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By Shirley Fong-Torres ("Big Ed" Watkins of Big Ed's City Market in Raleigh gets to know Wro during his North Carolina visit). Remember that quaint 19th-century concept called the picnic? If you do, I bet you probably also have a willow basket and a red-and-white checked tablecloth stored in your attic. Post-industrial America chained the picnic to the back of a 12-cylinder, all-terrain monster truck and towed it into the 21st century. That's where it was pumped up, overfed, pampered with alcohol and christened "the tailgate party," that holy trinity of "f" words: food, fellowship and football. I'm a tailgating devotee and, as a daughter of Oakland, California, I am also part of the Raider (football team) nation. That's another story, though actually, that's a-many other stories, some of which cannot be told, due to conditions of parole. If you know what the Raider nation is, you understand; if not, trust me, you don't want to know. By now, I hope you can sense I'm perhaps joking? A few years ago, for USA Today, I included Chapel Hill, North Carolina on my list of the 10 best tailgating spots in America. I loved the beautiful campus there and the proximity to great barbecue. After that was published, I heard from a lot of folks in North Carolina who said that I had the right state, but the wrong town, that Raleigh was a far superior tailgating scene. My bi-polar bear Wroburlto told me that these cranky messages were omens and that we better go immediately to Raleigh and check them out. Because Wro has good instincts when it comes to tailgating, I followed his orders. Tailgating in Raleigh centers around North Carolina State Wolfpack football games, so Wro picked a football weekend and a hotel across the street from a Build-A-Bear Workshop (BABW), so he could shop for appropriate tailgating clothes. Since the Raleigh BABW stocked Wolfpack T-shirts, Wro looked really sharp lounging about the lobby of the Marriott Hotel at Crabtree Valley. He confidently began flirting with two young men who, lo and behold, turned out to be Wolfpack football players. Without knowing it, we had checked into the same hotel that the team uses on home game weekends to escape the distractions of campus. Marcus Hutson and Lamart Reid not only posed for pictures with my happy bear, they asked if he would like to meet Philip Rivers, a player so famous that the university sometimes has to protect him from too much fan attention. Marcus and Lamart offered to arrange for their quarterback to meet one-on-one with my bear, and Wro told all three players some ridiculous story about how he had been raised by wolves. The players had to settle into their game faces, and Wro and I had to tailgate. The parking lot was magical, pine-lined and adjacent to the state fair as well as the football stadium. It quickly shot toward the top of my personal tailgating chart. The beautiful woods, so rare within cities, combined with some of the most serious tailgating chefs anywhere, including several performing whole hog barbecues. The Wolfpack beat Virginia, and Philip Rivers was magnificent, with Wro cheering for his "new buddies," Marcus and Lamart. After the weekend tailgating, Wro and I set off for Raleigh's City Market, an historic restoration in downtown Raleigh filled with niche shopping and restaurants. Some folks think that Big Ed's City Market Restaurant is the citadel of southern cooking. "Big Ed" Watkins is one of the few merchants who has been in the City Market since the days before it became a tourist attraction. However, Ed's personality suggests he has always been an attraction in his own rite. The restaurant is a Power Breakfasting legend, located close enough to the state capitol that it has been called both the "Legislative Annex" and "Lobby World." We had been told that these days Ed leaves the running of the restaurant to his son Richard, but Wro was on a lucky streak. When we arrived, Big Ed himself, dressed in overalls, greeted us, a red-and-white checked shirt, with a 6-carat diamond ring and Rolex watch. We also had been told that the biggest compliment Big Ed pays a guest is to bring out his private stash of fig jelly. As soon as Ed noticed Wro, they began an animated conversation. When Ed asked us how we liked our biscuits, Wro, who has no humble bones in his body, replied: "They're pretty good, but I don't know about this jelly." Sure enough, Big Ed brought out the good stuff, and I couldn't tell who was more charmed, Wro, Ed or myself. I later bought a stash of fig jelly at the North Carolina Farmers' Market. Southern vegetables go to Big Ed's to show off: navy beans; collard greens; red creamed potatoes; squash and onions; fried okra; butterbeans with corn; pickled beets. Because life is cruel, there wasn't time to eat them all. Ed told us that some of his recipes were handed down from his great grand daddy, "a mess sergeant in the Rebel army." His sausage and ham curing are executed exactly as they were in 1863, while General Lee made fools of one union commander after another, who obviously did not feed their men as well as General Lee did. Big Ed's life story sounded like the Carolina translation of Voltaire's famous line about how "the more life changes, the more it stays the same." Or, at least, the more it ought to. "I grew up down Poole Road, about 10 miles that way, on a tobacco, cotton and corn farm," he said. "I learned how to cook from the field hands, and they knew how to stretch things, not to waste a thing. We didn't have electricity, so my mama would toast biscuit's the night before and then grill them face down in the morning." Part of what he learned was folk medicine. Ed prescribes chicken and dumplings to anyone in need of a pick me up. "Yeah, that dish could make a poodle dog pull a freight train up hill," he told us. He also told us that the best foods are a lot simpler than they sound. "Tenderloins are the filet mignon of pig, that's all. And red-eye gravy is made from the fat of the ham, just boil it 30 minutes and add pepper and coffee." In the spirit of a kinder, gentler era, Ed works on the barter system. "My printer gets a meal for every 70 daily menus. I don't believe in credit cards. They teach bad habits," he moralized. Some of the legendary deal cutting at the restaurant involved Big Ed directly. "My cook Glen -- I got him out'a prison 14 years ago, for murder. The warden ate here, and so I told him I needed good men. I told him I didn't ever want any embezzlers nor anybody caught breaking and entering. Warden brought me two men, a murderer and dope dealer. "My cook accidentally killed someone in a bar fight," he said. "Hit him in the heart. So, man, was he tickled when I got him out of prison. Now he has a key to the place, and I trust him to do the buying. He's the first one here every morning and last one to leave at night." Big
Ed handed down to Wro the rules of working: "Don't ever lie, steal, or be
late for work." "Yeah, I do, even the lazy ones. I don't like feeding the lazy ones, but I do," he said, looking at his wrist, as if the Rolex could reveal a better century. IF YOU GO… Raleigh Marriott Crabtree Valley is located at 4500 Marriott Drive in Raleigh. Big Ed's City Market Restaurant is located at 220 Wolfe St. For information, call (919) 836-9909. (Click below for more travel stories).
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