H&L’s Restaurant, Englehard, North Carolina

I love just happening on these places. My visit to H&L’s was completely unplanned. I was headed to Martelle’s Feed House in Englehard and, well, the first thing you need to know about Englehard is that it is just before you fall off the edge of the earth. Well, it’s just before you fall into the Albemarle Sound after driving for a couple of hours through country that stuns you with its beauty until you realize that you’ve had three cups of coffee and there hasn’t been a gas station for two hours, and you’re ahead of schedule and you’ll get to Martelle’s at 10:22, per GPS, and it doesn’t open until 11:00 and it’s about the only public facility in a town of 155 souls and this is getting to be a serious issue.

Then suddenly you see H&L’s.

It doesn’t look like much, but it’s open and they sell food, which means you have a solution to your immediate problem and a way to kill half an hour. So I stopped, went in and, mutatis mutandis, looked at the menu. It turns out I was early. They weren’t really open, but they were too nice to say so.

I looked at the menu and it looked good. I order a pork chop sandwich. No go. The oil won’t be hot for 15 or 20 minutes. I guess that rules out the two-piece dark meat chicken sandwich, too. I’m afraid so. How about a barbecue sandwich ($3.75) and a lemonade. Can do.

Now all that may sound like a problem to you, dear reader, but it wasn’t. Everyone was as nice, sweet, really, as can be. I had time to look around. H&L’s occupies a portion of a building along with the End Time Living Waters Ministry,

and from the connecting door and the poster of testimony of praise for Apostle Mary Bryant in the dining room, I gather H&L’s a linked operation. I used to come across that sort of situation when I was on the ground doing voting rights work on behalf of minority voters, especially Black and Latino voters, and there’s a special warmth to the meals they serve. And usually very good food.

I got my food and added some Texas Pete.

I’m not going to pretend that it was great barbecue. They rushed it out for me. It wasn’t bad, but I’ll bet the pork chop sandwich or the two-piece chicken sandwich would have been great. Normally I would have waited 15 or 20 minutes until the oil heated up. Normally I’d wait an hour for a pork cop sandwich, but I was on a schedule. I had to try two True ‘Cue places, Martelle’s and Old Colony Smokehouse, that closed at two and that were miles apart over two-lane roads. But I treasure my time with the folks at H&L’s, and the other people who came in while I was there and talked and laughed with me and wished me a blessed day, a wish I returned to each and every one of them.

I may actually go back to Englehard. Martelle’s was great, and it’s such a pretty area. And the people at Martelle’s and at H&L’s were so warm and friendly and I really do need to try that pork chop sandwich. You should, too.

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