TOP IT OFF The Grind Mac and Cheese Burger Bar is a delicious, over-the-top dining experience BY LISA SAVAGE
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Friends Alyssa Smith, left, and Carly Arant look over the menu at The Grind in Martin, Tennessee.
he burgers are outrageous: One uses doughnuts for the bun, and another is topped with a deep-fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The milkshakes are over-the-top: They are at least a foot high and covered with unconventional toppings like chicken and waffles.
The Grind Mac and Cheese Burger Bar is fun, packed full of energy, and one of the newest restaurants in Martin, Tennessee. It attracts folks from as far away as Memphis, Nashville, Paducah and St. Louis. Most of the unique creations are the ideas of Alan Laderman, who opened the restaurant with his parents, Mark and Lisa Laderman, a year ago. “It’s a place to have fun and enjoy some amazing food,” says Mark Laderman. “We do some wacky stuff.” The Ladermans knew five years ago they wanted to open a restaurant that was different. Mark and Lisa Laderman had worked in the restaurant industry for someone else just about all their adult lives. They met while working at a steakhouse in Martin when they were 16 years old and have been together ever since. It was a dream to have their own place when they opened Sammies — slang for “sandwiches” — in 2012. They opened a second location in 2014. Everything is freshly made, never frozen, and it’s been very successful, Mark Laderman says. “But it isn’t the kind of food I want to eat every day,” he says. “We wanted to open a burger bar with deep-fried deliciousness.” So they pursued the dream. Alan Laderman loves to cook and taught himself over the past
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15 years. With his parents’ experience in restaurant management, the family teamed up to open The Grind Mac and Cheese Burger Bar. It’s next door to Sammies on Lovelace Street.
WHAT’S IN A NAME While brainstorming for the name, they wanted to play off the burgers and have a theme. “We thought about what’s important and decided one thing is the grind of the meat,” says Alan Laderman. “We also have a lot of nostalgia that dates back to the late ’80s and early ’90s when the phrase ‘Munchin’ on some Grindage’ was popular.” The Ladermans also knew what it was like to grind to get where they are. They wanted the bar to be a place for others to relax after the daily grind. “We brought everything we could to the table,” Mark Laderman says. “We wanted everything to be amazing and over-the-top, and we wanted to be able to give people something they’ve never had before.” He wanted the service and hospitality to be top-notch as well. He didn’t have a specific plan, but one day, “Bohemian Rhapsody” came on the radio in the restaurant. The servers started singing, and the customers soon joined in. “It was like a scene out of ‘Wayne’s World’ happening in our restaurant,” Mark Laderman says. “And it was done spontaneously.” WK&T Telecommunications Cooperative
