I’ve almost reached my lunch destination, a steakhouse in Burlington, when I see a strip mall sign—the kind that lists every business in the complex—that reads, at the top: CUM PARK PLAZA. And among the tenants, in faded print: Cum Park Grill.
I do a double take. If there is really a restaurant called Cum Park Grill in this strip mall, I need to throw my planned column out the window and go there instead. I take a sharp turn into the parking lot, but the grill is nowhere to be found. I pull up Yelp and see that it’s permanently closed. Only one review was ever posted: “You have to try their special white sauce!”
I get back on the road.
Once a month, I make the 40-minute drive from Durham to Burlington to pick up a medication that’s stocked more frequently in a community pharmacy here, hence my being a bit off the beaten path today.
Western Charcoal Steak House is right around the corner from Cum Park Plaza. It sits long and low in a sprawling parking lot, with a block-letter rooftop marquee sign that looks straight off an old Route 66 postcard. The menu I previewed online gave the same impression, with prices that seem to belong to a different decade.
Inside the steakhouse, there appear to be at least three dining rooms, each outfitted with wood paneling, frosted glass pendant lamps, and upholstered booths in muted florals. It’s seat-yourself, so I slide into a booth under a framed photo of a dog wearing glasses. A server breezes past and drops a menu on my table.
“I’ll be right with you,” she says.
Then comes the second double take of the day. The laminated cover of the menu bids customers to “visit our other restaurants” and lists just one place: Parazide [sic].
Um, am I at a Giorgios Bakatsias restaurant?
Bakatsias is the restaurateur behind the upscale Mediterranean spot Parizade in Durham, plus Vin Rouge, Kipos, Nikos, and something like 17 other eateries across the Triangle and beyond. His empire spans Mediterranean, French, Greek, Italian, and Spanish cuisines, but I’d never known him to do classic American comfort food at rock-bottom prices.
I look back at the menu and notice a name printed beneath the restaurant’s logo: Johnny Bakatsias, Owner. When my server returns, I ask if there’s a connection to Giorgios.
“They’re brothers,” she says.
If you’re from Alamance County, this is probably not news. Per a 1984 Elon College magazine article I found buried six pages deep in a Google search, Johnny was the first of three Bakatsias brothers to immigrate from Greece to Burlington, joining his parents, who were already working in the restaurant business here.
Terry, who also works in the industry, was next, followed by Giorgios, who went on to build his culinary dynasty in Durham and beyond, with Terry working in his kitchens. Johnny has stayed in Burlington, running this dining room since 1971.
Upon opening the menu, the double takes keep coming. The prices from the website, which I’d assumed were out of date, are real—a hamburger is $4. Then, a different source of confusion: The first item on a paper lunch-special insert reads “Toss Salad (NOT A VEGETABLE),” which I have to ask my server to decode. She explains that lunch deals come with two “vegetable” sides, and the toss salad isn’t one of them. The actual vegetable options include macaroni salad, Jell-O, french fries, and candied apples, as well as some that live up to the name, like turnip greens, steamed cabbage, and fried okra.
I was hoping to order a proper steak, but even with prices this low—$15.95 for “Johnny’s Special K.C. Steak,” $17.50 for a New York strip—I’d be over budget. So I turn to the lunch specials and go with the chopped sirloin steak with onions and gravy. For my two vegetables, I get turnip greens and a baked potato. The meal also comes with hush puppies, and I tack on a sweet tea. With tax and tip, my total comes to $14.82.
The hush puppies and sweet tea come out first. The tea, served in a tall tumbler with ice and a striped straw, tastes both sweet and tart, as if left to steep a beat too long. The hush puppies arrive piled in a basket. One is perfectly cactus shaped, with three arms reaching out from a thick trunk. I dunk each arm in margarine—there are about 15 packets on the table—and shove the whole thing in my mouth.
My full meal arrives a few minutes later. The baked potato is wrapped in foil. I doctor it with margarine and salt and pepper, score it in a crosshatch with my fork, and eat it in chunks. The turnip greens sit in a little ramekin; they’re on the salty side, so I douse them in vinegar, which tames the edge.
Then I turn my attention to the chopped sirloin, an oblong puck drowning in gravy. The meat is well done and studded with diced onion, with a nice char on the outside that would risk drying the whole thing out if not for the gravy pooling around it. There’s a cognitive strain to eating it—it tastes like a no-frills burger fresh off a poolside cookout grill, but I’m in a dim, windowless dining room, squinting at dark meat under dark gravy on a beige plate. It’s like one of those brain teasers where you see the word “red” printed in blue ink and have to name the color; my mouth and my eyes can’t agree. I decide to try looking somewhere else while I eat, to see if that helps.
Mid-chew, I lock eyes with the framed image of the bespectacled dog and realize that it’s not a dog; it’s a cow.
Frantically seeking somewhere else to rest my gaze, I turn to two men on the other side of the dining room who’ve been engaged in a boisterous conversation since I arrived. They’re reclined in their chairs, referring to each other as Moonshine and Starshine.
“Kiss me! I’m lucky!” one of them shouts, toward the kitchen, waving to someone out of sight. I smile to myself. They must be regulars.
Or so I think—until a few minutes later, when one of them asks a server her name. I’d overheard this server mention earlier that she’s worked here for 10 years. The day asks me to look twice once more. Not regulars, then.
“I’ll give you a kiss!” the man shouts, again, toward the kitchen.
“He took his medication this morning,” his buddy announces, presumably alluding to booze, to the mostly empty dining room.
With that, I head out to pick up mine.
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