by Charly Mann

Mildred Council is the founder, owner, and creator of the recipes that have made Chapel Hill’s Mama Dips into one of the most celebrated restaurants in the United States. When I talked to Mrs. Council recently she said that she makes comfort food based on her recipes. Her philosophy is to use only fresh ingredients, and each day they usually have at least eighteen fresh vegetables to include with their meals. She also points out her food is true country food, but contrary to what many people think, it is not greasy since the country people she learned to cook from were poor and did not have access to much fat.

Mama Dip's Country Kitchen Rosemary Street, Chapel Hill, NC

Mildred was born in 1929, the youngest daughter of a sharecropper who lived in Chatham County about four miles east of present day Fearrington Village. Her family usually made their meals from what they grew. The house had no indoor plumbing and young Mildred started cooking and creating her own dishes at a very early age. She got the nickname “Dip" because she was considered tall by her other family members (she is six feet, one inch) and with her long arms she could easily scoop up a dipperful of water from their rain buckets.

Enjoying a Mama Dip's breakfast including salmon cake and hash browns

When she was sixteen, in 1945, her family moved to Chapel Hill, and two years later she married World War II veteran Joe Council. In the early 1950’s she began her career as a professional cook first with the Patterson family in Chapel Hill, then with the Carolina Coffee Shop, followed by two UNC fraternities, and finally in 1957, she and her mother-in-law started a small take-out meal business. By 1976, she had been out of the food business for almost twenty years when she started Dip’s Country Kitchen on just $64. Her business was an immediate success and her reputation spread throughout the country by newspaper and magazine articles, as well as her own best selling cookbooks. By 1998 she had bought the land across the street from the original location she had been renting, and built her own resturant, renaming it Mama Dip’s Country Kitchen.

Mildred Council and her best selling Mama Dip's Kitchen cookbook

Mama Dip’s, reputation has been accentuated by features on the Oprah Winfrey show, and glowing reviews by the New York Times, and has become a favorite tourist destination in Chapel Hill. Among most Chapel Hillians though, both black and white, their enthusiasm for this now legendary establishment is more negative than positive. Among my own family members Mama Dip’s remains a favorite, but most of my friends and other people I have spoken to recently say it has become overpriced, that the food is often bland, and the service ranges from mediocre to awful.

Early advertisement for Dip's on south side of Rosemary in Chapel Hill before it moved across the street and became Mama Dip's

In spite of the realities of the restaurant today, Mildred Council started with nothing and through her own hard work and creativity made a successful enterprise that is truly a family business. All of her children and most of her grandchildren work for her now, or have worked at Mama Dip’s in the past. Mrs. Council is also a well respected community activist and is now raising funds to help build self-worth among adolescent children from single family and financially deprived homes, by teaching them cooking and auto-repair skills.

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