Oh! And of course, country style steak that falls apart when touched by a fork?
Heh. I’m the wrong person to ask about that, I’m afraid :). After years of trying, I’ve given up on liking serious soul food.
That said, Tupelo Honey does it pretty damn well (if it’s a bit on the light side). And Sunny Point Cafe has a great breakfast spread, if you can deal with some yellow in your grits. Used to be a good Cajun restaurant in town, but they’re closed now.
Only soul food restaurant I remember ever liking is Mama Dip’s Country Kitchen, but that’s a little bit out of the way. And even there I’ve only really eaten breakfast.
Daniel
Wait, I just remembered: Moose Cafe! It’s out near the completely unconvincing Farmer’s Market (more of a tourist trap than anything else–the real farmer’s markets are elsewhere), and while it’s not my favorite place to eat, I remember their apple butter as being just standout. It comes highly recommended by folks who like Southern food a lot. In fact, I just looked it up to make sure i was getting the name right, and apparently they’ve been featured in Southern Living and voted (according to someone, I have no idea whom) the best country restaurant for four consecutive years.
It’s a busy place, but probably a good bet if you’re looking for country fried steak.
Daniel
We have one of those cursed locations practically next door to us. In the seven years we’ve lived in Vegas, it has changed hands at least six times. First it was a downscale but cheap and tasty Oriental restaurant with a buffet where I stuffed myself on a regular basis. Remained in this guise under about four different ownerships before somebody decided to take it upscale, took out the buffet and made it strictly table service and about doubled the prices. That lasted about six months. About a year and a half ago, I was on my way back to work at Wal-Mart working a late shift, and I saw the door was open (it had been vacant a while at this point.) I stuck my head in the door and saw what appeared to be the adult membership of an extended Black family. I asked if they were planning on opening a restaurant. Answer, yes. What kind of food? Soul food. Kewl. Mom and I both love soul food. So, I waited. And waited. Eventually started seeing notices demanding the tenants vacate. Vacate? It was already vacated.
Now there’s a Mexican restaurant there. Haven’t bothered to eat there yet. There are a lot of really, really good Mexican restaurants in Vegas, we don’t need one more. Actually, the same is true of Oriental restaurants. You can’t heave a brick in this town without hitting a dozen of 'em.
I think the soul food place could have flown, if it hadn’t aborted. There are only a couple of decent soul food joints in this town, and the apartment complex I live in has a fairly high percentage of African Americans, many of whom are single mothers who would appreciate an inexpensive night off cooking. Oh, and mom and I love soul food, too. Basically, it would have been serving a market that wasn’t already glutted with a zillion restaurants serving that kind of food.
Heh, I’m glad you included this part. I was reading your post and mentally freaking out, like, “Does s/he not know about Naperville?” Mmmmm. If I may recommend something, you should try Jin’s Mandarin, near Naperville North HS, off of Ogden Ave. It’s very good, and there’s never a wait (even at 6:30 on a Friday night). It’s in the little shopping center with the Office Max and Binny’s.
Are you a native Southerner or a transplant? If the former, I’m glad to finally know I’m not alone in my general distaste for it (with several notable exceptions). If the latter, nevermind.
Thanks! Sounds wonderful!
:eek: Acckkkk! Country fried steak is breaded cube steak with a sawmill gravy; country style steak is nonbreaded cube steak (pounded to smithereens before frying) with a brown gravy. Only South Carolinians confuse the two.
Or (semi)vegetarians. If your mom can describe the difference between tempeh and tofu, I’ll concede the point. 
Aesiron, your question has a convoluted answer: you see, I was born in, and lived 13 of my first 18 years in, Chapel Hill. It’s the place that Jesse Helms said you could throw a fence around and have a new North Carolina Zoo. More charitably, it’s described as a pat of butter in a sea of grits. It’s a university/research town, chockablock with Yankees and other foreigners.
What’s more, my parents moved to Chapel Hill from The Farm, a hippie commune; my diet growing up had a lot more tofu than chitlins.
Some bits of Southern cooking–biscuits, sweet potato pie, fried catfish with hot sauce–are dear to me. But my mom taught me that vegetables taste better when they’ve not been boiled into submission, and that some things taste better without a ham hock thrown in, and that sweet potatoes served on their lonesome (or with a tiny drizzle of blackstrap) are a lot tastier than when they’ve been canned in syrup.
So I’m technically a southerner, but plenty of southerners would, by virtue of my Chapel Hill, vegetarian upbringing, revoke my membership.
Daniel
I think the problem is too often people take a short cut on market research. They look around and ask themselves “what kind of businesses are succeeding here?” The problem with this approach is that it fails to ask “would another business like these existing successful ones also succeed?” Too many people don’t use their imagination to make the leap to “what kind of business that doesn’t currently exist would be successful in this area?”
There’s a cursed spot in my neighborhood, as well. In this case, however, it’s all the fault of the same people.
The Sangenjaya neighborhood in Tokyo is absolutely packed with restaurants. I once counted all the places where you could buy a prepared meal between the subway station and my house (a 6-minute walk), and got over 50 (including several multi-story buildings with a different restaurant on each floor). And that’s just on a single street; there are literally hundreds of places to eat within a 10-minute radius of the station. As you can imagine, a new restaurant here has to really have something unique to have any hope of surviving more than a month or two, and many don’t. There aren’t many chain restaurants because everything’s packed together so tightly that there isn’t enough room for the standard franchise layout. One restaurant conglomerate, however, Shirokiya Group, tried their hand and failed three times in a row.
First, it was a kind of pork-cutlet/fast-food place called Yokozuna-ya. Not bad, but not great, and not a place you’d actually make plans to go to. It lasted about six months.
Next, Shirokiya Group replaced it with a udon noodle restaurant. Kind of original, but unfortunately another (and better and cheaper) udon restaurant had just opened up right next door only a few weeks earlier. This lasted about a month.
Attempt #3 was a ramen shop. This one lasted four months, but only made it that long because the main competition (again, better tasting and cheaper) only 50 meters away had closed because of a fire. When that place finished their repairs and re-opened, the cursed shop barely lasted to the end of the month.
Finally, about a year ago they changed over to an all-night pub that serves party-type food (fried chicken, mini-pizzas, etc.) and lots of alcohol. Fourth time seems to be the charm.
That sounds very plausible. A couple of my friends are opening up a bar/club in town next month, and I’m very hopeful they’ll succeed. The difference between them and the dessert people is that:
- My friends are very experienced bartenders who have worked at nightclubs, so they know the core business; and
- They’ve lived in the area for years, so they’ve got a built-in clientele of clubbers who love them; and
- They’re specifically taking into consideration the clubs in the area, in order to not duplicate anything existing.
Their market research has extended from all the local clubs all the way to clubs in New Orleans. (heh. Going out clubbing is now “market research,” the lucky bastards). While I acknowledge that they may fail, at least it won’t be for a lack of passion, or for a lack of knowledge of the core service they provide.
Daniel