[piano intro] [upbeat music] - [Heather] North Carolina is a haven for foodies and chefs.

Their stories about barbecue, street food, hot dogs, and international fare will bring a smile to your face and quite possibly a rumble in your tummy.

- I appreciate it.

- Thank you.

It's good to see you again.

- [Heather] It's all on "My Home" coming up next.

[gentle music] All across the state we're uncovering the unique stories that make North Carolina my home.

♪♪ Come home ♪♪ ♪♪ Come home ♪♪ [upbeat music] - Often I'll hear the argument made America's a melting pot.

And it's obligation or duty to accept people from elsewhere and integrate it into this melting pot and not to beat a culinary metaphor to death, but I'm saying, yeah, but if we're ingredients, then we have to also play an active role in that.

We can't expect to show up and just be accepted.

It's a two-way street.

You have to play your role too.

You have to be active in that process of incorporating the melting pot.

And I think, especially in the south, it's easy to say well, this place has got its own history and I'm not a part of it.

Maybe not in the past, but we can certainly be a part of the story moving forward.

My name is Meherwan Irani.

I'm a chef and restaurateur, I'm the owner of the Chai Pani restaurant group and my home is Asheville, North Carolina.

My wife and I, Molly and I had moved here from the San Francisco Bay area back in 2005.

And we'd moved here because we were looking for a place to raise a family.

It sounds as cliche as can be, but we just had our little baby girl who is now about to go to college and we wanted to find just a small town but that was just fun and liberal and in the mountain.

For a few years I wasn't quite sure what to do when I got here.

I was staying in sales, which is what my background was in, but it always had this idea, this sort of passion for what if somebody decided to introduce Indian street food in a way that people had never experienced it before.

And when the recession hit in 2009, I had a choice either to keep doing what I was doing or go ahead and try this idea.

And God bless Molly, when I asked her what I should do, she looked at me and said, well, if there was ever a time to do something completely unexpected, to do something completely different, this would be it.

So that's how Chai Pani was born.

Chai means tea, actually a very particular style of tea and I'm drinking some right now it's a street tea that's made made in India.

But the very word chai for tea in India comes from the fact that all the tea came from China originally.

And pani means water.

And in India, wherever you go, if you go to visit someone's house, if you go into an office to meet somebody, like a a supervisor or manager, it's a formality where the first thing will be offered is would you like some chai or pani, would you like some tea and water?

So it was a cute play on words and that's what I decided to call the restaurant.

Calling Indian food Indian is like calling any food from Europe, European food.

If you told somebody, oh, I love European food, they would start laughing and saying, well what are you talking about?

There's no such thing, right?

There's Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, I mean, there's cuisine from, you know, all over Europe.

And similarly there is no real Indian food.

I mean, living in India, I didn't call it Indian food.

And India is like Europe.

We are over 50 distinct regions, Princely States, ethnicities, religions that happen to be all brought together by the British only about 150 years ago.

So we still have 6,000 plus years of distinct cuisines and cultures.

So what I hope to see happen slowly is a recognition that Indian food isn't a monolith.

In fact, we should just stop saying Indian food and we should start being really particular about what region of India's cuisine we enjoy.

I've always been the kind of person that is really conscious of where I am.

And when I was in California, I really felt like I was a Californian and really sort of made that my homeland, if you will.

And then moving to the south, I realized that I hadn't done that.

And it took a conversation with a dear friend, Vish, but where I realized that, okay, Vish is a southern chef in Oxford, Mississippi, Maneet Chauhan is of Indian origin and her restaurants in Nashville, Marawata Roni is in Asheville, North Carolina, Asha Gomez is in Atlanta, Cheetie Kumar is in Raleigh.

And I realized like, well, hang on a second, there's something going on over here.

How did all these brown people end up in the south?

And as I started talking to each one of them, I recognized that, yeah, we all just ended up here because it actually felt like we belonged.

And I challenged all of us to say, well what if we took this feeling we're having of belonging and that we're Southern, but we happen to be from somewhere else and talk about it and "Brown in the South" was born.

People were blown way the food, but I think more importantly they were kind of blown away by the conversation and what can we actively do to stand up and be counted?

So it's turned into a series of dinners and then the pandemic happened and we basically stopped it.

But the idea I think is still valid.

In fact, I think now more than ever as we all stuck at home asking what does identity look like?

What does culture look like?

At what point does that acceptance happen and how much of a role do people from somewhere else have to play in that acceptance happening?

[upbeat music] The best part about being here during the pandemic is Asheville returning to its old self.

You know, just seeing your neighbors, your friends, locals, I always say that.

I don't think I could have done this in anywhere about Asheville, North Carolina.

When I first arrived here 10 years ago, it was people like me that were looking for a new beginning.

We live in a very inspiring place.

All you have to do is get out and look around.

These are the oldest mountains on the planet.

It was here before the Himalayas.

So my words of inspiration would be, you know, be inspired by what attracted us to live here in the first place and just give it some attention.

And I think if you do, we'll reconnect with it.

[upbeat music] - [Heather] Tell me a little bit about the hot dog ballet that has to happen back there.

They're very good at it.

- I think it's because you sort of anticipate where the person is going.

Obviously to have a dozen people in that small of a space, we've been working together so long that we know where this person is gonna go.

[upbeat music] - What is the favorite, the house favorite?

- I think the slow dog is the house favorite.

It has mustard, chili, onion, and the slaw on top.

[upbeat music] - When do we have a hot dog?

Maybe it's at the ballpark, maybe it's at the stadium, maybe it's somewhere that we just feel good.

It's Americana.

[upbeat music] - Thank you.

It's good to see you again.

Have a wonderful day.

My name is Steve Katsadouros.

My home is Hendersonville, North Carolina.

I am owner operator of the Hot Dog World since 1986.

This is Thomasa, he's my business partner.

We've been together working on 20 years.

I was actually born in Greece.

My family immigrated to the United States in 1972.

I grew up in Charlotte, graduated from UNC in Chapel Hill in 1982.

I met my wife.

Her father had ran a hotdog stand in Albany, Georgia and he was successful at it and he was very good at it.

So he retired from Albany, Georgia, got bored, and then wanted to open up a hot dog stand again.

And we started to work at the business.

There's 165 places in Henderson county you can go eat, but you chose to come here and I have to show my gratitude.

- What is it about a Hot Dog World hot dog that makes people just drive for miles to come get it?

What is it?

- And actually they literally do.

People drive from upstate South Carolina, when they're visiting from the coast to as far south as Florida.

The majority of our customer base is local to Hendersonville.

People just enjoy a hot dog and having the ability to dress it up as they like it I think makes a difference, from nothing on it at all to a plain hot dog, to just load it up.

And people like the foot long, sell more slaw dogs than any of the other traditional chili dogs or conies as they call them, it's the mustard, chili, and onions.

We toast our buns and we use a special bun that's sliced on top versus the traditional hot dog bun that we buy at the grocery store.

But we sell about six, 7,000 hot dogs a week.

The most interesting way that someone has dressed up the hot dog is with peanut butter.

They wanted peanut butter on the hot dog.

Who would we just say that it's not good?

We make it, but I must confess that I've never tried it.

[gentle music] We bring our Greek heritage into the business at the request of our customers.

Obviously most of them know that I'm Greek and they would say, oh, there's not a place here that serves a Greek salad.

Later then we get a request for a gyro sandwich.

Nobody served a gyro here.

- Small chef, small garden, no cheese, large tea please.

- We have staff that's been with us for, you know, Wendy's been here for almost 29 years.

- Okay, will that be all?

- [Steve] Young lady's been 18 and Mary's been 26.

Yeah, I know she looks, Josie looks also 15, but she's been here 10 years.

- So the fountain of youth is hot dogs.

- That's right!

- In the 30 years that we've been in business, people have come to recognize us for outstanding service, quality food, and something different.

We hope a hundred percent of the people who leave, leave happy and satisfied.

[upbeat music] - I'm excited because we're heading to Maxton, North Carolina to see Glenn and Dorothy Hunt and they are known for their collard sandwiches and also for their Lumbee homemade ice cream.

But people will line up for miles just to get these collard sandwiches.

And when I tell you that they're like celebrities, I'm not kidding.

You'll see what I mean.

[upbeat music] - Two collard sandwiches, it'll be $10 sweetheart.

Oh, oh, another way now.

- And so what are we expecting today?

- We are expecting a lot of people and a lot of fun.

- Right.

- I'm Dorothy Marie Bright Hunt.

This is my husband Glenn Hunt.

We've been married for 39 years.

- And our home is Long Swamp.

This is all Long Swamp you see down through here.

- He's the one actually came up with the collard idea.

It wasn't me.

And we would do ice cream on the weekends.

Then he wanted to, let's add something else.

So he said nobody does collard, let's do collard sandwiches.

Just become like a tradition.

- Y'all are what everybody talks about.

Well, they come out of town for y'all.

- All right, we're gonna be waiting on tomorrow.

- As you're talking, I can hear the crowds are growing.

- Waking us up.

- It's early, but I think it's worth it.

It's gonna be worth it to get there.

- Oh, it's gonna be worth it.

I believe you'll enjoy it.

- I think we're gonna put the collard that big blue cooler.

Making an assembly line right through here.

- [Dorothy] That's our oldest son, Grayland, and our baby boy, Donovan.

- Okay, it'll be 95, 96.

[upbeat music] - You guys, you didn't tell me to bring my gloves.

[laughing] - It sort of seemed like it got bigger and bigger every year, you know, we've done that.

And the next year it was a hundred gallons and next year it was 200.

And the thing we do different in those things, we just put love in our collards.

- Yup.

- You know, so that makes the difference.

- [Heather] What do you think we'll see today when we get there?

- I'm thinking we'll see a lot of action, moving action.

Hand to hand combat like.

You know, everybody's gonna be rolling and moving and running.

[gentle music] - Yep.

- [Heather] Talk about how you met.

- This, our friend, one of our friends were having a party and my eyes focus on one thing, straight to my wife.

And I go and ask her for a dance.

She says, no.

I said, what's the problem?

I ain't want to dance.

Did you?

But I finally kept on, I'm persistent like I said.

We sealed that deal, you know we sealed that, didn't you?

- [Heather] No.

- That night, sealed it with a kiss.

- With a kiss.

- I got me a sugar that I didn't ever think would get.

- [Dorothy] We have my mother, she's the one that works at my corn mill.

I have my brother that takes and actually fries some of the cornbread.

- [Glenn] What we're doing now, we're pouring in the collards, she's getting ready to fry up another bite of collards.

The first thing she do, she'll put her grease in there and she'll put the fire to them and start heating them up and start stirring them.

- Take the fried collards, put them in between the cornbread.

I make, we make chow chow.

- Want some chow chow with it?

- With a side of meat, we call it a fat back.

- Yeah, I forgot the fat back.

- [Glenn] You got to have fat back with that collard sandwich.

- Okay, good.

Right on top of your collared sandwich.

Two of them, two collard sandwiches.

- [Dorothy] We've actually had people stand our line right at an hour, waiting on a collard sandwich.

- You know, and people say that y'all just like twins.

If you see one, the other always gotta be there.

My brothers and sisters and them will say the same thing too.

Why you always gotta have Dorothy with you?

Heck, that the best friend I got in life right there.

She's my back and the mother of my children and everything, and that's the best friend I got in life.

I can tell her everything.

- What is it like for this to be a family and friend affair?

When everybody's here with you guys, kind of sharing in this experience, what is that like?

- It's time having family together to do anything.

- [Dorothy] It's a blessing.

And we are.

- The collared people.

- Collared people!

[clapping] - We're enjoying doing it.

We're never gonna be millionaires at it.

As long as we're making a little bit of money.

we're happy and satisfied.

- [Dorothy] Yeah.

- [Glenn] And we'll be blessed.

[gentle music] - We are heading down east to Ayden, North Carolina.

Ayden is known as the collard capital of the world, but it's also the capital of a big time barbecue legacy.

The Jones family has been cooking barbecue for over 70 years at the Skylight Inn.

And we're gonna go talk to Sam Jones, who's taking his family's barbecue legacy to a whole new level [upbeat music] - [Sam] Fire.

[upbeat music] - [Sam] That's something that I think mesmerizes every child on some level.

[upbeat music] - That same fire that's such a terrible thing creates such a beautiful thing here.

[upbeat music] - [Sam] What we are doing is preserving a tradition.

[upbeat music] - There's a lot of barbecue places that there's no fire burning.

So this smokehouse I feel like is one of my children.

I'm Sam Jones and home is Ayden, North Carolina.

[upbeat music] - [Sam] Ayden, North Carolina, which is a town about 5,500 and we were coming in from my home which is on the east side, out in the country.

[upbeat music] - I just noticed that, welcome home.

That's nice.

Barbecue has completely gone through a renaissance.

It's become trendy.

As old country song says, I was country when country wasn't cool.

That's our family and barbecue.

But whole hog is one of what Eastern North Carolina I think historically is known for.

as it pertains to barbecue.

To me, I grew up in it.

My grandfather, Pete Jones, leached a pound of drums.

If it's not cooked with wood, it's not barbecue.

And he opened in the summer of '47.

Here at Skylight, me and my dad and my uncle operate it.

- My name is Bruce Jones.

I'm Pete Jones' son and I'm Sam's dad.

I never have had a chance to be myself.

I don't usually get here by lunch time.

I pastor a church in Farmville.

Well, I've been working here 56 years.

I took what my dad gave me and went with it and Samuel carried it to a much higher level.

- Another title I hold is the chief of the fire department.

Command, put it right into gable end, right in the gable end.

We'll cool it down.

I'm also the co-owner, I have a partner at Sam Jones Barbecue.

Everything we do is, the heat source is fed from this chimney.

- [Heather] Okay.

[gentle music] - All your old school barbecue places, the one I came from, that smokehouse was treated like it was the inner sanctum.

Because they're almost a thing in the past now.

They're going away.

But we're going to go see the old family pit which we recently resurrected.

So my grandfather's buried essentially right across the street from this house.

That's where the family cemetery is.

And I never knew or realized that this old pit was still in existence.

So my grandfather's mother, her side of the family, this was their place.

And so when I stepped in it the first time, it was almost like a religious experience.

There's a photo that hangs in both restaurants of a gentleman in overalls and he's standing beside this pit and it was about 1930.

Got my phone out and I went trying to find that photo.

I said, man, I think this is, I said I think this is that pit.

Sure enough, that was it.

So you take that gentleman that hangs on the wall in our restaurant that taught my granddaddy how to cook hogs.

Here.

- Oh my goodness.

- Right, written in pencil.

- Those are the weights.

- This is where that shot was taken.

This was the orientation of him in that photo, just candid.

In his mind, he was not doing anything special.

I can promise you nothing at all.

- Finding this for you really kinda felt like you were coming full circle.

- Being able to not only preserve it is one thing, but then to fire it up.

And now I've got a photo of the first shovel of coals that's been in that pit in over 60 years.

Nobody alive knows when the last time that pit was fired up.

A legacy is not an impact if it's unrealized.

I can't describe how special it is to be standing here where so many people in my family, one, built this building and did something that was just a normal way of life to them.

So to have some of my friends, both near and far, to sit on this property and eat from this pit, in my opinion, the most fun thing that I get to do is take what started in this pit to crowds all over America at food festivals and things and people are wowed by whole hog because it's almost a thing of the past.

But if you think about old church revival meetings, your revival was intended to make you leave a little different than you came.

And that's the way I approach whole hog.

That's the way I approach our food is you have a chance to interact with somebody on the table whether you're standing there or not.

- [Heather] Next time on "My Home," join us for some North Carolina mountain memories at Biltmore Estate.

- [Woman] This balcony overlooks the servant's courtyard.

- It's a stunning entrance.

Cuddle some Highland cows in Burnsville.

- Is that one nice?

- Yeah, that's a little girl.

- [Man] She's really sweet - [Heather] And hear the fascinating legacy of the Wong family and Highland Brewing.

- Everybody can share a beer and have fun and doesn't matter where you come from.

- [Heather] It's all on "My Home."

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