Sugar Pie Saves the Day
A recovering food writer and a photographer head south in search of women chefs with stories to tell, traditions to share, and meals to cook
Day 2: Chapel Hill, Durham, and Asheville
Here’s how I know I drank too much wine the previous night: I wake up in Chapel Hill at 5:50 a.m. and can’t get back to sleep. I’m not regretting the wine, just the havoc it will wreak on my day. An hour later, I scrap the resting plan and get out the laptop. Melanie and I convene in the lobby at 9 a.m. Puffy-eyed and half-fried, I’m craving sugar and caffeine. Melanie, on the other hand, is the picture of health and has already paid a visit to the gym.
Off we go to meet Chef Number Two. After the interview’s conducted and the photos snapped, Melanie and I hunker down at Scratch, the Durham bakery I’ve been dreaming of squatting at since, three summers ago, I tried the Shaker lemon pie that the shop’s proprietor, Phoebe Lawless, makes. She uses the entire lemon for this peerless pie; you can see the macerated citrus slices embedded in it. My wedge had been sent overnight, so I could only try to imagine what it must taste like when freshly baked.
That particular pie is only one example of the crust-based items Phoebe sells daily. She has a way with dough, and with salt. She uses just the right amount of the latter to simultaneously bring out and temper sweetness and tartness. For a pastry junkie like me, walking into Scratch is a Christmas-morning moment. Where to begin? Which gift to unwrap first?
Like patience, pacing is a virtue. Years as a sweets fiend has taught me this: You don’t want to overdo it on the sugar first thing in the morning. The rest of your day will be a chaotic, manic series of hopped-up hyper highs and cranky, nauseous crashes. My plan is to stock up on a stash and save it, for later. I announce that I’m going to need a box or two, and proceed to order the following: the sugar pie, which is Phoebe’s trademark and relies on only three ingredients — sugar, flour, and buttermilk (or four, if you count vanilla); the lemon chess pie (no Shaker lemon on the menu today); the salted chocolate crostada; the pickled celery crostada (it’s important to try the savory options, and once I hear this one has includes anchovies, I’m in); a pecan “sandy” shortbread cookie, and a sack of the housemade sesame sorghum granola. That’s all packed up in a bag. Then, to have with our coffee, I choose the raspberry cobbler-esque muffin. Phoebe insists we experience the strawberry ricotta crostada, because it has the green berries in it.
Melanie smiles when she sees the small plate with the raspberry bundle on the table, and when I hand her the bag of granola. Then she sees my to-go bag. She is not amused. Concerned, is more like it. “That’s a lot to carry,” she says. Then she adds, “When are you going to eat all that?”
I shrug, and smile. “Now we have back-up,” I respond, aware that we probably won’t reach our next destination until 10 p.m. and may not be able to find a restaurant that’s still serving, let alone open. I also know that every once in awhile, having dessert for dinner is a magical thing. Melanie announces that she’s going to have some “real food,” and orders the green bean salad with pumpkin seeds. Harumph. (Okay, I admit, it was delicious.)
We park ourselves at Scratch and try to get as much work done as we can before leaving for the airport.
Just as we’re thinking about packing up and taking a pre-flight walk through town, out of the corner of my eye, I see three women enter the shop. The first one looks familiar — very. How do I know her? Do I know anyone who lives in Durham? No. Then I spy the woman behind her, and it clicks. It’s Melissa Hamilton and Christopher Hirsheimer of Canal House, the New Jersey-based studio where the duo develops recipes, cooks, and photographs food, and produces books that share the fruits of their labors. I’m a big fan, and they know me. Except they know me with long hair. They do not recognize me with super-short hair and as I say hi and start chirping away, I forget that I’ve been shorn. It takes a few moments for them to realize that I’m me. Then, we’re saying hi all over again. It’s an unexpected and delightful reunion. They’re in Durham to host a luncheon with their chum and former Saveur magazine colleague, Kelly Alexander.
Giddy from the not-too-sweet, buttery, tart raspberry not-cobbler not-muffin thingy, two coffees, and the coincidence, I’m all “thisisthebestdayever!” Although I’m hoping Melissa, Christopher, and Kelly will corroborate my bad eating behavior by ordering a mess of desserts themselves, they each order pork carnitas sandwiches, like normal lunch-takers. Sensible, but not foolish; they try a few sweets for the road. Kelly picks up a whole lemon chess round for her son because it’s his birthday, and that pie’s his very favorite. He must be great a kid.
Melanie and I say our goodbyes, and leave to discover what has become a hazy, hot, and highly humid day in Durham. As we stretch our legs by moseying along the city’s main street, Melanie acknowledges that were it not for Melissa and Christopher and the trail they blazed in the world of food publishing, we might not be on this trip of ours right now. She’s right, but it’s too uncomfortably sticky out to let that truth sink in as it should.
We drive off to Raleigh-Durham airport, where we’d landed the previous morning. I like the looks of the guy at the curbside check-in stand and decide he’s our man. He has the most piercing but kindly blue eyes. As he gets our boarding passes printed and takes in our precious cargo, he notices we’re going to Asheville. When Melanie leaves to return the rental car and I stay with the being-checked bags, he asks me why we’re going there, and then tells me it’s where he grew up. He hadn’t been back for twenty years until, a few months ago, he took his wife to see it, and boy, had it changed. I asked what they’d liked most. His wife, he noted, enjoyed the Asheville Beer Company, a pub that houses its own brewery.
Despite the fact that we’re going to have to take two planes to get to a city in the same state we’re already in, I’m still in a good mood, dipping into the Scratch granola as I go. We reach our gate. There are delays — not our flight, at first, but then, yep, thunderstorms are threatening Atlanta, and will surely come our way. Once I hear murmurings of a pending postponement, I suggest to Melanie that we think about the alternative, driving. We agree that as soon as we get the latest from the Delta team, we’ll make a lickety-split decision. (Tip: It’s always good to travel with like-minded people who know how to make hard-and-fast decisions down the line; no wavering, no second-guessing.) Update: our flight to Georgia is now leaving at 7:05 p.m.— maybe — instead of the intended 5:15 p.m. This means we’re not going to make our connecting flight to Asheville. We’ll have to get on a later flight. And then, who knows when we’ll get there.
Time to cancel our reservations (without canceling the rest of our itinerary, because that can happen), get our luggage back, and rent another car. Easier said than done. There’s some red tape here, some finding a Delta gate that doesn’t have a long line at its “help” desk there. And then there’s waiting for our bags that Mr. Blue Eyes so expertly checked to show up on the baggage carousel. It’s not a snappy process.
Finally, at 6:50 p.m., we start the three-and-a-half-hour drive (according to our bestie, the navigatress Garmin) to Asheville. As we pull out of the airport, it starts to pour, hard. Melanie’s at the wheel, and I’m taking to the tweets to see if there’s anywhere along the way we should stop for (food) fuel.
John T. Edge chimes in almost immediately with “Pulliam’s Hot Dogs, Winston Salem,” while illustrious food writer Josh Ozersky lobbies for Poole’s Diner back in Raleigh, and Food52 editor Marian Bull suggests “Cookout or any NC barbecue joint.” Our fearless driver Melanie perks up at the hot dog recommendation, but, sadly, also recognizes that it’s going to get dark, and she wants to take advantage of what’s left of the daylight while it’s there. “Make hay while the sun sun shines,” she says. And so, as we speed through Winston, we wave goodbye to the promise of a frank, blanketed in a buttered bun and heaped with chili and snowy-white creamy cole slaw. Instead, we take a quick pee-break at a service station and buy some soda (yeah, we went there) a bag of Twizzlers, which Melanie sees as a form of compromise. (She loves candy; I do not. I’d rather be eating pastry, clearly. But artificially-flavored “strawberry” braids are, oddly enough, okay by me.) She picks up a box of cinnamon Hot Tamales too (ew, gross).
At the register, the woman on duty asks us if we’re having a “girls’ night,” and Melanie says, “Yes, but without the boys, or the movies.” “No booze, either,” I add. Our new BFF finds this unacceptable. She loves a good girls’ night. She and her buddies rent a hotel room, and they load up on food and flicks. We should try it, she advises, and urges we go to Chick-fil-A for fried-chicken sandwiches, while we’re at it. She can’t believe we’ve never been to that fast-food spot. We explain it’s not a New York phenomenon; still, she remains shocked.
Back in the car, I’m DJ-ing, as the sun sets in the western sky (and how gorgeous the darkening, glowing horizon is out here, en route to the Blue Ridge Mountains). I take my job seriously and am really mixing it up, or trying to. Feeling a lull in the program, I go to Prince (“When Doves Cry”), and as it’s playing and the butterflies are all tied up, and maybe I’m just like my mother, she’s never satisfied, I ask Melanie if she has heard Patti Smith’s rendition of this track. She has not. Missing Chick-fil-A is okay; missing this cover is not. After a listen, Melanie agrees.
Finally, we reach our destination. It is 10:10 p.m. and we’ve arrived at the aloft,”a vision of W hotels,” its tagline reads. We are (not) met by a dude named Eric. He does not help us with our bags, or offer to. He does not do much of anything except proceed to screw up our check-in. Royally. We have each booked our own room. But, on Eric’s (lack of) watch, we’re both sent to the same one. He goes out for a smoke and leaves us standing in the lobby holding keys to the same room. When he comes back, we ask him to remedy the situation. “Sure, no problem.” Pause. Silence. “Uh, the computer’s really slow,” he says. Our patience is waning.
Have I mentioned we haven’t had dinner?
Maybe I should have brought up that minor point before. When we bypassed hot dog heaven for Twizzler town, I had taken it upon myself to do some sleuthing, and had found Cúrate, a tapas bar in Asheville, helmed by a well-regarded woman chef (how appropriate) named Katie Button. As per its website, it’s a few paces away from our “vision” of a hotel and takes reservations up to 10:30 p.m. There are still tables available for that very evening, according to Open Table.
As Eric takes his sweet time doing absolutely nothing, I suggest we go drop our bags off in my room and head to dinner. When we’re done eating, he can give Melanie her keys (because, by then, he surely will have straightened things out).
We arrive at Cúrate at 10:40 p.m. and are greeted by a very chipper hostess who tells us the kitchen has stopped cooking and no, we can’t stay and eat. Not even some sliced ham and cheese? Some pan con tomate (a simple snack of toasted bread with tomato)? Nope. She is very sorry, except she is not. We beg. She keeps smiling and saying, “No.” I hate her. I ask if there’s any place she knows of that might still be serving (decent) food. She tells us about a new place called the Green Room. It’s open late. And it’s nearby, on Church Street. She points us “there, behind the church.” We walk. And walk. We can’t find Church Street. When we finally do, the Green Room’s door is locked.
We are tired. We are hungry. We are angry at Asheville with its nouveau-hippy kids singing Grateful Dead tunes in the middle of the Downtown square. We give up. Back at the ranch, Eric is gone. We march upstairs to the lounge, which is also a bar, and sort of a restaurant, and has a concierge desk at its center. Help us, we beg. Pity is taken upon us. The two guys at this station give Melanie a set of keys to her room, and both of us drink vouchers. We thank them, profusely. I may or may not have told them that Eric sucked.
I leave Melanie at the bar while I run up to my room and grab a certain bag I’ve had with me since that morning. It is full of pie and crostada, and it is dinner. We order drinks and sit outside in the quiet, pleasantly chilly Asheville night. We drag our forks through Phoebe Lawless’s pie shells and shovel in bites of salty-spicy braised celery followed by those of brownie-like dark chocolate or tart lemon filling. For me, it all comes down to that sugar pie, with its sour, tangy buttermilk. It’s like a lighter, more custardy cheesecake, anchored by one of that chef’s flaky, buttery, absolutely, exquisitely perfect crusts.
See, Melanie, I told you so.
We go our separate ways. A few minutes later, after I’ve gotten to my room, I receive a text from Melanie. She is back on the second floor. Her keys don’t work. In the elevator, on her way downstairs, again, she hears a certain song playing. This is what it sounds like when doves cry.
