Southern Belly

by John T. Edge

  The clock on the wall says, “We serve fresh vegetables 12 months of the year.” My waitress’s T-shirt promises, “Food so great you’ll think we stole your mama.” Who am I to argue? I dig into my breadbasket. Over in the corner, I spy Jim Graham, onetime North Carolina commissioner of agriculture, working the crowd, slapping backs and buttering biscuits as he goes.

  I’m soon buttering biscuits, too, gilding the brown beauties with a squeeze from a bottle of molasses, and singing the praises of the unnamed cook. These are among the best biscuits I’ve ever tasted: soft, snowy centers capped with a butter-crusted mantle. When split open, a puff of steam floats upward like a sweet kiss from the baker. Indeed the biscuits are good enough to make me forget all about those fresh vegetables. I butter another and push aside my plate of chicken, collards, and cabbage.

  When I ask my waitress whom to thank, she points the way to the kitchen and says, “It’s Annie Mae Jones you want to see. She’s been working here one way or the other since the ’70s.” I find Mrs. Jones up to her elbows in flour, surrounded by spent cartons of buttermilk. As she works, her glasses keep slipping down her nose, and each time she tries to push them back up, her black face is splotched once again with white flour. Lacking much else to say besides thank you, I ask her to reveal the secret to her biscuits. She smiles, plants her hands on her hips, and says, “Ain’t no secret to it. It’s just soul power.”

  On my way out I stop and talk to Mr. Graham. When I tell him how much I like Mrs. Jones’ biscuits, he, too, smiles and points to the Jim Graham special, made with mayonnaise, onion, tomato, and streak-o-lean, all piled high atop one of Mrs. Jones’ biscuits. “I can eat those by the carload,” he tells me.

  1240 FARMER’S MARKET DRIVE / 919-833-7973

  MECCA

  Top left, behind the bar, above the wall-mounted fridge, is a portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Look closely and you’ll see the nicotine shadings that soften the brushstrokes, the lint-ball fuzz that haloes his head. Roosevelt’s smile is slight, even wry. He appears omniscient, by which I mean that our Depression-era savior looks like he has witnessed every deal done, every back slapped, every glad hand extended since the day Mecca Restaurant, a pol’s warren in downtown Raleigh, opened in 1930.

  Pull back from Roosevelt to take in the whole of the space and you’ll find a restaurant little changed since Greek immigrant founders Nick Dombalis and his brother-in-law Nick Bougadis threw open the doors and staked a claim to the motto “He profits most who serves the best.” Wooden booths, embellished with scrollwork and fixed with coat hooks, hug the walls. Swivel stools front the counter. The cash register doesn’t chirp and bleep like new computer models; it churns and grinds as gears engage in the manner of a vending machine.

  Now operated by Paul Dombalis, grandson of Nick, and Floye Dombalis, mother of Paul, the restaurant still tips its hat to Greek roots by way of lemon herb chicken, a Friday special, as well as an everyday salad with feta and olives. But, in large part, the menu is defined by ethnic assimilation and various quirks.

  Among the latter are the Garry Dorn Burger (veal cutlet, catsup, onion, and tomato), a sandwich of so-called Danish ham, a barbecue plate of “young North Carolina pig,” and a New England Clam Chowder which is, counterintuitively, given top billing. Assimilation, however, is the real story, for grilled chicken and Greek salad excepted, the eats proffered by the Mecca cooks are irreproachably Southern.

  On a recent visit, my plate lunch included thinly battered and expertly fried chicken, ropy turnip greens, rice napped with gravy, and, best of all, earthy field peas jumbled with snaps. The presence of the field peas—and even more so the inclusion of those snaps—signaled that I was in a restaurant where old-school cookery and produce are valued. Corroborating evidence came when I noted home-grown tomatoes and sliced cucumbers among the tail-end-of-summer vegetables of the day.

  13 EAST MARTIN STREET / 919-832-5714

  Reidsville

  SHORT SUGAR’S DRIVE-IN

  “You’ll find a few nicknames here and there, but nowhere, I’ll venture, are they as common and well-considered as in the South,” observed journalist Robert Coram. “One episode, one physical or mental aberration, one mistake, one peculiarity, and you get a nickname hung on you that will last for years.”

  Perhaps, while musing poetic about nicknames, Coram was thinking of the late Eldridge Overby, who was killed in a June 1949 car crash two days before he and his brothers Johnny and Clyde were to open a barbecue and burger shop called Clyde Brothers Drive-In. It seems that years before, Eldridge’s girlfriend pinned him with the moniker. “He was called Shorty by everybody,” present-day proprietor David Wilson tells me. “And when she went into one of his hangouts and asked, ‘Where’s my Shorty Sugar?’ it just stuck.” In tribute, the brothers Overby called their new business Short Sugar’s.

  An awful tall chimney for a short place.

  I arrive at such an early hour that most folks are seated at the low counter, coffee cups in hand, staring down a platter of eggs, biscuits, and bacon. But without hesitation, my request for eggs, biscuits, and barbecue is honored, and soon I can hear the sound of cleaver meeting cutting board. In no time, a plate of eggs, grits, and chopped, smoked ham brightened by a thin, sugary, vinegar-based sauce is set before me. Biscuits, split and toasted in a flattop press, are piled on top; a sliced beefsteak tomato is served on the side.

  The sauce is sweeter than I expected, the marriage of grits and barbecue reminiscent of the dishes of grillades and grits I sampled in Louisiana—which is to say it is delicious. When I ask David whether he considered my request to be odd he shakes the idea off with a smile. “I’ve seen just about everything,” he tells me. “Some people want their biscuits burned. Other people want barbecue omelets.”

  I leave in the company of David by way of the roofing tin–topped pits, where the pork I just ate spent the last twelve to thirteen hours over a smoldering hickory fire. Rick after rick of wood is stacked by the door and the firebox is propped closed by a broom handle. David pops the door open and scoops up a shovel full of coals to feed the fire. Smoke swirls lazily from the pit door and I bid good-bye.

  1328 SOUTH SCALES STREET / 336-342-7487

  Rocky Mount

  HARDEE’S AND THE FAST-FOOD BISCUIT

  Can you imagine a person of Jewish descent eating one of those sausage-stuffed Bagelwiches that Burger King used to hawk? Or a Frenchman downing a Croissanwich enrobed in a caul of melted American cheese? Of course not. So why do we Southerners accept the fast-food biscuits proffered by the national chains?

  Perhaps there is some solace to be found in learning that at least the roots of the fast-food biscuit are Southern. The North Carolina–based Hardee’s chain is generally credited with popularizing the homemade-style biscuit in the late 1970s, when franchisees Jack Fulk and Mayo Boddie began baking biscuits the size of an infant’s head and selling them to morning commuters. By 1977 Fulk left Hardee’s, striking out on his own with a chain of Bojangles Chicken and Biscuit restaurants.

  Today, Hardee’s and Bojangles—as well as smaller North Carolina–based chains like Biscuitville—still bake a better product than McDonald’s or Burger King, but I can’t eat one without a twinge of guilt, for with each pan of faux homemade biscuits that emerges from a fast-food restaurant’s convection oven, we edge a bit closer to the culinary and cultural precipice. Call me cranky if you wish, but I’ve got a rolling pin and I’m prepared to use it.

  Wilson

  THE PITMASTER

  Dressed in blue overalls, a gimme cap pushed back on his head, Ed Mitchell is a barbecue evangelist. With his full beard and lumberjack frame, he musters an Old Testament gravitas, leavened by a modicum of Jesse Jackson populism. Here’s the pitmaster’s plan:

  By contracting with farmers to rear hogs for a nascent chain of barbecue restaurants, Mitchell hopes to rescue the small North Carolina farmer from the brink of extinction. What’s more, Mitchell wants to return great pork—the roun
d-flavored pork he knew as a child, before the industry embraced confinement pens and waste lagoons and lean-generation genetics—to working-class eaters.

  Like any good barbecue man, Mitchell has, while running a barbecue restaurant in his hometown of Wilson, honed a repertoire of techniques. He has learned to bank his pits, to stack them with charcoal and hickory so that the temperature holds steady through the night. And following his mother’s lead, he soaks his wood in a salt-and-pepper-spiked vinegar solution that when ignited perfumes the pork with more than mere smoke.

  But Mitchell’s true talent is selling eaters on the import of ideas. For him, it’s a crusade. Sure, he cooks some of the best eastern-style Carolina barbecue you will ever have the pleasure to eat. And his vinegar sauce is a well-balanced concoction, perfect for pig or chick. But years from now, when Ed has passed on, he will—hope-fully—be remembered as the man who showed working-class Southerners a way back to cooking honest pigs. Mitchell knows the path won’t be easy. But you can see the determination in his face. And you can, if you like, taste the future he promises at this, the first in what he hopes will be a host of restaurants.

  6228 WARD BOULEVARD / 252-237-8645

  For the Pitmaster’s version of Eastern North Carolina Sauce, see page 217.

  Winston-Salem

  TEXAS PETE HOT SAUCE

  Southerners like it hot. Maybe that’s attributable to a latent taste for the heat of the islands, introduced by slaves who underwent a period of seasoning in the Caribbean. Maybe it’s fueled by a secret wish to sweat during the swelter of summer, when the scorch of a habañero or jalapeño induces the body to cool down. No matter, we Southerners are a hot-sauce-mad people. Few are the restaurants which can’t produce a couple of bottles on demand; many are the spots where tables are set with a couple of different brands.

  Although Tabasco, a product of Avery Island, Louisiana, is my favorite, it does not have a lock on the Southern hot-sauce market. Even in Louisiana, there are pockets of Crystal hot-sauce lovers in New Orleans, and up around Monroe you’ll

  find a strong contingent of Panola pepper sauce fans. You have to travel farther north and east, though, before another maker truly comes to the fore, but by the time you cross the border into North Carolina, the comparatively viscous and somewhat milder Texas Pete is oftentimes the favored brand.

  The Garner family at work, packing bottles of their heady Texas Pete hot sauce.

  Despite a name that conjures up images of roping and riding along the Rio Grande, Texas Pete is a North Carolina company born and bred, still run by the family of founder Thad Garner.

  It seems that back in 1929 when Garner graduated from high school, he bought a barbecue stand in Winston-Salem called the Dixie Pig. In time he developed such a strong reputation for barbecue sauce that he was selling it by the gallon to his competitors. And when some folks started clamoring for a hotter version, Garner obliged, packing it with peppers and selling the new sauce by the bottle.

  The barbecue stand soon folded when traffic was diverted by a new rail line, but by then no one cared because the sauce was flying off grocery store shelves, with sales boosted in part by a catchy new name, Texas Pete, dreamed up by Thad’s father, Joseph, in a brainstorming session. “Everybody got involved about then,” says Ann Riddle. “That was back in the days when Uncle Thad’s father, my grandfather, took off on the road in a seven-passenger Cadillac selling hot sauce. Back then, he wouldn’t come home until he ran out of bottles to sell.”

  Eastern North Carolina Sauce

  from the Pitmaster

  Makes about 1 quart

  The simplest of eastern Carolina sauces comprise just vinegar and red pepper. And so in some quarters this sauce would, despite hewing to the prevailing gestalt by forswearing tomatoes, be considered heretical. No matter, I love this stuff. And I believe with all my heart that there is no finer swab for smoked pork.

  1quart apple cider vinegar

  1⁄ 2 cup crushed red pepper flakes

  1 tablespoonful sugar

  1 tablespoonful salt

  1 tablespoonful freshly ground black pepper

  1 teaspoonful cayenne pepper

  Pour out an inch of vinegar from the quart container. Add the dry ingredients, replace the cap, and shake vigorously. Use liberally as a mop and a sauce. This sauce may be stored for up to 3 months without refrigeration.

  SOUTH CaRoLiNa

  eet Eugenia Duke of Greenville, the first lady of mayonnaise. Revel in a perfect pimento cheese sandwich, slathered with Eugenia’s eggy spread. Better yet, try a pimento cheeseburger in Columbia, where they smear on the stuff with a heavy hand. Take a summer excursion with me to the little community of Filbert—to the roadside vegetable stand of author Dori Sanders—where we sample peaches with bright, sweet, hopeful names like Starlight, Sunhigh, and Georgia Belle. And don’t forget to try a bottle of Blenheim’s Ginger Ale, the three-sneeze-fit strong stuff now bottled at South of the Border.

  Buffalo

  MIDWAY B-B-Q

  There’s a fine spray of sawdust covering the concrete floor at this combination barbecue joint and butcher shop—a vestige of the days when the blood from eviscerated cow and pig carcasses spilled onto the floors, and sawdust was thrown down to soak up the mess.

  Proprietor Jack Odell doesn’t slaughter his own animals anymore (a packing house does it for him), but he does haunt the local auction houses, personally selecting the pigs and cows that will eventually end up on his pits or in his kettles. And what Jack doesn’t smoke or stew he sells at his butcher counter, where souse and liver mush, cracklins and country sausage are piled high. “I look for the top end, the cream of the crop,” he says. “Otherwise my barbecue will end up as tough as whit leather.”

  As you might expect Jack’s barbecue is indeed tender, if minced a little fine and sauced a little heavily for my taste. But it’s the beef hash and chicken stew that keep the regulars coming back. Ropy and rich with sweet butter and mild onions, Jack’s hash is a paradigmatic dish, a standard by which all others might be judged. And the chicken stew is without peer, a localized specialty that deserves wider notice: a thin buttery milk emulsion, suffused with strands of tender bird and laced with the pleasing bite of black pepper. I can’t think of any place I’d rather be than seated in a ladder-back chair at one of the red and white gingham-flocked tables in Jack’s dining room, with a bowl of that steaming white stew in front of me, a pile of saltine crackers at the ready.

  If you happen to be driving into Midway around lunchtime, be sure to listen out for the daily dinner report from Jack’s grandson-in-law, Jay Allen, broadcast live on WBCV at 11:05. That’s how I found this Upstate treasure. “Yes sir, we got chicken stew today, piping hot and creamy,” came the siren song. “And just look at Shirley over there rolling out that pie crust. Now you know we don’t allow any tipping at Midway. No, we’ll accept compliments and constructive criticism, but no tipping. Say, did you know we’ve got the largest display of fatback in the state?”

  811 MAIN STREET / 864-427-4047

  Charleston

  BOWEN’S ISLAND RESTAURANT

  Drive the lane that branches off the road from Charleston to Folly Beach, South Carolina, and as you wend through a thicket of palmettos onto Bowens Island, you will spy a dock jutting into the marsh. At the heart of the island is a restaurant, a cinder-block bunker ringed by oyster middens. Decorations include decommissioned televisions scrawled with graffiti, a jukebox or two, and a rusted-out hair dryer liberated from a beauty parlor.

  Spray-painted on the side of the building are portraits of Jimmy Bowen and Sarah May Bowen, the husband and wife team who in the 1940s bought the island and, in what seemed a quixotic move, constructed their own causeway to the mainland. Alongside is an aerosol-rendered likeness of John Sanka, the cook who worked with the Bowens for more than thirty years.

  Scene from Bowen’s before they went to gas.

  Generations of Charlestonians have made the pilgrimage to sit at table
s covered with yesterday’s newspaper and piled high with today’s catch. They come for oysters—pulled from local waters by pickers Victor Lafayette and Nell Walker—served without pretense.

  Present-day proprietor Robert Barber, a grandson of the Bowens, takes that responsibility seriously. Barber’s staff, among them counterman Jack London and oyster cook Henry Gillard, serve as guardians of Bowen-family tradition and curators of imperiled Carolina folkways. In those roles they dish the house specialty: clusters of oysters, harvested by hand from the Folly River, steamed on a gas-fired griddle under cover of a burlap sack, heaped by the shovel onto Charleston Post and Courier place mats, and washed down with cold beer.

  1870 BOWEN’S ISLAND ROAD / 843-795-2757

  **Jestine Matthews** An Okra Education

  Jestine used to say, “Black don’t crack.”

  “I keep this for educational purposes,” Dana Berlin Strange tells me as she retrieves a mason jar of pickled okra from the corner cupboard of her restaurant, Jestine’s Kitchen. “A lot of our customers aren’t from the South, and they always seem to be asking, ‘What is okra? What does it look like?’ I show them the jar and tell them it has the skin of a peach and the shape of a hot pepper. I try to help them understand.”