their customers into the family fold. “It’s not about the dollar, it’s about family,” Johnson says. “We want to know not just how they like our burgers, but did they get that job or raise and, ‘How are your babies?’”

Sometimes customers will give them money to pay for other peoples’ meals when those folks cannot afford to eat. “Sometimes people come in to use the restroom or get a glass of water, for example, and we feed them.” She has dubbed this the Mathew 25:35 Initiative because that passage of Scripture reads, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.”

The Johnsons don’t want anyone to leave their diner hungry or thirsty.

BJ’s is open Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:30 a.m. until 8:30 p.m.; Wednesdays from 10:30 a.m. until 4 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays from 10:30 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. The one-Sunday-per-month hours will be posted on their Facebook page and on their front door.

The McWatering Hole a local favorite

Ashley McWaters worked as a dispatcher in the St. Clair County Sheriff’s office in Pell City for 13 years. Born, raised and residing in Ashville, every time she passed by the old Canoe Creek Coffee location on U.S. 231 South in Ashville, she would mutter to herself, “That place really needs to re-open.” One day, she decided she would make that happen. And that’s how the McWatering Hole was born.

“I love this town, and I wanted to be back (working) in Ashville,” she says. “I love to cook, and I like to love people with food. Coming home, seeing people I know and went to school with, keeps me smiling all the time.”

Although not a barista, Ashley has learned through experimentation over the two years she has been open. Her Hot Mama, for example, is an espresso named in honor of her mom, Misty Pruitt, because the latter never drank coffee until a few years ago and would not drink espresso at all because it sounded too bitter. “This one contains Americano coffee with caramel sauce and cheesecake syrup, and a dash of heavy cream,” Ashley explains. She uses only Red Diamond Coffee because it’s local. (The plant is in Moody.)

She offers a Red Bull Refresher for people who don’t like coffee. It contains coconut water and Red Bull in flavors such as Dessert Pear and Blue Raspberry. “It’s a caffeine kick, but you are hydrating as well,” she says.

Blueberry muffins, sweet and savory scones, sausage balls and mini-quiches top her list of edibles to go along with the 20-40 cups of coffee she sells per day. She uses local blueberries for her muffins and features seasonal flavors such as pumpkin scones in the fall. Right now, her seasonal feature is lemonade poppyseed muffins.

 “Our sausage balls sell out every day,” she says. “They are about the size of a meatball, and one serving is seven or eight balls, depending on their size that day.” The size varies because she and her mom eyeball everything during preparation. “We don’t use a scoop,” she says. “We stop when our ancestors tell us to stop.”

She developed her menu through trial and error, not knowing what would sell until she tried it. Most of her recipes came from her own home, and many had been in her family for two or three generations. “Momma cried the first time she remembered making some of these recipes with her grandmother,” Ashley says of her primary employee. “I remember making some with my own grandmother, too.”

Her best-selling sweets are the banana pudding cookies, which require an early-rising customer to sample because they’re gone by 9:30. “Mom and I had been saying if we ever opened a shop, we would sell these,” she says.

She used to serve sandwiches, making the chicken salad filling from her mom’s recipe. But they didn’t sell as well as the sweets, and she frequently had too many left over at the end of the day. “We sold sandwiches for the first six months, then went back to the basics,” she says. “That has worked.”

The newest additions to the menu are the mini-quiches. She makes them in a muffin tin on alternate days than her sausage balls, so she always has something savory on the menu.

As for decor, several tables made by the owner of Canoe Creek Coffee remain, because Ashley didn’t want to erase their imprint from the shop. She has added a vintage record player that is awaiting a new needle and felt pad before it can play those vinyls again. “It’s a 1948 model,” she says. “That’s the year my Maw-Maw was born.”

Weekday clientele consists of locals, while on weekends she gets more interstate traffic. That was boosted when she got the shop listed on Yelp!, Google Maps and I-Exit. “People look up ‘coffee shop near me,’ and we pop up,” she says.Employees besides Ashley and her mom are Meghan Frondorf and on some weekends when Ashley needs a day off, her niece, 16-year-old Kiki Walker. “We’re a family-run business,” Ashley says.

In addition to drinks and treats, she sells logo tees, crystal jewelry by local resident Cody Syler, who owns Unicorn Man Crystals; hair bows by Ashley Mills of Beauty from Ashes; and potted cacti from Terri Goolsby. “Terri is doing a project to catch, spay and neuter stray cats,” Ashley says of Goolsby, another local vendor. “Her proceeds go to her Shoal Creek Community Cat Project.”

She keeps crayons and games to occupy children who come in with their parents or grandparents. During the school year, her own two kids can be seen coloring or studying, because she home schools them and takes them to work with her. “My kids get to see me doing something I love and to see my dream become a reality,” she says. “It lets them know they can do whatever they want in life.”

The McWatering Hole, 36245 U.S. 231, is open Tuesday – Saturday, 7 a.m. – 1 p.m.

Story by Carol Pappas
Submitted photos

It has not even been a year yet since Pell City Square opened and already, predictions and promises are right on target.

Two new eating places are about to call Pell City home – one a national brand sit-down restaurant and the other a national fast-food chain.

Whataburger is already under construction on an outparcel near the south end of Pell City Square and is expected to open in a few months. Outback Steakhouse is clearing ground to make way for its arrival in late 2024 or early 2025 on an outparcel next to it.

Whataburger was founded in 1950 in Corpus Christi, Texas. As its history of its name goes, the aim was to serve a hamburger so big it would take two hands to hold it and after a single bite, the customer would say, “What a burger!”  

From that single stand the chain grew to more than 890 locations across the country.

Construction on Pell City’s newest addition to the dining scene began about three months ago, according to Pell City Manager Brian Muenger. “They’re moving at a pretty good pace,” he said, noting that the storefront is already in. Company officials projected opening would be in the third or fourth quarter of 2024. “They’re definitely on pace to hit that.”

Meanwhile, excavation work has begun on Outback in preparation for the company’s general contractor to begin the build. Projections call for opening in the fourth quarter of 2024 or first quarter of 2025.

The Outback project has been much anticipated. The city, in its agreement to lease the property, required location of a national sit-down family restaurant, preferably a steakhouse. “Outback is a very established brand,” said Muenger. “This is a new type of restaurant for the city. We don’t have a name brand out there.”

Outback’s location of a 187-seat restaurant in Pell City should serve as a signal to other corporate restaurants to follow suit.

The Australian-themed restaurant began in 1988 in Tampa and is owned by Bloomin Brands, which operates Carrabba’s Italian Grill, Bonefish Grill and Flemings Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar.

It is the latest economic boost in what officials had envisioned for the city when it assumed ownership of the old St. Clair County Hospital property.

But while the focus has been on the Pell City Square and surrounding property of late, retail and restaurant development in other areas has not stopped in areas like Vaughn Drive and Hazelwood Drive, Muenger said.  Interest is growing, and “feedback from prospects has been very strong. Looking forward, people will see a lot more of sit down dining. We’re a viable location. We’re actually working through the development process.”

It’s all part of an ongoing quest by the city, Muenger said, to grow its retail and restaurant community and “provide shopping closer to home so we can keep dollars closer to home in Pell City.”

St. Clair Economic Development Executive Director Don Smith agreed. “The city and county officials have done a great job working with everyone to bring retailers into the Pell City Square that draw from the region, and not just locally. This has opened up more potential customers coming into the city, which then grows the market so more retailers are attracted to invest in the community.”