With two locations in Gatlinburg, it is no wonder that people have been stopping for decades at Ole Smoky Candy Kitchen to pick up their favorite candy or sweet treat while they walk the Parkway in Gatlinburg.
Ole Smoky Candy Kitchen has locations in the middle of Gatlinburg and at the front entrance of The Village. You will be able to smell the candy and chocolate from feet away before you enter the wonder that is a professional candy kitchen, complete with people making candy in the front window and a taffy puller and wrapping machine that will make you stand for hours watching the wrapped taffy fall into a wicker basket. Homemade chocolate, taffy, brittle and much more cover every shelf and every side of the counter at both locations of the Ole Smoky Candy Kitchen. Let’s look at their chocolate first.
The counter itself is a mountain of chocolate. Covering everything from cherries to peanuts, made into bark and flavored with mint and all manner of flavorings, the chocolate chefs at Ole Smoky Candy Kitchen produce mouthwatering mounds of morsels just waiting to be purchased and eaten. Fudge of every flavor and of course, chocolate in milk, dark and white varieties. Chocolate, to be piled into bags and eaten as you roam further down the parkway looking in the windows of the shops.
And, if you are not a chocolate fan, then you can always jump on the brittle. Peanut brittle of course but there is also something different: cashew brittle. A personal favorite of mine, the cashew brittle, is something unusual and though I have seen it in other places since first having it here, I still think the cashew brittle at Ole Smoky Candy Kitchen is the best. You can buy it in small bags or if you are like me, you know that the bag is not going to satisfy your thirst for brittle so just buy a tub of it and much as you walk.
Half the fun though of coming to the Ole Smoky Candy Kitchen is watching them make their mouthwatering fare. The cooks, dressed in their whites are going to be in the window making fudge, candy apples and taffy. You can watch them load the ropy mess of taffy onto the puller, see then add the flavorings and the colorings and then they will put it on the wrapping machine. Everyone that visits this traditional stop in Gatlinburg has whiled away the hours watching the taffy get first stretched then cut and finally wrapped in simple wax paper and dropped into a basket.
If you have never been into the Ole Smoky Candy Kitchen you are missing one of the most fun stops in town. Stand right outside the door and take a deep whiff of the air. Let the smell of freshly made candy invade your nose. Step through the door and wait for the split second before your mouth starts to water. Make the Ole Smoky Candy Kitchen part of your Gatlinburg vacation tradition.
Ole Smoky Candy Kitchen
744 Parkway
Gatlinburg, TN
865-436-4886