[harmonica leads
beach music tune]

♪

(man)
Well, I grew up in New Bern,

didn't travel much farther
than the beach,

which was about 30 miles away.

Atlantic Beach
is where we went.

My grandmother had a--

a house at Marshallberg
every summer.

Her mother
was a German immigrant,

so their food
was not all Southern.

You know,
they had lots of things

that we didn't have routinely
in eastern North Carolina,

one of which was tripe.

And she would bread it,
fry it in butter,

and tell us it was fish--ha--

and shut up and eat it,
and we did,

so I love tripe now--
ha, ha!

It's the lining
of a cow stomach.

My grandmother,
she was a very good cook.

I learned more from her
without knowing it

than anywhere else.

She cooked a big lunch.

It was custom
once upon a time

your big meal
was in the middle of the day.

So every weekday,
she would cook this huge lunch

for whoever in the family
could go there.

The best thing
I learned from her, honestly,

was that your food was always
supposed to be good.

That expectation
has helped me a lot here.

No shortcuts, you know.

♪

I would just think back
to what was good to me then,

and it is Southern, in fact,

and so the--
that's my Southern,

eastern North Carolina.

It's what I knew.

Black-eyed peas and collards,
we always have.

Corned ham,
which is very, very specific

to eastern North Carolina...
soft-shelled crabs.

Shrimp and grits,
we always have,

which was sort of
a signature dish here.

The founding chef, Bill Neal,
was from South Carolina.

That was
a fisherman's breakfast

he grew up with.

The thing that has caused
the most stir--

I remembered this pie
that they used to serve,

and in fact,
still do, I think,

at the seafood houses
along the coast.

I did a little research
and put one together,

sort of found something
that sounded

like what I remembered,
and so I thought,

hell, I'll just put it
on the menu here.

It sort of stopped everybody
in their tracks.

People wanna know
how to make it,

and then they learn
how easy it is to make.

Then I hear I made them
look like a chef

because they presented
this pie that was so good

and that even they
could make it.

[gentle guitar
and banjo arrangement]

This recipe
is actually two recipes,

and you make the crust,
and then you make the filling.

I think that's fairly typical,
but in any case,

for this crust for one pie,

I use a sleeve and a half
of saltine crackers.

And I--by that,

I mean sleeve
out of the box like this.

And if I'm making a bunch,

which I do a lot
in the restaurant,

I use a food processor,
but just doing one,

you might as well
use you hands.

To each pie crust,

I add three tablespoons
of just plain old sugar.

This crust doesn't need
the sweetness of sugar,

but I discovered
that if you add sugar

that it browns a little better

and it holds together
a little better.

So it's like
a chemistry thing going on.

I've left this butter out
to soften at room temperature.

It's easier to work with,

and it's a half of a cup
of butter per crust,

more or less.

♪

I sorta just do this
till I get sick of it,

[chuckling]
and then I decide it's ready
to go into the pie pan.

It's not quite like dough,
but it sorta is.

And then I just
use my knuckles

to sorta force it into shape.

It's just like you're doing
a cookie crust pie.

It's exactly the same thing,

only we're using
saltine crackers,

which is the--the key
to this pie's uniqueness.

There we go.

I have my oven at 350,

and I have my rack
in the middle.

Then we're gonna bake it
for 16 minutes.

The thought was,
for some reason--

I'm not sure why 'cause
it doesn't make sense

when I think about it,
but we were taught,

you would never have dessert
after going to eat seafood.

The exception
was this lemon pie.

It was like you'd drop dead
if you ate ice cream.

I don't know what the deal was,
and my mother still--

"I believe that still;
I don't do it."

(man)
Did you test?

My aunt Mary Catherine did.

She, in fact, went,
and they had fish

and went to the Dairy Queen
and got milkshakes

and sat there
and waited to fall over,

and they never did,
so that--

I remember
her talking about that,

but anyway,
so there was this pie.

It doesn't have
to be real brown,

but you want it to show
a little bit of color.

OK.

I think any sweetened
condensed milk will work.

This is the kind that was sold

around the corner
at the Latino grocery store.

You need
four egg yolks for this,

and I always do this
with my hands,

which creeps
a lot of people off,

but it's honestly
the quickest way.

♪

Now it's very important
to completely mix this

because if you don't,
you'll find later,

once it's cooked,
that there are all these

little egg yolk fibers
running through it.

And although
I don't think it's harmful,

it's sort of unappetizing,
so I really take--

lay into this for a second.

In restaurants,
you're always looking for ways

to avoid waste.

So the using of day-old juice

is one of the things
I'm often faced

with figuring out,
but in this case, pie.

So we have
both lemon and lime juice,

so in this instance,
it's half and half,

but I have done it
with all of one,

and that was
a half a cup total.

♪

You do not have to wait

for this crust to cool
to fill it.

I'm gonna put this
in the oven.

It takes
about the same amount of time

to bake the filling
as it did the crust.

Rachel Crook was the woman
who owned it, hence the name,

but it was like a fish market,

and then it was
a barbecue joint briefly.

In 1982, it opened
as it is now, more or less.

It's almost
like a cartoon, isn't it?

It's like--heh!

I don't know where--
most of it--

it was started
before I got here,

but all this stuff
gets added,

and, like, that duck is new.

There are a lotta pigs,
though we don't make barbecue.

We serve barbecue,
so we're known for barbecue

even though we don't make it.

The last thing I need is
a barbecue pit back there--heh!

There is a pig
on the roof, obviously,

and that's sorta our logo,
is a pig.

The art changes all the time.

It changes once a month,
and that's cool.

They're local artists.

They sell stuff all the time,
and I used to buy a lot.

Now my house is full.

There's no room
for anything else.

[guitar leads calm interlude]

See the edge of the crust
has colored up nicely.

There's a little bit
of bubbling on the top.

Here is the finished product.

It's had time to set up.

It's cold;
it's chilled.

You can see it's very crumbly.

There's nothing you can do,
so don't worry about it.

heh, heh

Fresh whipped cream on top,
a lot of it,

coarse sea salt,

and then a sprig
of fresh mint,

and off to the table it goes.

Sweet and sour and salty
are a good combo,

and this is just
the perfect balance, perhaps.

They can't believe
how good it is.

"So good,
I can't believe this."

That's neat,
but they go on and on.

There's not much else
you can say.

It's really good.

I can never
take it off the menu.

It will always be on the menu
'cause people get mad.

[beach music tune concludes]