The State You're In

ALRIGHT Y'ALL... 👀🍟

The wait is over.

NEW MENU starts TOMORROW Draft & Vine 🔥

Featuring our collaboration with The State You're In
🧀 The State You're In Pimento Cheese Fries

We are donating $2 of every order of this dish to Adelaide's Army of Hope.

Sooo y'all ready?👇💙

If the band prays before they go onstage you know you’re finna be blesssd with more than good music.

Oliver Anthony at Lincoln Theater Raleigh

It’s a damn shame….if you ain’t here

What’s the O stand for…

if you say blue, you must be new

Quick lunch at Claytun!

Empanadas from Sauceinator and The Staions got Waynesville Soda Jerks!!

what a beautiful day, this is peak nc

I've become mighty fond of these kinds of events over the last few years.

You look at the ticket price at first and think, "That's a little salty." Then you realize you're getting several chefs in one spot, each serving up their own creation, often paired with beverages, live music filling the air, and the chance to try more dishes in two hours than most folks eat in a weekend.

And then you remember the most important part.

It's all for a good cause.

Last night at Rocky Mount Mills, Ripe For Revival hosted its fourth annual Chef Rival, bringing together some of North Carolina's finest chefs for a friendly culinary showdown. The challenge was simple, create globally inspired dishes using ingredients grown and raised right here in North Carolina.

The result? A lineup full of incredible food, good people, and plenty of reminders that our state's farmers can hold their own with flavors from anywhere in the world.

Even better, every ticket helps support Ripe for Revival and their work fighting food insecurity across Eastern and Central North Carolina through mobile markets that bring affordable local food directly into communities that need it most.

Congratulations to Chef Kyle Fletcher of Glasshouse Kitchen in Durham, who took home this year's Chef Rival title with a dish that impressed the judges and the crowd alike.

Good food. Good folks. A great cause.

That's a combination that'll get us out of the house every time.

If your grandmother cooked breakfast in North Carolina, there's a good chance you've eaten this without ever knowing it had a name.

And there it is, sitting in a cast iron skillet, in a kitchen somewhere off a back road. No menu. No fancy name. No reservation required.

You take your country sausage. You crack your eggs right in. You let them come together the way good things do, slow at first, then all at once. One pan. One purpose.

Now you can plate it up if you're feeling civilized. Or, and this is where North Carolina will tell you something, you fold it into a warm biscuit, fresh and soft straight from the oven. Or you lay it down on a thick piece of toast, golden and waiting.

However you take it, it doesn't argue. It just satisfies.

No extra dishes stacked in the sink. No recipe card propped up on the counter. No technique passed down from a cooking school. Just passed down from a mother, a grandmother, somebody who knew that the best food never needed an introduction.

It is what morning looks like when nobody's trying to impress you. When the only goal is getting something warm in your belly and getting on with your day.

Simple. Honest. Quietly perfect.

The rest of the world might dress their eggs up. Might fuss over them. Might give them a French name and charge fourteen dollars.

But here, we just crack them in with the sausage, let it all come together, and call it what it is.

In North Carolina, we call it a...

Sunset cruises on a boat are cool and all.

But have you ever made your rounds on a golf cart across a farm, saying goodnight to all the animals as they settle in for the evening?

There was a moment when the crunch of gravel beneath the tires became the soundtrack of the day fading away. We found peace in the fences stretching toward the horizon, comfort in the still waters of the ponds, and joy in the curious faces looking back from pastures and paddocks. The breeze carried the scent of summer fields while the sun slowly slipped behind the trees, painting everything in shades of gold.

There was a gentler time when the only thing on the schedule was slowing down long enough to notice it all. A time when waving at a donkey, watching a camel wander off toward supper, and feeling the wind on your face from the seat of a golf cart seemed like enough.

It was a magnificent time.

It was last weekend..

At Sweet Valley Ranch. 🌞🫏