Bertie County, North Carolina, is peanut country. Yes, of course you will find boiled peanuts in roadside stands all over the place, but if your idea of a good peanut is one that’s crisp and crunchy, you need to try what’s called “blister-fried peanuts” at the Bertie County Peanut stand. They’re available salted and unsalted, wasabi-hot, and sheathed in chocolate with a ghost pepper halo. You can get them via mail order, but it’s a special treat to visit the source and talk peanuts with the experts. Just up the road is Bunn’s Bar-B-Q, located in an old gas station, serving smoke-cooked pork with powerhouse Brunswick stew, cornbread, and zingy cole slaw. It was while getting a haircut in Windsor (where the tonsorial parlor had huge burlap sacks full of peanuts up against its walls) that we learned about the local delicacy, freshwater herring. Alas, it is for now a thing of the past because the Roanoke River’s population of herring has gotten so low. The town of Jamesville continues to host a herring festival in the Spring, but the last herring shack (Cypress Grill) was destroyed by fire and, as far as we know, there are none left.
No matter how delicious it may be, cole slaw always plays second fiddle. When visiting whole hog barbecue parlors in North Carolina, the curious eater will encounter a handful...
