Gather Ye Hushpuppies While Ye May

Dear Pros,

You've got Kat this week, slightly woozy from the flu but mostly just heart-sick. On Monday, my texts were ablaze with the news that all remaining locations of K&W Cafeteria had abruptly shuttered after 88 years in business. My patronage of these restaurants was not as frequent as those who were blessed enough to live within driving distance, but for that reason, it was all the more fervent. I suspect it baffled some of my in-laws that despite my employment at a highfalutin publication like Food & Wine I'd prefer plastic trays laden with chicken livers, gravy, hushpuppies, fried and stewed okra, collard greens, and a vegetable congeal (basically tomato aspic) in a dining room where the median age was Methuselah, but I'd pick it over the trendy new spot every last time. Those might be hot — or cool — but I'm always drawn to warm, and K&W was exactly that, every single time I dined there over the course of the 20 years since I met my North Carolinian husband.

What's more, when I was digging into newspaper archives on the history of K&W for my story "The Last Tray at K&W Cafeteria," I found a slew of late 1930s advertisements in the Winston-Salem Journal touting a bounteous four-course Sunday chicken feast for just 50 cents. "It's a BIG dinner that you get at the K&W for a small sum," one read. "Whether your appetite requires a deep monotone of substantial food or a silhouette of fragrant dainties, the K&W Restaurant can abundantly satisfy it."

As it happens, there was a photo of a K&W receipt on my phone from a 2014 Boxing Day lunch when my husband and I took his 92-year-old mother, his sister, and her husband, and we supped like royalty for just $41.49 before tip. Using an online inflation calculator, I found that, give or take a few cents, this was a brand promise kept, and I appreciated that. The food was inevitably bountiful and soul-satisfying, and every time I was there I marveled at the dedication of the patrons who'd likely been sliding their plastic trays down the line for decades longer than I'd been alive.

It also worried me because at 53, my feeling like a spring chicken in your establishment is not necessarily the harbinger of your next few decades of success. In 2021, the still family-owned K&W had 35 locations throughout the Carolinas, Virginia, and West Virginia, but shuttered nearly half of those when the company declared bankruptcy near the beginning of the pandemic, and the final nine on December 1 of this year.

Unless you are lucky enough to be present at the announced swan song of a favorite restaurant and can proffer your final goodbyes, you simply don't know that it will be the last tray of baked spaghetti, fried chicken and gravy, or chocolate cream pie you ever get to savor. So I offer this: Before the curtain drops on 2025, take time to savor a meal at that stalwart restaurant you've perhaps not visited for a while because you've assumed it will always be there. If the last half-decade has taught us anything, it's the fragile nature of things we love, and I wouldn't want you to pine for the lemon chess pie you'll never get to taste again.

With whipped cream on top,

Kat

P.S. On a personal note, since I'm still under the weather, I am brokenhearted not to be able to attend today's celebration of life for my favorite chef of all time, Alex Webster. He was a restaurant legend in the Cherry Valley and Cooperstown, New York area and, in the final years of his life, managed the Cooperstown Farmers Market. It would mean a lot to me and the people who loved him if you'd take a moment to read this tribute and get to know this maverick and singular soul who made the world so much more delicious.