Restaurants
Friday, October 21, 2011
Recipes / Restaurants / Food Events Meet-and-Three: St. Paul's State Fair Restaurant
Posted by Emily Wallace on Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 1:12 PM
Biscuits like Caves’ helped build the church, which was founded in 1959. Women from the congregation sold them with country ham to collect funds. So successful was the enterprise that St. Paul’s expanded its efforts and menu to a makeshift booth at the State Fair in 1962. “It was a two-forked program: outreach and a way to start our church,” Caves says of the initial business. “It was a way to make some money and to hire a minister.”
The congregation gathered recipes for the restaurant, which are still used today. “They came down from the charter members of the church,” Caves says. Plate meals ($8) include the choice of one meat, two vegetable sides and hushpuppies or biscuits. Barbecue sandwiches ($5), hot dogs ($2.50) and hamburgers ($3.50) are also available for lunch and dinner. But on a fall day at the fair, not much beats a bowl of St. Paul’s rich Brunswick stew ($4.50).
With their church now firmly rooted on Blue Ridge Road in Raleigh, St. Paul’s helps others to their feet by sharing their building and resources. Caves explains that faith-based groups from India, Vietnam and the Philippines have “nested” in St. Paul’s congregation until they can start churches of their own. At the State Fair, members of the larger St. Paul’s community work together from 6 a.m. until well after midnight to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. It takes three shifts of 12 members to cook and mange the restaurant each of fair’s 11 days, not including volunteers who clean up at the end of the night. Members are also called upon before the fair to transition the shed-like building into a functioning restaurant with a service line and long, family-style tables draped in red-and-white checkered cloths.
Some of the church’s items stay beyond the fair. Freezers are stocked behind the building, and a youth-painted mural of the restaurant with a Ferris wheel and roller coaster has covered one of the walls for years. Though the restaurant is closed, St. Paul’s meals are available after the fair, too. They are printed in a third edition of the church’s cookbook, The Art of Cooking, which can be purchased at the St. Paul’s church office. And unlike a deep-fried Twinkie or funnel cake, St. Paul’s Brunswick stew and flakey biscuits are manageable items to make at home. Of course, they are better at the fair as a break from the glitz of the midway. But until the next fair season rolls around and St. Paul’s meat-and-three is back in its booth, the recipes will more than do.
St. Paul’s is located on restaurant row northeast of Dorton Arena for the duration of the State Fair, which ends Oct. 23. The Art of Cooking is available at St. Paul’s Church office (3331 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh, 787-1278).
Restaurants / Food News / Food Events N.C. State Fair Illustrated: Day 9
Posted by Emily Wallace on Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 9:45 AM
- Emily Wallace
- Ninth post in a series of drawings to coincide with the North Carolina State Fair (October 13-23).
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Restaurants / Food News / Food Events N.C. State Fair Illustrated: Day 8
Posted by Emily Wallace on Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 10:02 AM
- Emily Wallace
- Eigth post in a series of drawings to coincide with the North Carolina State Fair (October 13-23).
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Restaurants / Food News / Food Events N.C. State Fair Illustrated: Day 6
Posted by Emily Wallace on Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 9:41 AM
Monday, October 17, 2011
Restaurants / Food News / Food Events N.C. State Fair Illustrated: Day 5
Posted by Emily Wallace on Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 9:12 AM
- Emily Wallace
- Fifth post in a series of drawings to coincide with the North Carolina State Fair (October 13-23).
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Restaurants / Food News / Food Events N.C. State Fair Illustrated: Day 4
Posted by Emily Wallace on Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 7:18 PM
- Emily Wallace
- Fourth post in a series of drawings to coincide with the North Carolina State Fair (October 13-23).
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Restaurants / Food News / Food Events N.C. State Fair Illustrated: Day 3
Posted by Emily Wallace on Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 3:31 PM
- Emily Wallace
- Third post in a series of drawings to coincide with the North Carolina State Fair (October 13-23).
Friday, October 14, 2011
Restaurants / Food News / Food Events N.C. State Fair Illustrated: Day 2
Posted by Emily Wallace on Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 9:32 AM
- Emily Wallace
- Second post in a daily series of drawings to coincide with the North Carolina State Fair (October 13-23).
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Restaurants / Food News / Food Events N.C. State Fair Illustrated: Day 1
Posted by Emily Wallace on Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 2:44 PM
- Emily Wallace
- First post in a daily series of drawings to coincide with the North Carolina State Fair (October 13-23).
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Restaurants / Food News Meet-and-Three: Libby's Too of Durham
Posted by Emily Wallace on Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 12:00 PM
Green’s frankness is reflected in the restaurant itself, where a hand-scrawled sign that hangs behind the short counter where orders are taken reads, “Cash only. Don’t ask.” Green’s brazenness is anything but inhospitable, however. From the service window that connects the kitchen to the dining room, or seated at one of the restaurant’s tables, she speaks to everyone who enters, calling many by name.
The restaurant isn’t Green’s first. She originally opened a spot on Angier Avenue in East Durham in 1982. Before Green purchased that restaurant and named it Libby’s, it was the Big Tub, a meat-and-three that operated next to a Laundromat, and gave Green her start as a waitress in 1970. “It’s all I’ve ever done,” she says of the restaurant business. It’s also all she’s ever wanted. As a child, Green says she used to “play kitchen” in a trailer that her father owned on the edge of their property in Durham, thinking, “I hope I can have a restaurant one day.”
For a while, she had two. In 1993, she opened the second Libby’s in a newer building—its current home on Hillsborough Road near the Orange and Durham county lines. But after two years of running two places simultaneously, she scaled back to one restaurant, closing the original.
Green uses recipes inherited from her mother, whom she grew up cooking with as the youngest of 10 children. Her sister Kathy Hicks also cooks at Libby’s Too. “We always have real creamed potatoes, dry beans and greens,” Green says of the menu. Lunch staples also include hot dogs, hamburgers and chicken and barbecue sandwiches.
The rest changes daily depending on what’s available, and is displayed on a dry erase board that leans on a shelf in the corner of the restaurant. There are a dozen or so vegetables, three different meats, and pie. For $8 (with tax, or $8.54 if it’s to go), a lunch plate includes the choice of one meat, two sides, bread and tea. I chose hush puppies, creamed potatoes and slaw to accompany my salmon patties. Rich and buttery, the potatoes were best.
“You want more of those?” Green asks upon noticing that I’d finished that particular dish. She eats a red hot dog covered with chili for her lunch. “Are hot dogs your favorite?” I question. “No, I eat everything—don’t have no favorite,” Green responds.
“Except salmon cakes,” I remind her.
“Yeah, and anything with cheese,” she adds.
Her favorites are clearer in other categories. Framed Duke posters cover the restaurant’s wood-paneled walls. “I like football, but basketball is my favorite,” she says.
I don’t mention that I pull for Carolina. Though I’ve seen Green welcome everyone into the restaurant, I want to ensure that I can go back.
Libby's Too (4910 Hillsborough Road, Durham) is open 6:30 a.m.—2 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 6:30 a.m.—11 a.m. Saturday.
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