SALT, PEPPER, AND SUGAR. They're the three seasonings Shirley Sharpe depends on to create simple, honest, straightforward food and plenty of it. Just across Route 321 from Watauga Lake, one of the nation's most beautiful bodies of water, sits a plain cinder block structure, painted white, with an add-on wooden porch, straight-back rockers, and whirring ceiling fans. Shirley and her husband Grant once sold gasoline there, but after the 1970s energy crisis, they methodically devised a plan to abandon motor oil and stock up on Crisco. And in 1990, Shirley's Home Cooking opened, with three tables.

At first, diners trickled in from Fish Springs, Hampton, Butler and Little Milligan. But as word spread about the tastes of the mountains that covered those tables, addresses in North Carolina, Virginia, England and Ireland began to appear in the purple guest book out front. And along with those addresses were plenty of exclamation points, penned in large and dark after words like "awesome" and "delicious."

Ask for your meal family style and more than a dozen bowls, plates and platters appear - your choice of two meats and every vegetable and side dish in the house.

Country ham is serious business at Shirley's. So serious, in fact, that frying it is Mary Campbell's sole responsibility. She says this is her "third ham-frying season." On the opposite side of this efficient, immaculate kitchen, Shirley's son Jeff dips boneless chicken breasts into seasoned, unbleached, self-rising White Lily Flour and plops them into an oil-filled tilt skillet that holds 65 pieces of chicken at a time.

Bottom round of beef is oven-baked in a rich soup mixture, and on Fridays, cubed steak is baked and served with a white gravy. For some diners, gravy governs the timing of trips to Shirley's. It's white on Fridays, brown from the roast beef on Saturdays. Either way, it's obligatory to scoop out a serving of real mashed potatoes, make a well with your spoon, and fill it to the running over point with gravy. Let the rich, thick liquid mingle on the plate with Doris Walsh's goldenrod-colored macaroni and cheese, cool coleslaw spiked with mayonnaise, vinegar and sugar, and a mound of ham hock-seasoned pinto and Great Northern beans.

This is food just like Shirley has served to her own family for decades, and it's food that nobly represents our Appalachian mountain heritage. One dish that always generates discussion is the cornbread salad, a moist, tart, crunchy combination of mayonnaise, ranch dressing, coleslaw dressing, tomatoes, cucumbers, green pepper, celery and onions. Corn, green beans, cooked apples, cooked cabbage and potato salad are permanent fixtures on the one-page menu.

For dessert, choices include hot fudge cake, peach cobbler, yellow cake with caramel icing and genuine banana pudding. This isn't pudding from powder. It's milk, eggs, sugar and flour, with a final flourish of meringue. Banana pudding too often suffers from shortcuts and compromises, but Shirley Sharpe and her cooks refuse to cut corners when it comes to this classic Southern dessert.

Just as the well-laden wooden tables at Shirley's reflect the tastes of the Sharpe family, the walls of the restaurant reflect their spirit: Signed photographs of the family's favorite gospel groups, the Heavenly Day Trio, the Harvest Time Quartet, the Sounds of Victory; Charlie Palmer's hand-painted fall scene of Watauga Lake, in oranges, reds and golds, done on the inside of an antique, oval-shaped grill; Tall, shiny softball trophies, won by Shirley and Grant's oldest son Forrest and their nephew Mike Matheson.

And then, almost hidden away behind a door, are the silent testimonies to heroism and humility, the World War II decorations earned by Grant Sharpe. In the middle of the frame, a Purple Heart. Grant was shot through the left arm in the mountains north of Rome in 1944 as the 88th Infantry was attempting to retake a hill from the Nazis. He was the first to be hit, but he carried a fellow soldier who had been shot in the heel five miles out of the mountains.

"War is such a senseless, wasteful thing," he reflects, looking out across the Cherokee National Forest toward the peaceful waters of Watauga Lake.

Soon his sadness is broken by the arrival of a van full of hungry, ham-seeking guests from the Douglas Senior Center in Bristol, Va., and another vehicle from Elizabeth Chapel United Methodist Church in Bluff City, anticipating fried chicken.

"The customers we've had since we started are so amazed that the business has done this well," says Shirley, "but nobody is more amazed than me."

The Sharpes say they couldn't have done it without the help of sons Jeff and Forrest, daughter-in-law Angie, and granddaughter Kaylyn and grandson Austin, students at Hampton Elementary School whose favorite dishes on the menu are mashed potatoes and fried chicken.

Shirley's first cousin John Lewis, a retired fireman from Pocatello, Idaho, crafted the ash trays, empty Fancy Blue Lake Cut Green Bean cans nailed to the benches outside. When the Sharpes' church, Little Milligan Baptist, replaced its furnishings, the Sunday school lectern was given to the restaurant for a guest book stand, and two wooden church benches were added to the waiting area.

Customer Larry Rogers even wrote a poem in homage to "Shirley's Place," which she had printed on the back of the laminated menu. Shirley's is a seasonal business, which prompted Rogers to write, "Winter is here, she's going to close. Where I'll eat, nobody knows."

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