One thing this Kingsport restaurant will never outgrow, though, is its Chicago foundation. Rush Street is a famous street in the Windy City, and many of the walls are covered in murals that mix the old, the new, the famous and the infamous of Chicago: Al Capone, Richard Daley, Wrigley Field, Michael Jordan. A massive painting of Oak Street Beach. Street signs that put diners on Randolph Street or West North Shore Avenue. The Drake Hotel looms next to a door that leads out to an outdoor patio, added this year.

Feliu said the restaurant menu got a big bump in 1997 when his younger brother, Gerry Feliu, returned to the fold and became Rush Street's executive chef and general manager. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Feliu worked at two prestigious restaurants in New York and Colorado before returning to Kingsport. Mike Feliu said his brother's expertise gives Rush Street a competitive culinary edge.

"What Jerry's been able to do is give us that little extra touch," Mike Feliu said. "We don't make fancy food, but we've got some nuances and touches to our food that make it taste special."

So along with fare that any diner would expect at a full-service restaurant - New York strips, chicken served a variety of ways, pasta and some seafood - Rush Street also offers specialties that give the restaurant an identity of its own and a Gerry Feliu signature: pan-blackened chicken, Thai fajita wraps, Mediterranean pizza with goat cheese, a marinated sirloin that has a spicy finish and slow-roasted barbecue chicken, to name a few. Some have even rotated off the menu, or were never even on it, but all it takes is a special request.

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