Mickey Ewell first came through Chapel Hill when he was working as a salesman. He would stop at the Town and Campus store on Franklin Street, owned by a couple he eventually befriended.
Following Ewell’s decision to settled down in the area, he established several mainstays downtown that endured and shaped Chapel Hill’s business scene for many years to come.
Ewell, a key member of the Chapel Hill Restaurant Group, passed away on October 5 following a terminal diagnosis of cancer. Known for establishing such eateries such Spanky’s Restaurant and 411 West on Franklin Street, the businessman had a reputation for creating menus for unfilled roles in the local restaurant landscape and developing talent to join him.
Greg Overbeck, a co-owner and the marketing director for the Chapel Hill Restaurant Group, is one of those people. He said before Spanky’s existed, Ewell got started by creating a spot in the basement of the Town and Campus store. Named Harrison’s, Overbeck said the joint capitalized on the beginning of the town’s bar scene in 1974.
“History kind of goes in waves,” Overbeck told Chapelboro, “and we were at the crest of a Bohemian, counter-culture wave [in the town.] The next crest was going to be more conservative, with fraternities and sororities and Mickey hit that at exactly the right time when he opened Harrison’s.”
Despite not having the infrastructure to cook meals in the space, Ewell served his guests quiches, soups and salads prepared at his house. Before long, he wanted to start a new project based around hamburgers. Inspired by the Georgetown area of Washington D.C., Ewell opened Spanky’s Restaurant on the corner of Franklin Street and Columbia Street in 1977. The restaurant quickly became a hit with its hamburgers served on English muffins and liquor-by-the-drink menu.
Overbeck had a friend who helped get him a job at Spanky’s as a bus boy after graduating from UNC. Before long, he became a waiter and first met Ewell by serving him at the restaurant. As he stayed part of the staff, Overbeck began to accumulate more roles until he shared manager duties with Pete Dorrance and Kenny Carlson, who also started out in minor roles at the restaurant.
In 1986, the trio began to have their own restaurant aspirations and Ewell decided to formally create a team with them, founding the Chapel Hill Restaurant Group. Since then, they’ve established places like Squid’s and 411 West in Chapel Hill, with Mez Contemporary Mexican and Page Road Grill a short way off in Durham. Overbeck says throughout their partnership, it’s been very collaborative, with each person playing their own specific role and Ewell curating the moves for new spots.
“He was always the vision guy, we were always the day-to-day,” Overbeck described. “We knew how to run restaurants and Mickey said ‘let’s do this, let’s try this over there.’ It was a mutually beneficial relationship for the four of us, it was fantastic.”
The presence of such restaurants, with Spanky’s at the center, significantly shaped the food scene of Chapel Hill, said President of the Chamber for a Greater Chapel Hill-Carrboro Aaron Nelson.
“It’s hard to overstate the impact that Mickey has had in positioning Chapel Hill as a destination for foodies and great meals,” said Nelson. “[He] really created some of the most iconic restaurants of our community. And he had a tremendous eye for talent and identified early on the staff members and folks he worked with, and chose great partners.”
Nelson said the culture partially created by these spots helped develop downtown business districts, with Ewell being honored for those efforts in the inaugural class of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Business Hall of Fame in 2013.
“When you think about some of the greatest places, to live, work, play, shop and raise your families,” he said, “it is often an experience with a business or an experience with a restaurant.”
Others certainly agree. When the Spanky’s Restaurant Facebook page shared the news of Ewell’s condition and diagnosis, they asked people to share their memories of the restaurant. More than 100 users commented, sharing photos and memories ranging from their favorite meals to order, to working there as college students, to even meeting their future spouses there.
Nelson said his experiences at Ewell’s eateries, and those he’s heard from others, were the same.
“[Such restaurants are] the things that bound our alumni back to our community, that made a wonderful place for families, as they grew up, they would want to bring their kids or grandkids back here,” said Nelson. “He really created some of those best memories: the iconic places that made Chapel Hill [become] Chapel Hill.”
“He changed the look of Franklin Street,” agreed Overbeck. “With Harrison’s, Spanky’s, 411 West and then Squids…[with] four restaurants in Chapel Hill alone, he had a tremendous impact on the downtown scene and the scene of Chapel Hill altogether.”
When Mickey retired from the restaurant business in 2018, the Chapel Hill Restaurant Group decided to retire Spanky’s itself. Moving to a new model called Lula’s, the restaurant remained open until the coronavirus pandemic this past March. At the end of July, the group decided to permanently close the space.
Overbeck said the day of Ewell’s passing, his group auctioned off the kitchen equipment inside the space occupied by the Ewell and the Chapel Hill Restaurant Group for more than 40 years.
Now, the space sits entirely empty — but not in the minds of those who frequented it for the many decades it was full.
Photo via the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Business Hall of Fame.
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