by Charly Mann

The Carolina Coffee Shop has been a cerebral eating institution in Chapel Hill for 87 years. It is the restaurant where people go as much to create new friendships as to dine. Within its walls are daily discussions of literary, intellectual, and social topics. For nine decades it has been the cultural center of Chapel Hill. The clientele has always been colorful, but its wait staff has often been more interesting, consisting of the most gifted artists, writers, and musicians in the community.

Carolina Coffee Shop 1963 meal specials

George Livas opened  the Carolina Coffee Shop in 1922 and created the charm and style that continue to this day, but the heyday of the restaurant was from 1959 to 2001 when it was owned by Byron Freeman.  In 1959, Freeman recalls the space rented for a very reasonable $400 a month. When he sold the business it had increased  to $6,700 a month.

I have had more than three dozen emails from former Carolina Coffee Shop devotees recalling the great food served during Freeman's tenure, but most remembered are their cinnamon rolls which many swear were the most delectable morsels they ever tasted. Byron has graciously shared the secret of this treasure. It begins with his great recipe for yeast rolls. Like the nearby Porthole, the Carolina Coffee shop made almost identical mouth-watering and highly addictive rolls. The cinnamon rolls used the same dough. They became Carolina Coffee Shop cinnamon rolls when cinnamon and nutmeg was folded into the dough, and icing containing confectioners' sugar and lemon was added to the top. His dough was mixed in a sixty quart mixer, but he says the most important part of the success was the cooking time. So for those of you looking to replicate this delicacy you can get the recipe for the Porthole yeast rolls here: The Porthole, Their Rolls, and The Recipe

We have tried this formula at home and recommend drizzling the icing over the rolls as soon as they are out of the oven and then letting it harden for about six minutes before serving.

What follows are three stories which convey what has made the Carolina Coffee Shop such a special place.

This first piece is by David Massengill, one of best and most respected singer-songwriters in America. For almost 40 years he has been living in Greenwich Village and is a disciple of folk legend Dave Van Ronk. In the early 1970s he was a student at UNC and worked at the Carolina Coffee Shop.

Carolina Coffee Shop 1935 - Lunch 35 cents - Dinner for 40 cents 

Waiter was the top position or the position with the best money at the Carolina Cofffee Shop. Nobody started as a waiter. First you worked the kitchen or bused tables etc. Byron Freeman was the owner and he possessed a calm and a fury at the same time. As owners go I give him good marks. I'm old fashioned in that when I played football or worked as a swordfisherman or any other really tough physical labor I adjusted to the boss or coach instead of expecting them to adjust to me. So if somebody yelled at me I didn't take it personal I just tried to not do what I got yelled at for again. That worked well for me. Byron was not a yeller, but he did not suffer fools and he had standards that MUST be met. Make Byron happy and the job atmosphere was cool. Byron liked to drink a bit and when things were going good he'd sit at a back booth and play Pachelbel's Canon in D over the sound system. A pretty piece. Many a customer asked about it and I'd go back to Byron and ask who wrote it and see his eyes a touch glassy and decided to commit to memory so I didn't continually bug him in his happy state. I had the record store stock up on it too and would inform customers they could buy it on record for $2.99 at Record And Tape Center. When Pachelbel was on we all knew Byron was happy and we could relax a bit.

Carolina Coffee Shop Shop late in the evening

My friend Steve Levitas was a waiter at the Carolina Coffee Shop and introduced me to Byron asking him if there was a position I could take. Byron was in foul mood because the chop steaks went bad the day before. Chop steak was hamburger meat basically, and Byron never wanted to let the meat go bad again. He made me head chop man. Every day I came in to make the chop steak and hamburger patties FRESH, never let them go more than 3 days he said. Byron himself showed me how to weigh each chop and pattie, slap it around then pounce it down on the wooden cutting board and form it into a nice circle or parabola. The chop steaks were very popular and had different toppings like mushrooms. Hamburgers were also popular. Breakfasts were of course a mainstay and there were often lines of customers waiting to get in. Hashbrowns were good. The rolls and cinnamon buns were made fresh every day in this big ass oven. Byron took special pride in those rolls and if someone forgot about time and burned a batch of rolls, Byron would dress them down like a drill sergeant. We tried to keep Byron happy so everyone did their job well. I learned to mop up efficiently and quickly. I don't know where Byron got his recipes but they had people coming back for sure.

Ad for the Carolina Confectionery & Coffee Shop 1929. Many businesses in Chapel Hill were known as confectioneries in the 1920s and 30s. Only Jeff's retained that title throughout its existence.

I liked being head chop man. I came in every day for an hour or 2, got a meal too. I did a few dishwashing shifts and liked that too. There was a Zen to dishwashing I found and years later in NYC I found another dishwashing job which allowed me to continue my folk singing quest and eat several times a week. I moved up to busing tables and the waiters shared their tips with us. Most of the waiters were students but there were full time workers who had a less cavalier attitude than the students. I particularly remember a very proud-to-not-be-a-student waitress that had worked there for years and she was a bull in instructing the host to guide the best customers to her tables. Very bullyboy though she wasn't butch. Occasionally someone would stand up to her and a good show that always was.

Inside the Carolina Coffee Shop in the early 1960s 

I remember passing on my chop man job to a kid I had seen as up and coming. Didn't know him well but he seemed a smart one and not too cynical. I took him in to meet Byron and told Byron he'd be an excellent head chop man and that I would show him the ropes. Byron nodded his head with a weary ok. I took the kid in the kitchen, showed him the meat, grabbed the meat and I said slap it around weigh it make sure it's not underweight; pounce it down and don't be afraid of the meat... I told him how important it was that the meat ALWAYS be fresh.

The Carolina Coffee Shop, a place for friends, good food, and comfort from 1936

Bob Jurgensen's father managed the Carolina Coffee Shop for much of the 1950s. He remembers this classic tale:

Andy Griffith attended UNC when my father was the manager of the Carolina Coffee Shop. Andy apparently was very much a real country boy then and he wore bib overalls with no shirt. My dad had a policy of no shoes, no shirt, no service. My dad often threw Andy out when he came in barefoot and shirtless, wearing those bib overalls. He'd argue with my father, who was quite stubborn and fussy about cleanliness and being barefoot was not his idea of good sanitation. Apparently it once escalated right out onto the sidewalk and Andy stormed away, only to try again and again.

The Carolina Coffee Shop great meal for between $1.00 and $1.35 in 1965

Finally Tom Scism who with James Vickers coauthored An Illustrated History of Chapel Hill recently relayed the following stories, one of which received national attention.

A Lehigh professor of statistics and great poker player was in town one Sunday in the 1970s for a game and volunteered to run the cash register for Byron because the cashier called in sick. Byron slipped up to the register and surreptitiously stuck a sign on it that read:

GUEST CASHIER: DR. JOHN ADAMS,
PROFESSOR OF STATISTICS, LEHIGH UNIVERSITY.
Please count your change.

Roy Carlton, who managed the Coffee Shop for Byron for many years, wrote up this incident and sold it to Reader's Digest, who published it on one of their joke pages, and Roy got a $100 payment from them.

This is from1938. During the depths of the Depression the Carolina Coffee Shop gave free meals to students and other Chapel Hillians who could not afford food. 

In the late 60s, most Carolina Coffee Shop employees were musicians in Chapel Hill bands, and there was a constant banter about whose band and whose guitar picker was the best. One day Byron posted a sign on the kitchen door that read: "There's too much bickering over musicianship back here and it's interfering with kitchen operation. From now on the only topics you are allowed to discuss are politics and religion."