by Ray Linville Nothing says spring like the arrival of flower blossoms, particularly in the Sandhills and eastern North Carolina with blooms on acres and acres of peach trees. Many in North Carolina believe that our state’s peaches are the best (they’re right) and that peaches are native to the South (they’re wrong). Cultivated in… Read More →
“Chowder Taster”—Touring a Clam Chowder Cook-Off at the Ocracoke Community Center
by Leanne E. Smith “The rainy weather cooperated with us,” Karen Lovejoy joked the Saturday before Easter 2015 during the First Annual Clam Chowder Cook-off on Ocracoke Island that showcased four entries in the Ocracoke-traditional category and seven for non-traditional. The mid-day event was a fundraiser for the Ocracoke Childcare Center, also known as the… Read More →
Making Mac and Cheese Better with N.C. Mountain Cheese
by Ray Linville What’s the most important ingredient in macaroni and cheese? Except for the love that the preparer personally adds, is one item more important than anything else? The questions may seem frivolous because today the recipe at home can be quite simple – unless you’re Thomas Jefferson, who was so consumed with serving… Read More →
La Cacerola Home Style Honduran
by Deborah Miller If you weren’t paying attention, you’d almost miss La Cacerola Café and Restaurant, tucked as it is between the Latino Super Market and Guess Road Mini Mart. The three of us were celebrating a special date, and no ordinary lunch would do for this occasion. Though rescheduled from the actual anniversary date,… Read More →
Pepper’s Pizza
by Evan Hatch I always wanted to be a part of Pepper’s Pizza in Chapel Hill. Pepper’s hid in plain sight on Franklin Street, two doors down from the Varsity Theater, a narrow squeeze of a restaurant with checkerboard floors, whacked art hanging and a cast of incredible characters working the kitchen. It was Chapel… Read More →
Enjoying Barbecue Prepared Like When You Were a Kid
By Ray Linville Have you ever passed a restaurant, wondered how good its food is, but didn’t stop because you were saving money by not eating out? That’s my story about North Carolina barbecue when I was growing up. I grew up in the Piedmont in a stable but modest neighborhood of Winston-Salem. In the… Read More →
Old Havana Sandwich Shop
by Evan Hatch The Old Havana Sandwich Shop faces Main Street in downtown Durham, North Carolina. Business and life partners Elizabeth Turnbull and Roberto Copa Matos surely pinched themselves when they first saw the limestone edifice that became their restaurant. Arched porticoes, vaulted windows and polished wood floors lend this space a warm and historic… Read More →
A Food Sisterhood Flourishes in North Carolina, and then some
Just in case you weren’t paying attention, North Carolina got some seriously good props this week from the New York Times. The North Carolina Food Sisterhood, to be exact, and it’s a nice change from all the athletic and political press we’ve grown used to. We’ve always been an agricultural state and women have long… Read More →
Neuse River Fish Stew – a guest post by NC barbecue expert Bob Garner
by Bob Garner [Editor’s note: We were so excited to receive an email from Winston-Salem’s John F. Blair Publishing asking if we’d be interested in having Bob Garner write a guest post for NCFood. Bob Garner? THE North Carolina barbecue expert? You bet your prized hog, we were interested! Especially since his new book Foods… Read More →
Chicken and Pastry, or What Have You
We are so excited that this week’s NC Food Blog installment also introduces you to our new online exhibits feature! This exhibition introduces the history and process of Chicken and Pastry making through both written and visual documentation. From our fieldwork archives, Edith Green of Columbus County, North Carolina, is pictured teaching NC Folk fieldworker… Read More →