Phila Hach was a well-known culinary pioneer. In her younger days, the Nashville-born chef served as an American Airlines flight attendant and collected over three thousand recipes from international chefs. She hosted the first televised cooking show in the South. Hach authored seventeen cookbooks, including recipe collections for the 1982 World’s Fair, Opryland USA, and Cracker Barrel. She catered meals for members of the United Nations and even served as the pastry chef for Princess Diana’s wedding.
In the 1980s, Hach founded Hachland Hill, an eighty-acre retreat on a parcel of land in Nashville’s Paradise Hills, a remote, forested area that had been in her family for generations. Thirty-five years later, Carter Hach, who grew up cooking alongside his illustrious grandmother, took the reins as the executive chef at the inn.
In the recently published Hachland Hill Cookbook, Carter Hach celebrates his grandmother’s legacy through a story of her life and a collection of her recipes. One recipe that’s beloved among the bed-and-breakfast guests are the scones, though he admits that no batch is the same. “I have worked that recipe a million times now, with savory applications, sweet remedies, and even cornbread versions as a nod to the South,” he writes. “I make our scones on the fly, improvising with whatever is available, to create a unique treat every time in the spirit of Phila’s ‘country cooking’ philosophy.”
