A sweet (potato) find in Grandy, N.C.

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes I forget to eat.

So there I am this weekend, tooling down to OBX early in the a.m. when hunger strikes. I’m out in the countryside, somewhat uncharted territory for me when it comes to places to eat breakfast.

Then, right there in Grandy, in front of the Sunoco station, I saw a hand-lettered sign, a little crooked, the letters a little wobbly: Rosemary-garlic chicken.

I admit that some of my very favorite food ever is gas station food. My favorite fried chicken in the whole wide world is at gas station 50-miles away in Courtland called Bill’s Hometown Grill. And if you’ve never eaten at Sting-Ray’s on the Eastern Shore, it’s worth the Chesapeake Bay-Bridge Tunnel toll. Malbon’s BBQ Virginia Beach, yum, is also a gas station.

So when I saw this sign in Grandy, I turned right on in and said right on! Inside the Grandy Corner Store, a two-tiered warming device held several kinds of breakfast biscuits – country ham, cheese, sausage (patty or link), bacon and egg in all possible permutations. Plus, the top tier was all homemade sweet potato biscuits and the bottom tier was homemade buttermilk biscuits. All were wrapped in a nice, recyclable piece of paper.

Doug, the owner told me that a local lady comes in at 2 a.m. daily to make the biscuits, which are about the circumference of a softball. The price is between $1.05 and $2.65.

My sweet potato/country ham biscuit was that perfect combination of sweet and salty. I stopped eating it long enough to snap this shot on the front seat of my car. Delicious! So keep this in mind when you are migrating south this spring and summer for your OBX fixes. If you call ahead, they'll make a  bunch for you to take with you.

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