Morehead City, N.C., gets a taste of ‘Corn Bread Sticks’

Among the earliest North Carolina coastal seafood restaurants that continue to thrive is the Sanitary Fish House and Restaurant, which opened in 1938 on the Morehead City waterfront.

Tony Seamon and Ted Garner ran charter fishing boats out of Morehead City. Some people said they didn’t want to fish all day; they were just interested in a “fresh fish dinner.”

Capts. Seamon and Garner responded by opening a small restaurant with a seating capacity of 20 – 12 stools at a counter and two tables seating eight. They had a waiting line on the first day.

The owners named the place “the Sanitary,” because they wanted people to know it was ultra-clean.

The slogan for fish sold fresh and cooked at the Sanitary was: “They slept in the ocean last night.” In 1938, a large seafood platter cost 85 cents, and diners could eat all they wanted for $1.

In that age and time, customers at the Sanitary were served “Corn Bread Sticks” (employee Roy Henderson’s recipe).

The story goes: “Capt. Seamon went to New Orleans to attend a restaurant association meeting back in 1947 or 1948, and when he came back, he started calling them hushpuppies instead of corn bread sticks.”

The Sanitary’s classic “Famous Tarheel Hushpuppies” recipe is readily available online. Ingredients include fine cornmeal, egg, buttermilk, salt, sugar and baking soda.

 

It’s also the only hushpuppies recipe contained in the Morehead City cookbook titled “A Little Taste of Heaven Since 1857,” which was compiled to celebrate the town’s sesquicentennial in 2007. That was probably by design.

Author and historian Dr. David Cecelski of Durham, N.C., has roots in Carteret County. In one of his essays published by the North Carolina Folklife Institute, he told the world in 2010 that his grandmother always took the family to the Sanitary “for our birthdays and other special occasions.”

 

“It was a little ritual. Mr. John Tunnell, who began working there in 1944 and knew everybody, always greeted us at the front door,” Dr. Cecelski said. “The waitresses, clad in all white, brought big pitchers of sweet tea and trays of hushpuppies.”

 

“I started taking my children to the Sanitary when they still had to sit in highchairs,” Dr Cecelski wrote. “We celebrated family birthdays there, lunched with elderly great-aunts there, and entertained out-of-town guests there. We ate lots of fried fish, bowls of clam chowder, and, always, hushpuppies.”

“I have always thought that the Sanitary’s hushpuppies are the world’s best,” Dr. Cecelski said. “They’re just globs of deep-fried cornmeal and buttermilk seasoned with a little salt and sugar, but they’re culinary works of art: long, crisp, and flavorful, every one was a unique size and shape. For generations of beachgoers and locals alike, they define what a hushpuppy is.”

 

Later, a new Cecelski family tradition was to pick up “a to-go bag of those hushpuppies” to make “a picnic meal out of them.”

Another North Carolina community that is known for its hushpuppies is Calabash, located deep into Brunswick County, just up from the South Carolina state line.

 

“Calabash” comes from the French and Spanish words for “gourd,” which is the shape of the Calabash River, according to travel writer Besha Rodell, who came all the way from Melbourne, Australia, to find the fried seafood and hushpuppies of Calabash.

Patricia Mitchell, a food critic based in Chatham, Va., said she journeyed to Calabash for a “endless basket of worthy-of-an-award hushpuppies.”

 

Never fried in the same vat with the fish, “these light…puppies actually taste of cornmeal,” she said.