The more things change, the more they stay the same. Sort of. The surge caused the restaurant world to pause a moment, but happily not to shut down completely again. Caution became more individualized. I’ll personally feel much better when children also are allowed to receive vaccines.

The weather has remained mostly lovely allowing our restaurants to take good advantage of outdoor seating. One of the best things about all of this is that my friends are all working again.

One difference this year is that football weekends seem to be less of a factor than they used to be. Once upon a time they governed how restaurants operated here in the fall. Talking to colleagues this year, it seems they are just one more thing to consider.

So how is fall shaping up? Every place that’s open at all has figured out its own way to make do and the dining public is pretty much cooperating. Chef Sera Cuni down at The Root Cellar has reopened her indoor dining area, renovated to enclose the once-open part of the kitchen. This place was made for social distancing. Really tall ceilings, a big dining area with room to spread out and a covered outdoor porch. Her regulars are delighted.

At Imbibe, the Monday night jazz (with Robert Griffin and Danny Grewen) has moved back downstairs. If it’s pretty, the door is propped open and passers-by can listen for a moment. You can still get a full takeout menu, but Chef Mandey Brown is serving her Louisiana cooking in the dining room again as well.

Down Henderson Street a bit is Tru, a deli that serves wine. It has a pretty patio in the front and rooftop dining as well as inside tables. Their build-your-own sandwich or salad menu provides an endless number of possible combinations.

While I was visiting The Root Cellar and its neighbor Flyleaf Books, I walked around the corner to see what other restaurants in Midtown Market are up to. Kitchen has returned to serving inside as well as out front and is open Wednesday through Saturday. They have returned to an a la carte menu

Lucha Tigre is open every night again, but only serving lunch on weekends. They have a really beautiful vine covered patio. I always get the mojito made with beer. Hunam has returned to its full schedule of lunch and dinner seven day a week and still has one of those bafflingly huge menus that are common in Chinese restaurants. All of these restaurants require masks to be worn when inside until you are seated. They are all also doing some form of takeout service.

Much of the world has been either been on fire or flooded and battered by storms. For some reason, the weather in central North Carolina has been exemplary and one of the blessings of this has been an abundance of wild scuppernongs, paw paws and persimmons. This is the persimmon pudding that I found in the recipe box at Crook’s Corner when I started there in 1993. I always said that of all of the recipes that I inherited, this was the best. It is made with our native wild persimmons, and wild persimmons behave differently in recipes than cultivars do due to the difference in moisture content. I have never made this with store bought fruit.

Wild Persimmon Pudding

Serves 8-10

Preheat the oven to 350° and grease and flour an 8 x 12 inch baking pan

  • 3 cups wild persimmons
  • 2 cups whole buttermilk
  •  1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 1 ½ cups sugar
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
  • ½ teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Puree the persimmons, either with a food mill or by pushing them through a sieve of chinoise. Three cups of fruit should yield two cups of puree. Combine the persimmons with the buttermilk. Beat the butter in an electric mixer with the paddle attachment for three minutes. Then slowly feed in the sugar and continue until fluffy. Add the eggs one by one. Switch to a spatula and fold in the persimmons. Sift all of the dry ingredients together, then fold them into the pudding, again by hand with a spatula. Pour the batter into your prepared pan and set it in the oven inside of a larger pan. Pour warm water into the outer pan to a depth halfway up the baking dish. Bake uncovered for about an hour and a half or until the pudding is firm at the center, has begun to pull away from the sides and a knife blade inserted into the middle come out clean.

Serve warm with fresh whipped cream. The pudding will keep well in the refrigerator for four or five days.

Persimmons
Blackened Catfish Po’Boy from Imbibe. Persimmon Pudding cooling in the back.
Sitting by the window in the newly reopened dining room at The Root Cellar.
Lucha Tigre, patio to the left, instructions to the right.
The patio at Tru

“Just The Bill, Please” is a regular column on Chapelboro.com penned by local culinary legend Bill Smith. Born and raised in New Bern, Bill Smith spent 25 years heading up the kitchen in Crook’s Corner — and over the years, he accumulated the accolades to match his incomparable takes on classic Southern food.

 

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