It’s not easy to imagine a Chapel Hill without Crook’s Corner. The building, which straddles the Carrboro-Chapel Hill border at 610 W. Franklin Street and is topped by a flying pink pig sculpture, was originally a fish market. In 1951, it took on a grisly history when market owner Rachel Crook was murdered, possibly at the building.
Over the next few decades, the building cycled through new lives—taxi stand, bait and tackle shop, pool hall, abandoned relic, and a barbecue joint named Crook’s Corner—until 1982, when chef Bill Neal and Gene Hamer purchased it.
On early Wednesday afternoon, the restaurant announced it is closing, effective immediately. Shannon Healy, a former bar manager at the restaurant who is part of Crook’s Corner ownership group, cites COVID-19 as a leading cause and told the INDY that he is “devastated” by the decision they’ve had to make.
“It has been an incredible honor to both serve our community in our place and serve as Chapel Hill’s culinary ambassador to the wider world,” a closing email from the restaurant reads. “With an incredibly heavy heart I must share the news that we are closing. The position we find ourselves in, exacerbated by the Covid-19 crisis, is no longer tenable.”
In 1985, a rave New York Times review changed the trajectory of the small restaurant, with its gourmet treatment of low-country dishes like shrimp and grits, and its place in the culinary iconography of the South. When Bill Neal died in 1991, local chef Bill Smith, a New Bern native, took over the restaurant and became a North Carolina celebrity in his own right. In 2019, Smith retired, and a new ownership group, including Healy, took over. Asheville-based chef Justin Burdett also came on board.
Healy says that initially, as the pandemic waned, ownership tried to make things work.
“Anecdotally around town, we were seeing a lot of faces that we hadn’t seen in a while, because of the pandemic, and they were giving us a shot and were delighted to come back,” Healy said over the phone on Wednesday. “But the business of the business—that didn’t work. We took on debt, and we couldn’t pay it off during COVID—we were closed for eight months, basically.”
“The thing that people see and experience at a restaurant—the food, the service, the menus—none of those things are why Crook’s Corner is closing,” Healy continued. “I’m very heartbroken. It’s the reason I’m still in restaurants.”
Remember Crook’s Corner with a few pieces from the INDY archives:
Bill Smith on union beer, activism, his restaurant beginnings, and retirement
Hunting for honeysuckle with Bill Smith
The making of a documentary about Crook’s Corner founder Bill Neal
A deep dive into Southern cooking and history with Bill Smith
An evening at the Crook’s Corner Book Prize awards ceremony
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