Cagney’s Kitchen, Kernersville, North Carolina

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, yet it’s one that many of us avoid. I often just have coffee for breakfast, or maybe a bowl of cereal, which is a poor excuse for breakfast. Occasionally, however, I have a real breakfast, the essential elements of which are meat and starches. And coffee. And when I’m in the South, I eagerly seek out that glory of breakfast dishes, the biscuit sandwich.

On this particular trip, I received a recommendation for Cagney’s Kitchen. Cagney’s is a small chain in the Greensboro/Winston-Salem area, and it’s typical of what I’ll call New Diners.

They lack the patina of history that their traditional brethren exude. That will take time. The important thing is that they offer a traditional breakfast at an accessible price. I went to the location at 801 Main Street in Kernersville. Cagney’s interior there includes a couple of side rooms and a large open room bearing the legend, Signore,Scire admirals an et agnosco pro adsum!

My Italian is limited to items and phrases from Italian operas, so there’s a strong tilt toward romance, betrayal, and murder. From my schoolboy Latin I can tell that this has something to do with worship of God and willingness to serve. Perhaps someone can translate that for us.

I’ve expanded Milton’s reassurance that “They also serve who only stand and wait” to include those who only sit and eat — me. Cagney’s serves by cooking, among other things, biscuit sandwiches, including the greatest of all biscuit sandwiches, country ham.

Isn’t that a nice biscuit? It tasted great. And that country ham deserves a closer look.

Now that is good country ham, salty with a good chew and a delicious flavor.

The faint of heart may wish to stop here.

Regular readers will recall that I’m exploring local specialties, including those that emerged from bygone days of poverty when Americans used the whole pig, from snout to tail, including offal (also known as innards). As the general state of wealth has increased in the Untied States, as it has dramatically over the course of my own life — how many of you had air conditioning in 1960? — these dishes, like scrapple and South Carolina hash, have changed considerably, and often contain no offal at all, and sometimes no pork – indeed in some cases no meat.

The North Carolina variant is livermush, perhaps the most unattractively named food around. It’s served in a much narrower compass than scrapple — jet from near Greensboro to some point as you enter the mountains — which is widely available in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, or South Carolina hash and rice, which is ubiquitous in that state.

But I’ve enjoyed livermush the few times I’ve been able to try it, and I’m eager to try more examples so I can more fully understand and enjoy the dish. I therefore ordered a livermush biscuit at Cagney’s, and here it is.

As you can see, I got two slices, which was a peasant surprise. You also see that it has a crust, and you can imagine, I trust, a smooth interior. It’s seasoned like country sausage, with lots of pepper and sage, and it tastes like sausage with the addition of a gentle flavor layer of liver. The liver is less pronounced than chicken liver, more like braunschweiger. The seasonings mute and balance the liver flavor, and the overall flavor is quite good.

You should try it, and Cagney’s is a good place for that first bite. Their service is good and the country ham and the quality of the biscuits is reason enough to go, as are the platters of pancakes and other delights that my fellow-diners were enjoying. Come on. Give it a try.

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