Barbecue and Burgers and Fusion, Oh My!
Imagine a world where there are no Big Macs, and no Whopper Jrs. and no Extra Crispy in a bucket. There was a time before Hardee’s drive-through and Door Dash when sitting down to a meal was the norm and restaurants were owned by local folks from the Fort Mill area. A very long time ago, way back in the 1960’s, before I was old enough to think my parents were stupid, we used to go out for meals together.
Sometimes on a Sunday after church, Dad would gather us in the tan 1958 Buick he never liked, and we would ride to Brandon’s Grill for Sunday dinner. Brandon’s sat where the filling station now sits at the intersection of 21 Business and 21 By-Pass. Fried chicken or roast beef were stars of the Sunday menu and my sister, Connie and I mostly ate what the grown-ups ate. Sometime there was a children’s meal but that was just a chicken leg or fish sticks and macaroni & cheese.
Fish sticks were my favorite. In the early sixties, fish sticks came on the scene and held the same status for kids as chicken nuggets do today. Mother could end the daily fight about what I would not eat by throwing four or five frozen fish sticks in the oven along with dinner. They were also a staple for cafeteria lunches at school. Once in a while, when nostalgia overcomes common sense, I will bring home a bag of frozen fish sticks and put them in the oven. Don’t do it. It will only break your heart.
Fried fish has always been a favorite for my parents too. Hillcrest Fish Camp, (now Captain Steve’s) owned by Bun Collins, was the best place for fried fish in town and for the adventurous, Lineburgers Seafood, near Gastonia, fed hundreds of hungry folks on Fridays and Saturdays. It was the first restaurant I know that had to hire off-duty police to direct traffic.
When my food-loving Dad was in the mood for something more exotic, we would have to leave town. Exotic food choices were limited in our little corner of the Carolinas. Rock Hill and Charlotte had only two varieties: Chinese and Italian. There were Greek restaurants around but they were usually as American as apple pie with a side of spaghetti.
I don’t know where my father developed his taste for Asian food. He did serve in the Pacific campaign in World War II but I think once he tried it in Charlotte, it just suited his taste buds. The earliest Chinese restaurant I remember is the Ming Tree on Providence Road in Charlotte. It may have been the earliest “Fancy” restaurant I ever saw. Inside were lacquer panels and Asian art. I was a fan of their over-sized almond cookies and fortune cookies.
In the seventies, Dad discovered the Moon Garden in a strip Mall near K-Mart in Charlotte. Dad, gregarious to several faults, got to know the Moon Garden owner Chuck Lee. Dad must have taken every friend he had to the Moon Garden and Chuck would always treat us to special dishes. We would order four or five different dishes and pass them around family style.
Fort Mill had no Italian restaurants. The closest was Luigi’s restaurant, set back from India Hook Road in Rock Hill. Luigi’s still had a gravel drive and parking lot but the inside mood was set by friendly greetings, straw covered bottles of Chianti and Italian music. We were naïve about food. For my family, and I suspect most families in the South, Italian food meant spaghetti. Chef Boyardee canned spaghetti had made its way into our home in a box that contained spaghetti noodles, a can of sauce and a small container of parmesan cheese, but let’s face facts. The sauce was pretty much oregano-flavored ketchup.
Luigi’s and the Open Kitchen in Charlotte introduced us to lasagna and ravioli and manicotti. Pizza was an upstart in our part of the south. Frozen pizza didn’t appear in stores until thec1950’s.
By the time I was in high school there were other choices in the area. Bun Collins and Rufe Hammond sold hamburgers and hot dogs from their cafes on Banks Street and students at Fort Mill High would sneak out to eat there for lunch. Sometimes Bun’s employees would cross the road and hand burgers over the fence to waiting students.
Rock Hill had some particularly strange restaurants in the sixties and seventies. The Varsity had good food with burgers and hotdogs as the staples but the strange part was the tree growing through the roof. When The Varsity needed to expand, the owners just built around the large oak. Eventually the tree died, the Varsity built a new building next door and the tree was carved into an ice cream cone shape. Termites ended the tree’s saga in the eighties. Vying for strangest building was the Dutch Mill, an old-fashioned burger place with a replica of a windmill and a small movie screen which ran cartoons. It was a good place to get a burger and a beer delivered to your car. In third place for strange but probably first place for food was the Shrimp Boat. You will have to guess what the original building was shaped like.
The owners of The Varsity opened Watkins Hot Dog Stand downtown in Rock Hill. Their chili was renowned and became the stuff of myth. There was even a Watkins in Fort Mill in a little strip on White Street beside a Seven-Eleven. I sometimes believe that one out of every five people in Fort Mill and Rock Hill claim to have Watkins’ chili recipe. If you doubt me, just post on any site popular with locals and ask for it. Careful, there are counterfeit recipes. I was given a copy once but it started with “eight pounds of ground beef” and my math is just not up to dividing that recipe.
When fast food chains first arrived, there was no drive-in window and no inside seating. At Hardees on Cherry Road in Rock Hill, the customer had to walk up to the window to order a hamburger and a drink. That cost twenty-five cents total in the sixties when Hardees first opened. In the seventies, Fort Mill got its first fast food restaurant. Located on White Street, where the Farmers’ Market is now, the Bantam Chef offered walk-up orders and even a few tables for locals who wanted to get out of the summer heat to drink their chocolate shake. It was a sad day when the “Banty Chef” closed its door.
When pizza finally did rear its peperoni-covered head in the south, Shakey’s Pizza on Independence Boulevard became the place to be for the dating set. Waiters brought out the pizzas on the traditional aluminum trays and served drinks in what looked like heavy glass mugs. I say “looked like” because the mugs were lightweight plastic and the uninitiated could easily lift the mug too fast and douse themselves with Coke or beer. Shakey’s will live in my memory as the first place I ordered a beer after my eighteenth birthday.
I am sure I missed some of the places we used to go. Time passes and restaurants are noted for having short lifespans so feel free to share some of your favorites with me. Good food in a sit-down restaurant has always made for good conversation and good conversation is what makes us human…keeps us grounded.
There must be more places to eat on Main Street now than in the whole township in the seventies. It looks like Fort Mill has arrived on the food scene. Barbecue? Sushi? Pimento Cheeseburger? Fish Taco? We’ve got those and more. It’s great to have a good selection to choose from but I do miss a big ol’ Bantam Chef burger and a Watkins hot dog all the way. Oh, by the way, has anybody got that chili recipe?