Where Slurping Is Discouraged, But Understandable

Firefly
2706 South Croatan Highway
Nag's Head, North Carolina

(just north of the entrance to Jockey's Ridge State Park)

Elegance is not a word much thought of in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where the uniform of the day is shorts and flip-flops and any décor generally carries a fine gloss of salt spray and sand. Yet the dining room of Firefly, a purely local venture, exudes a lush dignity while maintaining the casual innocence that gives this resort area its charm. 

We stopped in after watching a spectacular sunset over Albemarle Sound from the dunes of Jockey's Ridge, and the easy friendliness of the staff refreshed us while the magnificence of the room renewed our sated spirits. We were a little leery, going in, because the legend on the sign outside warned of "Southern Cuisine," which we feared might mean saturated fat in the ice tea. Instead we found down-home cooking done with flair and a minimum of lard. Everything was delicious, and seldom has self-restraint required such exercise of will. (The self-restraint was limited in duration though: the leftovers were gone before the sun was high the next morning.) It would seem there is a qualitative difference between "Southern Cuisine" and "Southern Cooking."

What does that mean?

The first dish we tried was the Meat-n-Tater Salad. Surprisingly fresh greens and other rabbit-food in generous quantity underlay a satisfying pile of shaved prime rib of beef, of excellent quality, and Cheddar cheese. Tiny roasted potatoes ringed the outer edge of the plate, each one a gem of perfection. We opted to have the salad without the ranch dressing it normally would come with, and didn't miss it at all. There was plenty of moisture and flavour in the dish without the added fat calories of a buttermilk-based dressing.

The other dish was crab pot pie. This was served in a large-ish crock, with a flaky pastry crust over chunks of flaky crab, peas, carrots, onion and other vegetables in a creamy sauce. The combination of flavours was tremendous, and each different vegetable retained its texture and taste.

The side dishes offered are all paradigms of Southern cooking, from coleslaw to collared greens; the ones we tried were cheesy grits and fried green beans. I had high expectations for the grits, and low expectations for the beans. Both confounded me. The grits were oddly seasoned and, I thought, lacking in some essential quality: a touch of bacon? a chunk of fatback? The beans, though, proved to be extraordinary. They remained tender and crunchy inside their light shell of piquant seasoned batter, which was fried in very hot oil to create a dish that was dry to the touch. They were even better as leftovers the next day.

One of the others at our table had a cold side dish called broccoli salad, which I tried. The combination of tart, sweet and sour was fabulous, and I would say that this was my favourite among the many available side dishes on offer.

Never Out of Season

Oak Street Cafe

332 Main Street

Highlands, North Carolina

Highlands, North Carolina, is a high-end weekend getaway spot for the rich folk of the Southeast. It's 4,000 feet up in the mountains, somewhat remote, and lousy with the kinds of shops that still sell fur along with their designer furnishings and art. Kind of like Aspen without a treeline, Palm Springs without the desert, White Sulphur Springs without the bureaucrats. 

Oak Street Cafe fits right in. Located in the second floor of a typical main street building over a typical main street boutique, it boasts an intimate, romantically-lit dark-panelled dining room with windows giving a view of more typical main street boutiques, and a floor-to-ceiling wine rack that screens the creaky oak stairs.

What does that mean?

The season in Highlands doesn't really get started until Memorial Day, we're told; that may be why the waitstaff at this upscale place on a weeknight consists of one man, a waiter with a slight eastern-European accent and excellent presence ... when he's around. We arrived to find one occupied table and no staff on hand. After several minutes' good-natured bantering with the other customers, we seated ourselves at a table by the window, where we were eventually discovered and served. 

We started, eventually, with house salads. When, in time, these came, they had all the ingredients arranged by colour on the plate; an interesting choice, but I hesitate to call it a good one. After all, we at the table lack the utensils to toss a salad, and I for one dislike the chore of selecting one item from column A and one from column B with each bite, when I know that I could as easily have had a salad that was pre-mixed for me. 

Our next course was escargots bourguignon. Well, that was the name on the menu, though it varied from my conception of that very traditional recipe, first by being served in a puff pastry shell, and second by being served with a surprisingly thick and sweet-tasting butter and garlic sauce. The sauce grew on me, so that by the end of the dish I thought I would prefer it to the usual butter and garlic sauce; unfortunately it had a deleterious effect on the puff pastry shell, which grew gelatinous as the seconds ticked by. The snails themselves were a little on the rubbery side, not so much that they squeaked against the tooth, but enough that they threatened to. 

For entrées, we chose the two dishes recommended by the waiter. The chicken Kiev was, well, excellent.  In all honesty, it is the first I've had that is better than I could make myself. (At least, back when I would make such fatty dishes, in the 1970s.) The herbed butter inside was exquisite: not a thick slab, but a deliberately measured quantity, not sprinkled with herbs but properly mixed before being encased in the tender chicken breast, so that when cut into, the butter does not gush out like sea water through a Louisiana levee, but drains gracefully onto the plate, forming a halo around the delicate crust of the dish. The plate was shared by a generous portion of green beans that, for once, could honestly claim the moniker haricots verts. A small bowl of roasted potatoes was, in contrast, disappointing. They had a sawdust texture and little flavour, and ended the evening in the trash.

The other choice was shrimp and grits. Being enough of a Southern boy to have a fair appreciation of grits as food, I was tickled to see them on the menu in a place like this. Think Billy Carter in the White House. It's not quite that, but in that line. But Oak Street Cafe pulls it off with flair. The grits are thick enough to hold their own with the cheesy sauce and bacon flavours, and would have been delicious even without the shrimp. Mushroom slices and scallions provided textural variance without interfering in the wonderful flavours of the main ingredients. 

The prices would have bordered on inflated back home, where everything seems cheap, but they are in keeping with the economy of a place where the local workers can't afford to live.