[piano intro] - Next on "North Carolina Weekend", join us from Boulted Bread in Raleigh as we celebrate eats and treats around the state, with burgers in Morganton, pizza in Winston-Salem, and Bob Garner is back with a visit to Native in Greenville.

Coming up next.

- [Narrator] Funding for "North Carolina Weekend" is provided in part by Visit NC, dedicated to highlighting our state's natural scenic beauty, unique history, and diverse cultural attractions.

From the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains across the Piedmont to 300 miles of barrier island beaches, you're invited to experience all the adventure and charm our state has to offer.

[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] [upbeat music continues] - Hi everyone, welcome to "North Carolina Weekend", I'm Deborah Holt Noel, and this week, we are celebrating eats and treats with samples of great food from around the state.

Right now I'm at Boulted Bread in Downtown Raleigh, a craft bakery where they still stonegrind their flour.

Their bread is out of this world, and so are their other pastries.

We'll meet the bakers a bit later in the show.

But first, let's head to Winston-Salem, where a Neapolitan pizza not only has James Beard acclaim, it's consistently voted one of the top 50 pizzas in the country.

- Once we launch the pizza in the oven, we have a very short window.

[clock ticking] There's so many things to be engaged in, and so many elements.

Thermal conditions, the oven conditions, the wood, the fuel source, the pizza itself, how many toppings.

Slide the peel under, give it a little spin.

Be patient, wait, observe.

I have no margin for error.

Do I need to sort of bake it half in, half out of the mouth of the oven?

Do I need to dome the pizza, lift it up into the top of the oven a little bit?

Does it need to come up, bake a little more on the bottom?

Where's the dough at?

Like, it's nonstop.

We have to do that in real time in probably like a minute, 15 seconds maybe, or it's trash.

[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] The real two passions in my life predominantly are soccer and food.

And a soccer career was kind of out of the question, so I leaned into food.

Started a small mobile pizza company with a pizza oven on a trailer, and I was doing private events in people's homes, an occasional festival or public event, and migrated into the brick and mortar in 2014.

- I've had pizza in Naples.

And you know, he's bringing that little bit of Naples to Winston-Salem, and I don't have to go to New York and I don't have to go to Naples, you know, each week I can just come down here, come on Trade Street.

- The ambiance itself here is different than a lot of other restaurants within the triad, and especially within Winston-Salem.

- Italian journalists have created a list of top 50 pizzerias in Italy.

There was an American list put together in the same way by the same group of people, and Mission Pizza Napoletana, it was the only North Carolina pizzeria on the top 50 in America list.

- The best way to experience Mission Pizza Napoletana is just to come in.

Neapolitan Pizza is meant to be fresh, bright.

It's really, like, meant to be eaten as soon as it comes out of the oven, within reason.

- His pizza is true to the format of Neapolitan style pizza as far as the hydration goes, and just the focus on the ingredients, of keeping it simplistic.

You're never gonna find a pineapple and ham pizza in this establishment.

- For the kind of person who would be attracted to coming to a place like Mission, they're willing to experience different things, different flavors, different people, different cultures.

- They have a lot more to offer than just pizza.

- [Jennifer] I love his pasta as much as I love his pizza.

- Bit of olive oil, post baked.

- [Alice] I don't know a place where they will offer a quote, unquote, a pizzakase experience.

That is uniquely Peyton.

- [Peyton] Pizzakase is inspired, the name comes from omakase, which is a Japanese tradition.

You sit at the counter, the sushi chef makes you, frankly, whatever they wanna make you.

And so you're really basically saying to the chef, "I'll leave it up to you.

Do your thing.

This is what I'm here for."

Can come with a wine pairing if the guest elects.

- [Jay] If you went into a trattoria in Naples or Rome, you would find these kinds of wines on their wine list.

- [Peyton] Pizza, frankly, has become sort of a daily practice and a daily purpose that's really meaningful to me.

I get to make a real thing with my hands and nourish other people with it.

- [Jay] And there's a lot of great places in North Carolina today, but more Mission Pizzas would make me a very happy eater.

- Mission Pizza Napoletana is at 707 Trade Street in Winston-Salem, and they're open Wednesday through Saturday, beginning at 5:00 PM.

For more information, give them a call at 336-893-8217, or visit them online at missionpizzanapoletana.com.

For a lot of us, going out to a restaurant is practically a religious experience.

Well, our Charlotte based producer, Jack Brayboy, visited a restaurant in the Queen City, whose roots literally began in a church.

Amen to that.

- [Jack] In Charlotte's Plaza-Midwood neighborhood, an old church built back in the 1940s has been converted into what "Southern Living Magazine" calls one of Charlotte's best restaurants.

- Supperland is a real land that comprises two buildings.

So the building we're in now is the original church built in 1948, and then they expanded, built a bigger church next door on the same property in 1956.

- [Jamie] A lot of the space when we first came in was just looking at the inherent beauty within the walls that were already here.

So you can see some of those touches, like, the rough walls are actually the same as when we first walked in here the first time, and the aisle that runs down the center of the room, that's also the way that it looked when we came in here for the first time.

And we've just really tried to lean into some of those beautiful organic elements in order to just make the space come to life in a new way.

[upbeat music] - [Jack] The first thing I noticed when I explored Supperland was Jamie and Jeff's acute attention to detail.

- So there are a handful of really unique touches in this space.

We have actually made all of the tables by hand.

They're made from North Carolina hickory.

And then we've done brass inlays in them, and our team has made them in our wood shop.

We also have custom made plates.

These are all produced by Villeroy & Boch, but we worked with an artist out of London named Lou Roda, and she actually created the artwork.

- [Jack] And of course, when you go to church, you sit in the pews.

These are not the originals, but they are 120 years old, brought in from Colorado.

So before I sit down and try out some of the menu items, Jamie wanted to show me another little hidden gem here at Supperland that truly sets them apart.

And this is... - This is our speakeasy.

- Wow.

Tell us about that.

- Right, so what's really unique about this is that we have such a talented team, so we've decided to start with the cocktails, which is really unique.

Most places start with the food and then pair drinks.

We start with the drinks themselves, that center around a theme or around a holiday of some kind, and then we pair the food with that.

So this is the speakeasy during the daytime, but this is what it really looks like.

[upbeat music] - [Jack] Wow.

Check that out.

- We call it a southern steakhouse meets church potluck.

You're not gonna find that anywhere else.

So we wanted to pull in those church potluck influences, but then also have this beautiful fire cooking accompanying that.

So, you'll find on the menu really high-end prime steaks and beautiful seafoods.

We also have really interesting side dishes and appetizers like our sausage croquette.

We have a macaroni and cheese that has a miso cream on top of it.

- So finally, it's supper time at Supperland.

I'm gonna dig in.

Gotta try that mac and cheese, that's my favorite.

[chuckles] Mm, mm, mm.

- We want people to have fun here, that's what the premise of the whole place is about and how we want you to experience dinner.

But we want you to walk in and kind of just be in awe of the ceilings and what's going on and feel like you're in a really special place.

- [Jack] This is Supperland, a divine dining experience and a little slice of heaven on the east side of Charlotte.

- Supperland is at 1212 The Plaza in Charlotte, and they're open for dinner at 5:00 PM on Tuesday through Friday, and lunch and dinner Saturday and Sunday.

For more information, call them at 704-817-7514, or visit their website at supper.land.

[bright upbeat music] I'm here with Joshua Bellamy, one of the co-owners and bakers here at Boulted Bread Downtown Raleigh.

And I'm just loving your new location.

- Thank you.

- Were you guys able to bring the stone mill with you?

- So, we actually have a brand new stone mill here.

It's about 48 inches wide, about twice as wide as our former one, and we're able to mill about twice as much flour on it now for our brand new shop.

But our original mill is actually up in Vermont, sort of getting a facelift, and we'll have that here hopefully in the next few months as well.

- Great.

More milling, more flour, more bread.

- Yeah, more fresh flour, exactly, yeah, yeah.

- [Deborah] Is there a reason why you guys mill your own flour?

- Flour is just like any other ingredient.

The fresher it is, the more nutritious it is, the more flavorful it is, and the more aromatic it is.

So by milling it here and then using it within hours of when we mill it, we get a loaf of bread and we get a croissant that are ideally a little bit more flavorful than they would be otherwise.

- [Deborah] They're definitely delicious.

- Thanks.

- And why do you call this place Boulted Bread?

- Boulted is a milling term, and it's basically synonymous with sifting, and that sort of encompasses our ethos here.

We sort of think of our shop as, like, stripped down to the essentials.

So we don't do a ton of things, but the things that we do, we try to do really, really well.

The goal is to always bake the perfect loaf of bread, sort of with this idea that you'll never really reach that goal, but every day is an opportunity to try again, and there's something about that challenge on a daily basis that's really appealing to me personally.

- [Deborah] And so are there some favorites here?

- Yeah, I think my personal favorites probably are baguette.

I really love baguettes.

They're a really challenging loaf of bread to get right on a daily basis.

But I think the crowd favorite, and if I'm being honest, probably my favorite, too, is our morning bun, which is a croissant pastry that we sort of roll up with cinnamon sugar and lemon zest, and then we bake it in these muffin tins and coat it with a little bit more sugar, and it's just amazing, it's so good.

- [Deborah] So I understand you like to bake bread dark.

Is there a particular reason?

- Yeah, it's... All right, so that's a little controversial.

I think growing up in the south, growing up in Raleigh personally, I didn't encounter a lot of, like, dark bread growing up.

A lot of stuff that we historically baked down here is pretty light.

But once I had, like, a darker loaf of bread up in New England, I was sort of hooked on it.

By baking the bread pretty dark, it sort of allows the natural sugars in the flour and in the dough to fully caramelize.

Once that loaf cools, that caramelization gets sort of pulled back into the crumb or the inside of the loaf itself.

You end up getting a more flavorful loaf, not just on the crust, but on the inside as well.

You know, when the customer comes in, they not only see the pastries and the bread right in front of 'em on display, but you know, behind all the bread and pastry, you actually get to see the process unfold in front of you.

We have a big open bakery here, so if you're interested in that, like, you can just take a look, and you sort of get pulled into the activity of what's going on back of house.

We also have a big open mill room, so you can see the mill in action itself, and I don't know, it's sort of a unique experience.

It's pretty fun.

- [Deborah] And it looks like you have a variety of talents behind here helping you with the bread.

- Oh, yeah, you know, Sam and I started the shop, but you know, really, the only reason Boulted Bread exists and continues to thrive is we've been really fortunate and lucky to have historically just, like, really awesome folks come in here and bake bread and pastry with us.

I love these guys.

They're great, they're great, yeah.

- Joshua, thank you so much.

I'm excited for what you guys are doing- - Thank you.

- And your future, and I can't wait to take some pastries home myself.

- Well, thanks for coming, I really appreciate it.

- Boulted Bread is at 328 Dupont Circle in Raleigh, and they're open Wednesday through Sunday.

For more information, check out their website at boultedbread.com.

I'm gonna give y'all the tea.

There's an establishment in Morganton that's got tongues wagging and mouths watering over their smoking meats and deep fried delicacies.

And if you eat too much, you can just go outside and work it off on the pickleball court.

And get this, the name of the establishment is the same as the name of the owner, Bones Jones.

[upbeat music] - I worked in a lot of meat packing places, learning how to be a butcher and learning how to do old world butchery the correct way.

The guys started calling me Bones, and that's kind of how I ended up with the nickname.

- [Narrator] Tyler Bones Jones is the man, and this is his self-titled restaurant.

- We are at Bones Jones.

[laughs] - [Narrator] To begin with, Bones Jones Burgers and Butchery isn't your typical restaurant, because Bones Jones isn't your average restaurateur.

In addition to being a butcher, he's a first generation farmer, which is pretty amazing.

- It is.

I think a lot of farmers, I think they say the average farmer's like 58 years old.

It's a very multi-generational occupation.

You usually take over a farm.

A lot of people, there's not that many first generation farmers out there.

- [Narrator] For Bones, it was hogs that he chose to raise from his 126 acre farm.

- I don't really know what came over me, to be honest with you, and I think like any farmer would tell you, I don't know what I was thinking.

[laughs] - [Narrator] Folks around here are awfully glad he brought his love and knowledge of all things fresh and delicious to the Burke County town of Morganton.

- We go here quite a bit.

It's really good.

- I have a passion for good food.

I grew up with a southern fried grandmother.

Had a lot of education from that standpoint, I guess.

- [Narrator] But with the word butchery in the name, you know succulent meats are on the menu.

- Friday, Saturday nights, we'd start some smoke prime rib and ribs at five o'clock, and then we run a nightly special during the week, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Sundays, just whatever we come up with.

We try to be creative.

But mainly, we do ribeyes six days a week.

Sirloins, chicken sandwiches, hot dipped chicken sandwiches, all kinds of gourmet craft burgers.

- [Narrator] Like the Bones Burger.

- [Tyler] Which is a local burger with pepperjack, bacon, jalapenos, barbecue sauce, and onion rings on top.

- [Narrator] Poultry takes center stage on Wednesday with smoked and flash fried wings doused in your choice of several sauces.

- Usually I get them dry, but I'll do, like, barbecue sauce, too.

- I actually like the habanero and the jerk.

They're really good.

- [Narrator] His appetizers are just as well received.

- [Tyler] It's like fried Brussels sprouts, onion rings, fried pickles.

- [Narrator] And everyone's favorite... - The cheese curds are wonderful.

- The most popular item for appetizers is the fried cheese curds, the local fried cheese curds.

- People tell us, and I agree, that they're the best that I've ever had, and I've been to Wisconsin.

- [Narrator] You'll notice Bones says the word local a lot.

30 to 40% of everything they prepare is purchased locally, which for him is what it's all about.

- You know, there's nothing better than being able to market food that's raised in your community, right?

- [Narrator] Something else that makes Bones Jones stand out in the restaurant world are the pickleball courts right outside.

- We had old tennis courts in the back of the restaurant from when this place used to be a dry county.

And in order to serve alcohol in a dry county, you had to be a sports club, so they put tennis courts in the back.

I don't think they ever used 'em, but they had 'em there.

- So, out of two tennis courts, you can make eight pickleball courts.

- [Narrator] Fortunately for these pickleball players, Burke County is no longer dry.

- We get people that'll come here and they'll time it out, 'cause the restaurant opens at 11.

So they'll say, "Okay, let's go play at nine.

We'll play for a couple hours, and then we'll come in and grab a bite and a beer or a libation or iced tea," whatever they want, but it's kind of a destination, which makes it, you know, a little bit more unique than most courts that you just go and play and go home.

- [Narrator] A distinctive destination for delicious foods, beverages, and pickleball, it can only be... - [All] Bones Jones!

- Bones Jones Burgers and Butchery is at 3221 North Carolina Highway 126 in Morganton, and they're open for lunch and dinner, beginning at 11:00 AM, Tuesday through Sunday.

For more information, give them a call at 828-391-1210, or go online to bonesjones.com.

Chef Lucas Owens has cooked from the mountains to the coastal plains and won awards all along the way.

Now he has settled in Greenville and opened Native Fine Diner.

We sent Bob Garner to check it out.

[upbeat music] - [Bob] Native Fine Diner occupies a wedge-shaped corner space on Dickinson Avenue, Greenville's hottest re-gentrifying culinary destination.

Look for a lot crammed with artist John Bowling sculptures and scrap metal right across the street.

- So a diner really filled my soul as an adult and what I wanted to do with my food and my style, and I ate in diners growing up a lot, you know, a lot of blue collar food, so it filled my soul and my stomach, you know?

- Speaking of filling soul and stomach, you should know upfront that Owens was recently named first runner up as Chef of the Year by the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association.

High praise indeed.

I'm gonna start out with a couple of small plates, the first of which will be french onion soup.

So you know this is a really thick, substantial French onion soup if they give you a fork to eat it with.

But you can see the french onion, but there's lots of Gruyere cheese.

There's actually some braised beef short rib down in there, and lots of Gruyere cheese on top.

Oh, man, look at that.

Mm.

That is fabulous.

Onions, Gruyere cheese, braised short rib.

Now, either a white wine or a red wine will go perfectly well with any of these dishes.

Since this has the Gruyere cheese and since it's soup, I'm gonna go with a nice Sauvignon blanc.

Next among the small plate samples, a bao bun, which is basically a large steamed dumpling, in this case, containing a creamy oyster pie filling.

This has something called chili crunch in it, which sort of tells you that it has a little spice to it, but it's not too much.

Mm.

And whatever else is mixed in there, it is crunchy.

Oh, that's wonderful.

Up next, a trio of large plates.

This is a sausage and rice stuffed pork loin.

Look at that.

Some people call this a pork boudin.

What actually is called a boudain down in Cajun cooking land is a spicy sausage and rice mix, and that's what we have here.

Since we have some real meat to deal with, I'm gonna go with a house cab here.

Yeah, that goes very well with the pork.

Second large plate in line, a lovely stuffed acorn squash.

Okay, this has a Mediterranean spiced rice, it has pomegranate seeds and pomegranate molasses, and it has toasted almonds.

[upbeat music] Mm.

[chuckles] That is so inventive.

It may not even be on the menu when you come, but whatever you find will be just as inventive.

I can pretty much guarantee that.

And the third of our large plates, a Joyce Farms duck confit.

Three basic things.

You have the duck, you have butternut squash there, and you have a pumpkin puree.

They do this exact same dish with chicken as well as duck.

Mm.

Either way, you will really be impressed by that.

For dessert, I sampled a marshmallow sweet potato cake with a fermented sweet potato butter and a sweet potato crunch made out of some of the skins and some other good stuff that's dried out a little bit.

Greenville's Native Fine Diner.

I can pretty much guarantee you it's worth the trip.

- Native Fine Diner is at 907 Dickinson Avenue in Greenville, and they're open for lunch and dinner daily except Sunday and Tuesday.

For more information, give them a call at 252-508-5005, or go online to eatnative.com.

Well, that's it for tonight's show.

The breads and pastries here at Boulted Bread in Raleigh are just amazing, so if you're ever in town, be sure to stop by.

And if you've missed anything in today's show, remember you can always watch us again online at pbsnc.org, or catch us on our YouTube channel.

Have a great North Carolina weekend, everyone.

[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] [upbeat music continues] [upbeat music continues] [upbeat music continues] [upbeat music continues] [upbeat music continues] - [Narrator] Funding for "North Carolina Weekend" is provided in part by Visit NC, dedicated to highlighting our state's natural scenic beauty, unique history, and diverse cultural attractions.

From the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains across the Piedmont to 300 miles of barrier island beaches, you're invited to experience all the adventure and charm our state has to offer.

[gentle music]