The Queen City

Rolled down here this afternoon for a professional conference, the first in many years, at least where it's a professional conference for me. I've been to professional conferences for economic development people, agtech people, tissue reconstruction people, etc, looking for business in the years leading up to COVID. Never quite got much business, but learned an awful lot.

In any case, here I am in Charlotte. Looking around for a place to eat I discovered there is an Early Girl Eatery here. The family and I had eaten at the original one in Asheville many years ago and had a lovely meal. Turns out it was founded by the brother of Butch from Crooks back in the day and painted by Marvin. But of course it was.

I hustled down there because it was slated to close at 8. I got there at 7:10 and the place was oddly almost empty. "We're out of almost everything, we've been totally slammed" said one of the guys working there. I was tired and didn't really feel like looking around, and from Google Maps it didn't look like there was a lot around there (it was either wrong or I wasn't looking carefully). "Well, what do you have?" The guy disappeared into the kitchen and came out saying "we're out of everything on the lunch/dinner menu, but we do have some breakfast stuff." I didn't really feel like looking around, so I ended up with a pork, potatoes and eggs bowl.

It ended up being quite good and the biscuits with honey butter he brought out were quite delicious. The contrast between it and the place Mary and I ate last Friday at Mattamuskeet couldn't have been starker. Last week the room was entirely white and the place was incredibly noisy, and they never bussed the other end of our table. Here it was empty (at least when I got there), everybody was black and the service was impeccable. The guy went out of the way to take care of me, despite being at the end of a long shift, and was incredibly friendly. I was kind of thinking of maybe getting a seltzer to go but decided not to ask because he had run back and forth to the kitchen several times on my behalf. Then he just offered me a seltzer to go. I tipped the hell out of him.