Phila Hach facts for kids

Phila Hach (born Phila Rawlings, June 13, 1926 – December 2, 2015) was a famous American chef, restaurant owner, and caterer. She wrote 17 cookbooks, including recipe collections for big events like the 1982 World's Fair and places like Opryland USA and Cracker Barrel restaurants. People called her the "grand dame of Southern cooking" because she was so important to it. She was even friends with famous people like Duncan Hines and Julia Child.

Phila Hach cooked for many important events, including those for the United Nations, U.S. mayors, governors, military groups, and celebrities. She was also one of the pastry chefs at the wedding of Princess Diana.

When she was young, Phila worked as a flight attendant on international flights. She was so determined that she convinced chefs in top European hotels to let her learn in their kitchens. She wanted to see how fancy French kitchens worked. Phila Hach also hosted the first cooking show ever shown on TV in the southern U.S. It was on WSM-TV in Nashville from 1950 to 1956 and won her an award.

In 2009, Hach won the "Silver Spoon Award" from Food Arts Magazine. In 2015, she won the Ruth Fertel "Keeper of the Flame Award." This award is given each year to a person who has made a big, often unnoticed, contribution to food. Phila Hach was also a main speaker at large events, including the Culinary Institute of America. A Southern food writer named Betty Fussell once said that what the "Grand Ole Opry" did for country music, Phila Hach did for Southern food.

Early Life and Learning to Cook

Phila Hach was born in Nashville, Tennessee. Her parents, Sophia and Arthur Lee Rawlings, owned inns. Her mother, who was from Switzerland, also worked for the U.S. Government during the Great Depression. Her job was to provide hot lunches to schools.

When Phila was a teenager, from 1942 to 1944, she spent her summers learning from a Hungarian chef. This chef worked at a summer resort called the Lookout Mountain Hotel in Chattanooga. Phila said he taught her two important things: "not to waste anything, and to start with fabulous ingredients." She earned a degree in music from Ward-Belmont College in Nashville. She also got a bachelor's degree in foods and nutrition from Vanderbilt University in 1949.

In her twenties, Phila became a flight attendant for American Airlines and Pan Am. She flew on international routes. In the late 1940s, this was seen as a very exciting job for young women. Airlines looked for young, attractive women who were the right height and weight and were not married. The airlines treated their flight attendants very well. On her flight layovers, Phila was able to stay in beautiful hotels in Europe.

Phila visited the kitchens of famous hotels like the Savoy Hotel in London and the Georges V in Paris. She would ask the chefs there if she could cook with them. Because she was so good at getting access, she learned cooking techniques that gave her food a "worldly touch." She combined her airline experience with her love for cooking to create one of the first guides for making food for airline flights. Even in 2009, Phila Hach's company was still making 30,000 meals a year for military planes flying out of Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. She once said, "When I started in the food business with the airlines, there were no women. It was a man's world."

Her Own Television Show

When television came to Nashville in 1950, the new WSM Television Channel 4 needed shows to put on the air. Within a few months, the station hired Phila Hach to create a cooking show. This made her the first woman to host a television show in the southern U.S. The show Phila led was called "Kitchen Kollege."

For the 30-minute show, she chose Martha Mormon as her assistant. Martha was an African-American woman from Detroit who had worked as a maid at the TV station. She became the first Black woman to appear on television in the southern U.S. Phila and Martha put on the show every weekday for the next five years. During this time, Phila still worked as a flight attendant on weekends. The show was very popular with viewers. People loved the funny mistakes and surprises that often happened on live TV back then. Famous guests on the show included Roy Acuff, Minnie Pearl, June Carter Cash, and Duncan Hines.

Building a Business and Helping Others

During one of her flight layovers in Paris, Phila met a young businessman named Adolph Hach, Jr. He was a wealthy tobacco exporter from the United States who had studied at the Sorbonne. Two years later, after he had returned to his home in Clarksville, Tennessee, he saw her again. This time, he saw her on television doing her cooking show! He wrote to her, they met, and a romance began. They got married in Clarksville in October 1955. Their wedding was a big event with a party for 1,000 guests.

Phila described her husband as a "darling, fabulous man who spoke five languages." He asked her to stop working in television and flying, and she asked him to sell his tobacco business. After they both agreed, they went on a year-long honeymoon, traveling all over the world. Then they settled in Tennessee to build their dream: an inn like the ones in Europe. It was first called "Hachland Hall Bed and Breakfast" and was located in Clarksville, Tennessee. Soon after opening, they started serving lunch and dinner, and it became a full inn in 1963.

The Hachs later added Hachland Hill Vineyard on a 90-acre property in nearby Joelton, Tennessee. This was used for company events. They also built the Spring Creek Inn next to the vineyard. In 2005, they sold the first Hachland Hall in Clarksville. They then created a new "Hachland Hill" at the Joelton location. This new place could serve up to 1,500 guests by 2009.

Phila Hach often appeared on talk shows, in newspaper articles, and gave speeches. Even with a young son at home, she hosted a radio show from her kitchen. She became friends with political leaders and celebrities. Famous people like Oprah Winfrey and Henry Kissinger came to her inns. Phila said, "Small inns and bed and breakfasts are where people get back to earth, where they have a home experience."

Fun Stories and Helping Others

In 1976, the Governor of Tennessee and the Mayor of Nashville invited 1600 important people from the United Nations to visit Tennessee. Senator Howard Baker chose Phila Hach to cater the event. She decided that mint juleps should be served. However, alcohol was not allowed at the party's location, Nashville's Centennial Park. Phila arranged for Tennessee State Troopers to secretly transport cases of Jack Daniels' Whiskey from Lynchburg. Under the cover of darkness, she made the juleps at a nearby Coca-Cola bottling plant! During the visit, Phila gave her cookbooks to each of the delegates. In return, she asked them to send her their favorite local recipes. They sent her letters and recipes from all over the world, which Phila later put into her book, "Phila Hach's United Nations Cookbook."

Another Tennessee Governor, Lamar Alexander, hosted a dinner for Roots author Alex Hailey. Phila Hach catered this dinner. Guests commented on how the house smelled just like freshly baked pies. The truth was, the original pies didn't show up! This forced Phila to go to a nearby grocery store, take over the kitchen, and bake enough pies for 300 guests.

In the early 1950s, the General Electric Co. sent Phila Hach an electric mixer. She used it on her television show for the very first time. When she put it into a bowl of egg whites, eggs splattered everywhere! She said, "It was just funny. They thought it was supposed to be funny...the show was such fun and such a fiasco."

In her later years, Phila Hach became interested in helping refugees from Iraq, Iran, and Kurdistan. Through Nashville's International Center for Empowerment, she helped organize cooking classes for these new immigrants.

Phila Hach passed away on December 2, 2015, at 89 years old, after battling colon cancer. Her son, Joseph Karl Hach, continues to run the Hachland Hill properties today.

Phila Hach Cookbooks

• From Phila with Love, Hachland Hill Recipes: Nashville's Famous Caterer Shares her Secrets (1973)
• Kountry Cooking (1974)
• Kitchen Kollege Recipes (1975)
• Phila Hach's United Nations Cookbook (1976)
• Hachland Hill Recipes: From Phila with Love (1980)
• The Official Knoxville, Tennessee World's Fair Cookbook, 1982 (1981)
• Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Vol I (1983)
• Plantation Recipes and Kountry Kooking: The Official Cookbook of Opryland U.S.A. (1983)
• Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores: Old Fashion Intentions (1983)
• Old Timey Recipes and Proverbs to Live By (1984)
• Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Celebrates American Holidays Vol. II (1985)
• Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores: Recipes Specially Selected, Compiles, & Edited for Cracker Barrel, Vol II (1985)
• Tennessee Cooks for Company (1986)
• Homecoming Cookbook: Famous Parties, People, Places (1986)
• Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Recipes and Health Secrets to Make You Live Longer Vol. III (1990)
• Global Feasting Tennessee Style (1996)
• Red Gold Simply Delicious Recipes (1999)