When my friend come from Charlotte to Winston Salem to take me to the Medical Center for a procedure, we always end by stopping at Cagney's restaurant on Stratford Road. Cagney's is one of those city legends with incarnations sprouted up in Winston Salem bording towns. It is comfort food done really well and the menu can only be described as all inclusive, enough to give any northern diner a run for the money.

Our meal of choice is, invariably, the perennial special, meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy with your choice of two sides, usually cold or hot vegetables. additionally, you can select corn broad, a regular roll, or toast.For us, this is a meal made in heaven and very seldom duplicated anywhere.  

At one point Cagney's was competing with the Cloverdale Kitchen, also a legendary eatery steeped in tradition and engraved in the culinary memories of hundreds of patrons. Cloverdale particularly did vegetable soup right and sold it by the quarts. but the owners, sons of early Greek founders. saw business falling off in the later afternoon and evening and so decided to close after the noon lunch rush.

Cagney's which sits at the bottom of the sloping shopping center is always full. Across town, on Reynolda Road, Mamma Zoe's is another superb comfort food establishment, refurbished after the start of the pandemic to allow for more patron space.  The wait times still see many folks, most elderly, patiently waiting for tables. 

They wait because the food is excellent, affordable, and memorable. Desserts  are large and plentiful and it is quite impossible to leave hungry from Mamma Zoe's.

And every establishment uses delivery services or encourages patron pick-up.

Every city had it's specially known fast food joints that leave you satisfied and clamoring for more. But few leave a lasting impressions based on the menu, the fast service and the down home welcoming atmosphere. It is part of southern history. Every town had at least one place, often doubling at a pharmacy or all-purpose store that had a lunch counter or tables to accommodate the hungry wanderers. 

My friend wish, all the time, that Cagney's would open a restaurant in Charlotte. But is is not yet that regional. We hope that it will someday be so,