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“Those ain’t commercial fishermen,” Gardner said, indicating two men laying a herring drift (net) from a flat-bottomed metal skiff midriver. “Ain’t no commercial fishing on the Roanoke nowadays.” With the Roanoke’s herring supplies depleted, North Carolina banned commercial fishing on the river in 1995. Even sport fishermen are allowed only a dozen herring a day.

The herring now served at Cypress Grill, a weathered clapboard shack open only from mid-January till May, now comes from the Chowan River, “over Edenton way.” A government placard posted inside the Grill’s front door lists the restrictions on herring fishing, and just beyond it, there’s an anti-moratorium petition for diners to sign. Plenty do.

Fish shacks once lined the Roanoke’s south bank around Jamesville. Today Cypress Grill is the only one where you can fill up on batter-fried herring, flounder, oysters, clams, shrimp, sweet slaw, hush puppies, your choice of homemade pie (chocolate, lemon meringue, coconut, or pecan), plus all the iced tea you can drink.

The front room is the place to eat. We snared the window booth where we could not only see the river action but also survey the room: tables draped with blue-and-white-checked oilcloth, a wall-to-wall photo gallery chronicling the glory days of Jamesville’s herring industry, Cypress Grill T-shirts for sale tacked to a lattice room divider, a three-generation family (toddler to granny) bowing their heads to say grace.

We ordered the herring, of course. But we had no idea how to eat it. Each fish was about six inches long and fried to a crisp—“cremated,” the locals call it. Amused, the waitress came over to help. “Do you mind if I touch your food?” I shook my head. She parted the fish down the middle with her hands, cautioned me to avoid the backbone, then told me to eat the rest, bones and all. “They’re fried hard,” she explained. I bit into a piece as crunchy as a potato chip.

Once again the waitress intervened. “It’s better if you sprinkle it with vinegar. And this,” she added, sliding a chile-stuffed bottle of vinegar across the table, “is the Jamesville way.” Some folks, she said, like barbecue sauce on their herring, others prefer Texas Pete. I stuck with plain vinegar. It did improve the flavor of the herring just as it does that of slow-cooked collards.

Cypress Grill’s hush puppies, unlike the crispy brown ones I knew, were chewy and yellow and tasted of stone-ground cornmeal—no sugar, no onion. I liked them, but better still was the sweet slaw that accompanied my mountainous platter of fried herring, flounder, and shrimp.

When it came to dessert, I succumbed to the chocolate pie (dark and delicious!) and my friend to the coconut (an excruciatingly sweet chess pie with a crunch of coconut on top).

And what did our herring feast cost? Less than twenty-five dollars!

* * *

SKILLET TROUT WITH PARSLEY-PECAN PESTO

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

Trout swim the quicksilver streams of the Great Smokies and Blue Ridge and I love them fresh-caught, dredged in stone-ground cornmeal, and fried the southern way. Still I aimed for something a little more unusual by churning pecans, a key southern crop, into a sauce. It’s a good combo.

Parsley-Pecan Pesto

11/3 cups firmly packed Italian parsley leaves

½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1/3 cup very lightly toasted pecans (5 to 7 minutes in a 350° F. oven)

1 large garlic clove, peeled

1/3 cup fruity olive oil

Trout

½ cup stone-ground cornmeal

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon black pepper

¼ teaspoon ground hot red pepper (cayenne)

Four 6-ounce trout fillets

2 to 4 tablespoons vegetable oil

1. For the pesto: Churn the parsley, Parmesan, pecans, and garlic in a food processor for about 30 seconds or until very finely chopped. With the motor running, drizzle the olive oil down the feed tube and continue processing for 15 to 20 seconds until well blended, scraping the work bowl with a rubber spatula at half-time.

2. For the trout: Mix the cornmeal, salt, black pepper, and cayenne in a pie plate, then dredge the trout fillets well on both sides