These days, you won’t encounter stray chickens in downtown Asheville — just one 10-foot-tall rooster with a proportionately large attitude.
The star of local artist Molly Must’s Chicken Alley mural casts a cool stare on passersby, coaxing them to pause at this side street off Lexington Avenue and wander in. Which is exactly the point: to draw modern city-goers back into the agricultural past of the neighborhood, where a family-run poultry processing plant once ruled the block in the early 1900s. As visible proof of that time disappeared, Must’s chickens pace the alley — strutting, as if boasting what we only partially knew then: They were about to be history.
Find it: Between North Lexington Avenue and Broadway Street in Asheville.
In North Carolina, spring brings the scent of fresh-cut grass and memories of helping Dad mow the lawn.
Nostalgic burger joints are like time machines, delivering something extra special that keeps us coming back.
This tiny city block in downtown Greensboro once had a gigantic reputation. Not so much for its charbroiled beef patties — though they, too, were plentiful — but for its colorful characters and their wild shenanigans.
In the 1950s, as Americans hit freshly paved roads in shiny new cars during the postwar boom, a new kind of restaurant took shape: the drive-in. From those first thin patties to the elaborate gourmet hamburgers of today, North Carolina has spent the past 80 years making burger history.
