KERNERSVILLE -- It was raining, it was pouring, but inside the tiny, narrow diner on Kernersville's Main Street, the coffee was flowing. The fresh-fried potato chips were hot and crunchy, and the pimento cheese was thick and spicy, and falling out of my sandwich.
At just 9 feet wide and 72 feet long, it's hard not to get to know your neighbor in Fitz on Main. If the red and green stools along a low counter didn't make things cozy, the bathroom would, where you have a good chance of bumping your knees against the wall.
Soon, in between bites of her pecan pie, the lady on my left was asking about a coming trip to Asheville. Could Fitz on Main be the (albeit dry) Cheers of Kernersville? It's likely.
David "Fitz" Fitzpatrick, who retired from Kernersville Elementary School as its principal earlier this year, opened the restaurant in April. He wanted to recreate Snow's, a downtown, community diner that was in same small, cramped location on Kernersville's Main Street for almost 40 years.
He's decorated Fitz on Main with metal signs peddling root beer and orange soda, framed posters and local memorabilia, and the piece de resistance, a vintage school score board.
But it's a retirement hobby. Fitzpatrick is not interested in working on weekends -- that's why his little sandwich shop is open for only breakfast and lunch, Monday through Friday, and if he wants to close for a week to take a vacation, he will, and recently did.
As a kid growing up in Kernersville, Fitzpatrick remembers walking from school to Snow's to watch World Series games on television.
The restaurant closed in 1985, but has been reborn a little through Fitzpatrick -- the counter and stools are the same ones that were in the restaurant when it opened in 1947, he said. There's also a handful of tables and chairs in the rear for larger parties.
But it's fun to sit at the counter, where you are so close to the action that you could probably reach across and refill your own (very) sweet tea, or flip your own burger.
As the woman next to me pointed out as she moved forward on her seat to make room for people walking by, there's another way you can tell that stools are the real thing -- their size is a giveaway that they're from a time when people were smaller.
The menu is also petite -- burgers, hot dogs, BLTs, grilled chicken salads and sandwiches for lunch, biscuits, French toast and eggs for breakfast.
The homemade pimento cheese is classic, a study in creaminess, with a subtle nudge of sharp cheddar and spice, and there is too much of it for one sandwich, spread between slices of hot, buttery bread (if you get it grilled, which I recommend). The burgers are well done, thick and well seasoned. The Carolina version is particularly tasty, thick with mustard, chili and the cool, sharp bite of slaw and onions, and delicious with a pile of Fitz's chips on the side.
This isn't fancy food, but it is good-hearted. And cheap -- one of the most expensive thing on Fitz's breakfast menu is a $4 omelet. Made with three eggs, by the way. For lunch, the grilled-chicken salad will set you back $5.35.
You don't come here for salads, though.
More soulful is a helping of biscuits and gravy, in this case, one biscuit (but one is plenty), split open and drowned in mild sausage-speckled gravy, and washed down with decent coffee. Or the Shammy breakfast, which is not a meal, but a parade that includes a buttery biscuit, a sausage patty, two perfectly-cooked over-easy eggs and best of all, a fluffy pancake as wide as a dinner plate.
The disappointment is the hash browns -- cubed, undercooked, pale potatoes. These taste almost, uh, healthy. Not what I'm looking for in short-order cuisine.
Dessert is hard to come by -- on my lunchtime visit, the pie was already gone. A delivery hadn't come in that day.
Next time.
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