Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [73]
When you enter, you have a choice of sitting on a bench at a counter in a room to the left or at a table in a room to the right, in back. Whichever place you sit, service is lightning-fast. That’s because there is virtually no choice on this menu. What you eat is pork, with or without Brunswick stew, on a plate or sandwich, accompanied by tart, tangy coleslaw. The pork is chopped ultrafine, a mix of soft white meat from the inside of the roast laced with chewy brown shreds from its surface. It comes ever-so-lightly sauced with what the locals like—vinegar and spice—but if you want it moister or hotter, other sauces are provided on the counter and tables. Plates are topped with a lovely square of thin, extremely luscious corn bread that has a serious chew and is the ideal medium for pushing around Brunswick stew on the plate.
Chicken Box
3726 N. Tryon St.
704–332–2636
Charlotte, NC
LD | $
When hungry for fried chicken in Charlotte, we always headed for Price’s Chicken Coop (North Carolina) or the Coffee Cup. Nothing wrong with either choice, nothing at all. But there’s another contender for chicken supremacy, a very humble eatery named the Chicken Box. Located in a drab setting that used to be a fast-food eatery, this place serves chicken with crust that crackles with savory flavor. Wings, drumettes, drumsticks, thighs, and breasts are sold by the plate with French fries or soul food vegetables (mac and cheese and collard greens are especially noteworthy) or in party-size quantities to take home. Just because this is the cheapest fried chicken in the fried-chicken-crazy city of Charlotte does not mean it isn’t the best.
Amenities are minimal. Carry a tray with your food from the counter to a molded seat in the dining area. And it would be appreciated if you cleaned up the table when you are done.
Cypress Grill
1520 Stewart St.
252–792–4175
Jamesville, NC
D Jan–Apr | $$
For those of us who grew up thinking of herring as a pickled hors d’oeuvre, North Carolina river herring is a shock. For one thing, it looks like a fish. And for another, it really tastes like a fish. Not the least bit like chicken or anything else. If you like fish, you will love it. And there is no better place to love it than at the Cypress Grill on the banks of the Roanoke River. Here is the last of the old-time herring shacks, quite literally a cypress wood shack, open only for the herring run, January through April.
There is nothing on the Cypress Grill menu other than fish. In addition to herring, you can have rock (striped bass), perch, flounder, shrimp, oysters, devil crab, clam strips, trout fillet, or catfish fillet. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, roe is available. Not even a gesture is offered for fish-frowners. No hamburgers or grilled cheese sandwiches here! Side dishes include a choice of vegetables, which are fine but not particularly interesting: boiled potatoes, fried okra, slaw.
The herring are spectacular, heads lopped off but not the tails, each one veiled in the thinnest possible sheath of cornmeal, its flesh scored with notches so that when it is tossed into the boiling oil, it cooks quickly deep down to the bone.
The big issue among river herring lovers is degree of doneness. Some ask for it sunny-side-up, meaning minimal immersion in the fry kettle, resulting in a fish from which you can peel away the skin and lift moist pieces of meat off the bones. The opposite way to go is to ask for your herring cremated: fried until hard and crunchy and so well cooked that all the little bones have become indistinguishable from the flesh around them. The meat itself is transformed, its weight lightened so the natural oiliness is gone but the flavor has become even more intense. The crust and the interior are melded, and they break off in unbelievably savory bite-size pieces, finally leaving nothing but a herring backbone on