Southern Belly

by John T. Edge

  Inside, you’ll find knotty pine paneling plastered with religious bumper stickers—“My Boss Is a Jewish Carpenter”—and a row of stools facing a long linoleum-topped bar. Order a sliced pork sandwich and lean back to watch as they toast two slices of white bread over an open pit tucked into a side wall, then layer on thin slices of pork. The sauce, a thin tomato concoction with a pronounced vinegar whang, perfectly complements the pork, which, truth be told, lacks the smoky punch of years gone by.

  Unlike many of the South’s best ’cue joints, the side dishes at Harold’s are not afterthoughts. Their Brunswick stew is one of the best in the state, thick with tomatoes and corn. And the coarse cornbread is studded with sweet, rich cracklins, the solids left from rendering lard.

  Founder Harold Hembree passed away a few years ago, but his widow and children vow to carry on. The bars stay on the windows, the cracklins stay in the corn bread, and Harold’s name stays on the door.

  171 MCDONOUGH BOULEVARD SE / 404-627-9268

  **Deacon Burton**

  Fried Chicken and the Legacy of the Late Deacon Burton

  He was a king among cooks.

  There are as many schools of thought about the proper preparation of Southern fried chicken as there are Southern cooks standing at the stove on a Sunday afternoon, tongs at the ready, chasing a crusty thigh around a cast-iron skillet.

  Some would have you soak that bird overnight in an ice-water bath; others would have you do the same in a rich vat of buttermilk spiked with hot sauce. There are those who call for a quick dip in wheat flour, others who swear by cornmeal. Some add a little egg along the way. A proud few look to the Colonel for inspiration and go heavy on the herbs and spices. And we’re just getting started. We haven’t even dealt with the issue of fat. I’m of the lard school (for reasons both sentimental and savory), but there are many fine cooks who wouldn’t dare set their skillet on the stovetop unless it’s brimming with Crisco. And then there’s the question of whether the chicken should be cooked in a covered or uncovered skillet. It’s enough to make you call up Popeye’s for takeout.

  * * *

  Wash ’em, put ‘em in some flour, season ’em with salt and pepper and some grease. That’s all.

  * * *

  There was, however, a quiet season in this seemingly eternal debate. At least among Atlantans. From 1961 until 1993—the years that Deacon Lyndell Burton ran his little white brick grill over in Inman Park—most folks were willing to cede that whatever way the Deacon did it, well, that was the best.

  Deacon was a minimalist. Ask him how he fried his chicken and he’d reply, “Wash ’em, put ’em in some flour, season ’em with salt and pepper and some grease. That’s all.” It was just that simple. And yet, the chicken that emerged from the Deacon’s iron skillets was perfect: tender legs coated in a thin, brittle blanket of crust, and snow white breasts, juicy beneath a peppery mantle of brown.

  What Deacon wasn’t telling was that he had spent a lifetime perfecting his technique. At the age of six he began his schooling at the stove of his mother, Ida, in Watkinsville, Georgia. On Christmas Eve, 1924, at the age of fourteen, he ran away from home and found work by Christmas Day, washing dishes at a downtown Atlanta restaurant. By the time Deacon was in his early twenties, he had cooked in some of Atlanta’s finest dining rooms, including the venerable Capital City Club, and had opened his own café on the city’s outskirts.

  * * *

  “

  See this boy with the old knock-knees, we’re gonna feed him some black-eyed peas.”

  * * *

  But it was not until he took up residence at the corner of Edgewood Avenue and Hurt Street that he came into his own. There—his thin black face creased by a mischievous grin, his white pleated chef’s hat poking high above the greasy haze of the kitchen—Deacon dished out rice napped with a true brown gravy, hoecakes as light and ethereal as any madeleine ever imagined by Proust, black-eyed peas heady with the taste of cured pork and dank earth, and, yes, skillet after cast-iron skillet of peerless fried chicken. In his spare time he ran a radio repair shop and served as a deacon in the Free For All Baptist Church. Unlike the Colonel, Lyndell Burton’s title was not merely honorific.

  It seems as though all of Atlanta passed through his cafeteria line at least once before the Deacon passed away in 1993 at the age of eighty-three. And if it was your first time, the Deacon wouldn’t let you get away without taking time out to say hello. I can still remember my first pass through the line, my celadon-colored lunchroom tray billowing clouds of pork and pepper scented promise. “See this boy with the old knock-knees,” he called out over the clang of the little Liberty Bell he kept at the ready for such occasions. “We’re gonna feed him some black-eyed peas.”

  SON’S PLACE

  When the Deacon passed away in 1993, Burton’s Grill chugged along for another year under the watchful eye of Lenn Storey, the Deacon’s illegitimate son and heir apparent to the legacy of Atlanta’s fabled fry cook. But there was trouble boiling in the pot. A passel of Deacon’s heirs claimed the restaurant was theirs to inherit and managed to convince the Georgia Supreme Court of the same. By March of 1995 Storey was out.

  Three weeks later, Burton’s Grill reopened under new management. Unfazed, Storey set up shop two doors down in a battered yellow frame building, calling his café Son’s Place. Much bad blood was spilled, much good chicken was served. Along the way the original Burton’s Grill was sold to a group of New Yorkers intent on making a killing during Atlanta’s Olympic summer of 1996. They stowed away the cast-iron skillets, pulled out the deep fryers, added a terrace, and failed. Miserably. Soon a froufrou Italian restaurant stood at the corner of DeKalb and Edgewood.

  All the while Son’s Place was turning out fine fried chicken, cooked, rumor has it, in the same ebony skillets once tended by the Deacon. To assuage the fears of the faithful, Storey set up the same cafeteria-style line, stocked it with a stack of those familiar Melamine lunchroom trays, and planted himself front and center, just like the Deacon, ready to meet his public.

  Some say Storey’s fried chicken is almost as good as his father’s. If that’s so, it’s surely the best in town. What’s more, his collards sing with the taste of pork and a hint of sugar. And his hoecakes are the perfect sponge for sopping a puddle of potlikker. For breakfast, nothing could be finer than a salmon croquette; a fried drum-stick; a mound of creamy, white grits; and a cat-head biscuit.

  100 HURT STREET / 404-581-0530

  THE VARSITY

  Places like the Varsity give lie to the old saw that Southerners—and by extension Southern restaurants—move like turtles rather than rabbits. Before you step to the counter at this Atlanta institution, you had best heed the signs posted near many of the cash registers, “Have your order in mind and your money in hand,” or the counterman is likely to fix you with a scowl and call out over your shoulder, “Who’s ready to order? C’mon step up! What’ll ya have? What’ll ya have? Talk to me!”

  Founded in 1928 by Frank Gordy, the Varsity is revered the world over. Ask a dedicated grease-hound—especially a Southern one—about America’s top hot dogs and he is as likely to mention the Varsity as Nathan’s of Coney Island fame.

  Clowning at the counter

  Each year, thousands of the newly converted belly up to the gleaming stainless steel counter at the 800-seat North Avenue location, set across a yawning twelve-lane interstate gully from the campus of Georgia Tech, bark out an order, and then retreat to their table with a couple of chili-slaw dogs, maybe a cheesesteak, a bag of rags (French fries), and an F.O. (frosted orange) in their clutch. Orders snake their way from the kitchen along a custom-made conveyor belt, picking up trademark toppings along the way—meaty chili and mayonnaise-laced coleslaw for those dogs, a swab of oily pimento cheese on that hamburger steak. Fresh-cut French fries and onion rings emerge from their baptism in hot grease, crisp and sweet.

  In Atlanta, where, William Faulkner’s opinions aside, the past may well be dead,
few things endure, save this vaguely Deco silver and red restaurant with the curt service. Generations of Atlanta children have spent a restive morning squirming in a church pew, quieted by the promise of an afternoon trip to the Varsity. Junior executives and Junior Leaguers, sweat-soaked mechanics and white-stockinged attorneys alike stand in line for what everyone seems to call a “grease job.” One bite of a chili dog and you’ll know why—sweet oil bursts forth on the palate like a geyser. It’s a gourmand’s delight, a cardiologist’s nightmare. And still they come: 5,000 feet of hot dogs, 2,000 pounds of onions, 300 gallons of chili served. Each day. Every day. “Who’s ready to order? C’mon step up! What’ll ya have? What’ll ya have? Talk to me!”

  61 NORTH AVENUE / 404-881-1706

  **Flossie Mae**

  That Crazy Curbhop

  The wunderkinds of haute couture could have learned from Flossie Mae.

  During the days of America’s love affair with the drive-in, the Varsity employed nearly 100 curbhops, young black men for the most part, famed for their hustle, their temerity, and quick wit. In the early years, some would jump on a car’s running board as it wheeled into the parking lot and might well be bolting for the kitchen to retrieve an order of rings and a bag of rags before the car came to a rest. Others sang a song, told a joke, or shuffled a dance. The quest was to impress—and to garner fat tips. Comedian Nipsey Russell got his start on the Varsity blacktop in the 1940s, trading quips and dishing dogs, as did a legion of doctors and lawyers, dentists and mortgage bankers.

  But the grand old man of the Varsity carhops will always be the late John Raiford, known to generations of Atlantans as Flossie Mae. You could always spot Flossie, the “Wild Hat Man,” across a crowded lot, a loopy riot of color and whimsy, trash and treasure perched atop his head. One week he’d sport a circle of plastic forks and toy army men with a feather boa for a plume, the next a vegetable colander ringed with prescription bottles and heart-shaped lollipops.

  * * *

  “

  To earn big money, you got to give a big show.

  ”

  * * *

  Flossie Mae began working at the Varsity in 1937 at the age of twenty. Already a veteran curbhop—he began his career at the Pig and Whistle barbecue joint a few years earlier—he soon learned the lesson that would prove to be his watchword. “To earn big money, you got to give a big show,” he once told me as I munched down on a dog and parted with a tip twice the size of my bill.

  And he gave a show—clowning, chiding, singing, dancing, and winning an army of admirers. When Flossie jumped up on your running board, his crazy headgear tilted at a precarious angle, and called out the menu in a singsong rap, you ordered twice as much food and left three times the normal tip. In 1993 Flossie Mae retired after fifty-six years of service at the Varsity. In 1997 he passed away.

  **Lester Maddox**

  Restaurateur and Unlikely Governor

  Cover art from a recording of a defiant press conference staged in 1964.

  Gawky and jug-eared, with oversized horn-rim glasses, a wisp of a body, and a voice pitched at a frequency only yellow-dog Democrats could hear, Lester Maddox was an unlikely terror. I remember the first time I laid eyes on him. It was the summer of 1974, and Lester was on the campaign trail once again, preaching the gospel of states’ rights and peddling a bicycle backward around the Jones County courthouse. It was the closest thing to a circus I had seen come through the little town of Gray, Georgia, and I was enthralled. I couldn’t understand why my parents despised this little man. He wasn’t a threat; he was a clown, a flop-shoed circus sideshow performer. I begged my father to let me buy one of the little wooden souvenir axe handles he was selling.

  * * *

  You pick it out, we’ll rick it up.

  * * *

  What I didn’t know at that young age was that Maddox had a deserved reputation as one of the South’s most unrepentant segregationists, and his election as governor in 1966 was considered by many to be one of the state’s darkest hours. “I am ashamed to be a Georgian,” said Martin Luther King Jr. upon learning Maddox was to be his state’s governor.

  But it was not merely political bluster and blunder that won Maddox notoriety. Since 1947 he had run a restaurant, the Pickrick, on Hemphill Street just north of downtown. The name, said Maddox, was an invitation: “You pick it out, we’ll rick it up.” And pile it up he did. For nearly twenty years Maddox sold skillet-fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits, turnips, and homegrown tomatoes to travelers on Highway 41, then the primary north-south route through the city.

  Maddox was a born showman, a promoter of the old school, who kept a nesting bantam hen by the front door of the restaurant and awarded a prize to whomever guessed when she would lay her eggs. His ads in the Saturday edition of the Atlanta Constitution were pop-culture icons of the late 1950s, equal parts reactionary political commentary on everything from the Communist Menace to the Warren Court and testaments to the virtues of the Pickrick’s home cooking. Maddox prided himself as a friend of the common man, who kept prices low and quality high. All were welcome. All ate well—so long as you were white.

  * * *

  It was his God-given constitutional right to refuse service to anyone he darn well pleased.

  * * *

  The Civil Rights Movement came late to Maddox’s corner of the world. It was not until the spring of 1964 that black citizens began showing up at the Pickrick front door, intent on sitting down for a meal. For most of that spring and summer, Maddox repelled any advances, waving a pistol in the air and declaring that it was his God-given constitutional right to refuse service to anyone he darn well pleased.

  And so it went until July 2 when President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing discrimination in any business engaged in interstate commerce. That evening, three black ministers came to the Pickrick. Maddox met them at the door, an axe handle at his side. Maddox swung the axe handle that night, bashing the roof of one of the ministers’ cars. They left, but many more followed in their wake, and soon Maddox was embroiled in a federal court case that sought to test the constitutionality of the newly enacted law. On August 10, Maddox lost his last appeal and soon thereafter he closed his beloved Pickrick, taking to the road on a quixotic campaign for governor, selling axe handles to supporters, tokens of their shared will to resist. A little more than two years later, he took the oath of office.

  MARY MAC’S TEA ROOM

  Tearooms—dolled-up dining rooms where the tables were set with china and silver and the curtains dripped with lace—were once the exclusive province of the “Ladies Who Lunch” set. A few of the old Southern rooms remain, though for the most part they are now in their dotage, victims of a shrinking leisure class and a dearth of white gloves.

  Atlanta once claimed numerous such luncheon spots, among them the Frances Virginia Tea Room, a grand palace on Peachtree Street, and Mary Mac’s Tea Room on Ponce de Leon. Frances Virginia put away her doilies in 1962, but Mary Mac’s is as vital as ever.

  Founded, like many Southern restaurants, just after World War II, Mary Mac’s was run—on and off—from 1956 until 1998 by the late Mary Margaret Lupo. In the hands of Mrs. Lupo what was once a delicate enterprise was transformed into a trencherman’s heaven, a sprawling four-room complex seating over 200, where you filled out your own order with a nub of a pencil and dabbed at the corners of your mouth with a coarse dishtowel instead of a linen napkin. And the menu, rather than offering chicken salad–stuffed tomatoes and Melba toast, is a veritable encyclopedia of Southern cooking: chicken pan pie and country fried steak, country ham and calf’s liver, stewed corn and pole beans, squash soufflé and candied yams, to name but a few of the more than ten entrees and twenty vegetables offered on a typical day.

  A cultural constant on Ponce de Leon.

  The most curious dish on the menu may well be the cup of potlikker offered as a starter, perhaps a vestige of the days when the whole of the nation seemed embroiled in discussion over t
he proper consumption of the soupy leavings from the bottom of a pot of greens.

  That was back in 1931, during the height of the Depression, when Huey Long, U.S. senator-elect from Louisiana, and Julian Harris, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, were debating the relative merits of dunking or crumbling cornpone in potlikker. It all began rather innocently when Harris appended an editor’s note to a wire story about Long and his devotion to potlikker. Harris claimed it was a dish best enjoyed by crumbling pone into potlikker. Long took offense, he was an avowed dunker.

  Soon, presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt was weighing in as an adopted Georgian. The New York Times published weekly reports. Poems were penned, songs sung. The debate raged for nearly three and one-half weeks, and each day the Atlanta Constitution kept readers abreast of the developments with articles that, more often than not, landed on the front page. And, yes, even those grand ladies’ tearooms got into the spirit of the day, serving potlikker in china teacups with a corn stick on the side.

  224 PONCE DE LEON AVENUE / 404-876-1800

  See Mary Mac’s recipe for Potlikker Soup on page 102.

  WAFFLE DOO-WOP

  I like these songs. They have a good beat and you can eat to them.