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THE EATER: Congrats, Carrboro


by Kirk Ross

A belated woo-hoo! to the Carrboro Farmers’ Market for being listed among the top markets in the country in Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food. Carrboro shared ink with markets in the somewhat larger towns of New York, San Francisco and Seattle.

The market consistently gets these kind of props because it manages to keep things interesting, in addition to the quality and variety of its foods.

This market’s ninth annual Chefs Event – one of the best events of the year – starts and 9 a.m. on Sept. 9 and features a typically awesome line up of locals. Jeff Barney of the Saxapahaw General Store and The Eddy, Acme’s Kevin Callaghan, Matt and Sheila Neal from Neal’s Deli, Pazzo’s Seth Kingsbury, Adam Rose of Il Palio and Amy Tornquist of Watts Grocery will be cooking up samples with their favorite market ingredients, and for a few hours a little gazebo on the Carrboro Town Commons becomes the best restaurant in the South.

Trucking – not
With all due respect, I think the last people who should pick the winners and losers in the local restaurant business are the members of the Chapel Hill Town Council.

It should be decided by the customers, the staff, the inventiveness of the chef, the pleasure of the service and, of course, the food.

The council has dithered enough on the food truck matter while other towns have left Chapel Hill in the dust. Carrboro has a functioning, consistent and orderly fleet of vendors that folks can count on. Durham has incorporated its trucks into efforts to pump more life into its downtown. The smart thing to do would have been to let the trucks in temporarily to see how things go and where they set up, and draft rules to manage that.

The unfortunate thing now about Chapel Hill’s stilted response is that the issue has become a political hot potato in an election year. With several restaurants aligned against it, the council is going to feel the heat to either reject the trucks altogether or, as it looks now, draft rules so restrictive that they will have the same effect as a ban, or worse, lead to some bizarre unintended consequence.

Once again, local government is trying to figure out what the market will do ahead of allowing it to function and pre-drafting rules to guide the assumed behavior. I’m all for that when it comes to public safety, health and welfare, but it seems that when it comes to food trucks, we are over-thinking this to death.

Really big shrimp show
Jumbo shrimp is among The Eater’s favorite oxymorons, and recently there have been some wonderfully large late-summer shrimp coming out of the Pamlico Sound. We’re talking shrimp-on-the-barbie-size shrimp.

Photo by Kirk Ross

Large, fresh local shrimp are especially good eating in a classic po’ boy, which is about the easiest to make of all things New Orleans.

In addition to some 15-20 count shrimp, which are running around $5.99 a pound at the coast and $7.99 here these days, all you need is some Creole seasoning, a frying pan and a decent, not too hard, loaf of white bread. Some people bread the shrimp. Some put tartar sauce on the bun, while others insist on spreading mayo and Creole mustard. The Eater likes to add a couple slices of late-summer tomatoes. Best to keep a hinge on the bun. The assemblage should be sloppy, but functional. You should have one, chère.