Language Lessons at Crook's Corner

Last month, the beloved Crook’s Corner restaurant in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, closed its doors after nearly 40 years. Along with serving its famous shrimp and grits, Crook’s was a good place to learn how to slow down, listen, and learn a thing or two about living in the South. Lesson number one: Don’t cuss at your food, even when you love it.

by Michael Venutolo-Mantovani

Illustration by Truett Dietz, based on a photo by Kate Medley

I’m new here. 

That is to say, I’ve been living in the South for just six years. And even if I spend the rest of my life here, I may never fully acclimate. 

Though my pace has slowed and my resistance to the stultifying Southern heat has strengthened, I will forever be the New York City transplant who moved down here to start a family in kinder and more forgiving environs than Lower Manhattan. I will forever be the born-and-bred Jersey guy who can weave a well-placed “fuck” into nearly any conversation.

One of the first things I learned, though, on moving from New York to Chapel Hill was how many of my old ways weren’t going to work.

I learned as much at one of Crook’s Corner’s diner-style tables. 

Before we had a child, when Emily and I could go out whenever we pleased, we decided to try the little restaurant — the one everyone kept telling us about — on the corner where Chapel Hill becomes Carrboro.

We had but one edict from the locals: order the shrimp and grits. 

It was a dish made famous by Bill Neal, and one whose fame was solidified by Bill Smith; the two were the longest-tenured chefs in the restaurant’s storied history.

It was a dish that helped bring Southern cooking to the forefront of the modern gastronomic movement, telling high-minded diners around the country that comfort food had every right to be on the table beside whatever it was they were concocting at Eleven Madison Park or The French Laundry.

But unlike those places, you could get into Crook’s Corner without a reservation and without having to spend half a week’s paycheck. You could walk into Crook’s, past the palms hanging over the fence from the building’s side patio, and ask for, and usually get, a table. If not, you could sit at the bar, where dining alone was less anomalous than sitting solo at a two-top. 

The server was a woman I recognized from the local rock ’n’ roll scene. She took our order for the local delicacy, and, after a short wait, returned to gently place a piping bowl of shrimp and grits in front of me and one in front of Emily. I squeezed the juice from one of the quartered lemons garnishing the dish, sweeping my hand in a gentle circle to cover as much area as possible, took a final sip of water to cleanse my palate, and spooned a small pile of grits topped with a single shrimp into my mouth. 

“Fuck,” I said, as the mushrooms, bacon, and chives commingled with the shrimp on my tongue. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Emily shot me a look. 

Though she’d been away from the South for decades, she was born and raised in Charlotte. And though she was a child of Northeastern city Jews, she knew what people did and didn’t do in the South, how they did and didn’t talk, and why it was, unlike back home, inappropriate to show your appreciation of a dish of shrimp and grits by dropping a very audible f-bomb.

“Mike,” she whispered through a chuckle. “You can’t talk like that down here. This isn’t New York. People actually listen to what they hear.”

It was busy and the dining room was packed and loud. I assumed, just like on the Lower East Side, no one could hear me. And even if they did, they certainly weren’t listening. I looked around, noticing the disapproving glances from neighboring tables. 

I clenched my teeth, which tightened the muscles in my neck, and raised my fork a touch, nonverbally apologizing to the genteel Southerners who had no interest in hearing me curse at my grits, even if the curse was in highest praise.

It was one of my first lessons on how to live in the South, and how to live, if not as a Southerner, then at least like a Southerner. 

Over the last six years, we’d return to Crook’s often, sneaking in before a show at our town’s nearby rock clubs, Cat’s Cradle or Local 506. We’d come on the rare date night when we could find someone to watch our son, Julius. Each New Year’s Eve day, a burgeoning tradition would take us to the end of Franklin Street, for Bloody Marys and shrimp and grits. It’s where Emily spirited her sister during a mid-Thanksgiving visit so they could dine alone on the banana pudding, enjoying a one-off bourbon-based “pairing” the bartender concocted in a flash after asking the sisters what they enjoyed drinking. It was where I told a table of dear friends from rural Alabama that I was going to be a dad. It was the first place Emily nursed Julius in public.

Sometimes, when Emily was away for work or on a trip, I’d park our truck at one end of Franklin Street and saunter to the other, in no rush at all and like a real Southerner. I would eventually end up by myself at the bar at Crook’s, enjoying a dish of shrimp and grits alongside a vodka martini, dry.

There, unencumbered by conversation, I would listen; listen to the bartenders as they interacted with their charges, asking questions about their day, their weeks, and their lives; listen to my neighbors at the bar as they recounted their days, their weeks, and their years. I would listen to how Southerners spoke, not just in accent but in cadence and with genuine interest. I would listen to how they listen, patiently and often without interruption. 

Over the last six years, I learned how to live like a Southerner, how to move slowly through the swampy heat that lasts almost half the year, how to make a real batch of biscuits, how to discern tomato- and vinegar-based barbecue sauce, and how to pick a side (vinegar, by the way). I learned how to listen. 

Crook’s became a requisite stop for out-of-town guests, to show them one of the few things Chapel Hill is famous for that isn’t basketball.

Once, on a busy weekend night on the side patio, a dear friend visiting from Brooklyn chewed on his shrimp and grits, savoring each and every morsel of flavor in his mouth. He swallowed, took a sip of his cocktail, and stared back into the dish. 

“Dude. This is fucking insane,” he said, after a long pause.

Neighboring tables shot us glances, disapproving of the wanton use of our well-practiced tri-state vernacular.

I clenched my teeth, which tightened the muscles in my neck, and raised my fork a touch, nonverbally apologizing to the genteel Southerners who had no interest in hearing my friend curse at his grits, even if the curse was in highest praise.

“You can’t talk like that down here,” I whispered. “This isn’t New York. People actually listen to what they hear.”

I knew, because even if I’ll always be kind of new here, I now understand what it means to talk, to eat, and to listen like a Southerner.

More On Crook’s Corner

In The General Store

Support Southern Storytelling