Graceful curves and turrets and a white-pillared front porch face Canton’s Main Street. The brick Queen Anne they belong to — now known as the popular lunch spot Southern Porch Kitchen & Drink — has been a landmark in the mountain town since the late 19th century. Just a few minutes’ walk from the Pigeon River, the elegant establishment has lived many lives: It was first built as a private home in 1876. Then, in 1910, it was purchased by a businessman who expanded it into the Imperial Hotel to capitalize on the opening of the nearby Champion Fibre Company paper mill.

The hotel became intimately linked with the mill. It ran on electricity from Champion’s generator and hosted its executives and their guests. The Imperial was celebrated in the press as “one of the state’s best two-dollar hotels,” a high compliment at the time.

Located on Main Street, Southern Porch’s Queen Anne design pays homage to Canton’s boom during the turn of the 20th century. photograph by Tim Robison

Today, two years after the mill’s closure brought more than a century of Canton papermaking to an end, artifacts of that boom time — a waitress’s starched white apron, an elegant grandfather clock — welcome diners into Southern Porch, which has called the building home since 2016. The restaurant’s patio occupies a space that was once an adjoining drugstore, its tiny floor tiles still intact. In the main dining room, you can see, embedded in the dark wood boards, a trapdoor to a Prohibition-era speakeasy.

Preserving that prosperous Papertown history matters to co-owners Michaela and Nathan Lowe, who grew up in the region and know what it means to the people of Canton. Before the mill closed in 2023, it employed more than 1,000 of the town’s 4,000 residents. Every lunchtime saw a parade of mill workers walking to Southern Porch, where they could enjoy a good meal and air-conditioning.

Southern Porch serve family specialties like the Lowe Down Deviled Eggs, made with homemade pimento cheese and finished with candied peppered bacon. photograph by Tim Robison

“We’d see some guys every day, and then they’d be back with their families at night,” Michaela recalls, looking around the sunny, brick-walled front room. “Even now, we still have regulars — you’ll take their order, and then they’re up and walking around, talking to everyone they know. But we’re seeing new faces, too.”

On this day, there’s a couple in hiking gear, sharing collard-bacon dip. There’s a girl enjoying a heap of onion rings with her mother and grandmother. A table of men in T-shirts and jeans are laughing and catching up over Southern Porch’s best-selling burgers. Nathan, who’s also the chef, has emerged from the kitchen to chat with a local about an upcoming community fundraiser. It’s a snapshot of what Canton and Southern Porch are today, and what they might become in the years ahead.

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The Lowes share deep roots in Haywood County. Michaela grew up as the daughter of a local Christmas tree and produce farmer. Nathan graduated from nearby Tuscola High School in Waynesville — Canton’s rival. The couple met after they graduated from Western Carolina University. After they married, Nathan was gaining experience at a local bistro when the owners of the previous restaurant in the Southern Porch space approached them. It was an opportunity for Nathan to make his dream of opening a restaurant come true.

Michaela and Nathan Lowe photograph by Tim Robison

“We wanted Southern Porch to be a place where people could gather, whether they were just coming off their shift at the mill or heading to their kid’s baseball game,” he says.

With the help of Michaela’s mother and stepfather, who have extensive restaurant résumés themselves, the Lowes opened Southern Porch with a menu of North Carolina classics like fried “yardbird” and tomato sliders (yes, they use Duke’s mayo). Incorporating local ingredients whenever they can, the couple celebrates the flavors of the region through their own family’s favorites. Khairee’s Fish & Woodchips is named for one of their daughters. The Sweet Tye Chili wing sauce is named for their late son, Tye. Come in for lunch, and you might find their daughters, Khairee and Brindley, 11 and 14, playing hostess and contributing to the family atmosphere that reflects this tight-knit town.

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In the late 1920s, a sterile brick facade was built around the Queen Anne gem in an effort to expand and standardize the look of Main Street. In the 1990s, attorney and former Canton mayor Pat Smathers and his wife, Sherry, bought the property, which sits across the street from his office, and restored the building to its former grace.

“When I was a little boy, there was just a straight up-and-down brick wall,” Smathers says. “I wanted to take that down and get back to the past. I have always been very proud of our town and our history, but I also want to build on that and move us toward success in the future.”

From inside Southern Porch’s dining room, customers can watch scenes of downtown unfold while enjoying their meals. photograph by Tim Robison

Now the building looks like it did during Canton’s first boom, and Smathers believes that a new era of prosperity is on the way. The closure of the mill means that the notorious aroma of paper-making — a sulfurous smell associated with the chemical reactions used in pulping woodchips — no longer lingers in the air. A two-year demolition process has begun at the mill site, with plans for its reinvention into both residential and commercial properties. Smathers plans to turn the former Imperial guest rooms above Southern Porch into a boutique hotel, and he is completing a wine bar and event space in the old post office next door.

Canton native Emeri Wright has waited tables at Southern Porch since before the paper mill’s closure in 2023. Today, she still serves former mill workers, like her father, and newcomers, too. photograph by Tim Robison

Southern Porch employee Emeri Wright shares Smathers’s hope that good times lie ahead. As the child of a mill employee, she’s known many of the regulars all her life. “Before the mill closed, it would be great to see my dad and a table of his friends when I was working lunch,” she says. They still come in, but new faces appear at her tables, too. “Four generations of my family worked in the mill, but I think that even though Canton is changing, we can hold on to our history and our spirit.”

As Wright slides plates of griddled cornbread and peanut butter pie onto tables with a warm smile, she embodies the spirit of Canton and Southern Porch: resilient, welcoming, and always looking ahead.

Southern Porch Kitchen & Drink
449 Main Street
Canton, NC 28716
(828) 492-8006
southern-porch.com