Dining

By LaMonique Hamilton Barnes

Craig Nickerson, left, and his wife Yvonne Nickerson enjoys salads while having lunch at Prime Smokehouse Barbecue and Beyond in downtown Rocky Mount.

Rocky Mount is a great place to call home in no small part because of the sense of family and community.

Nowhere is that more apparent than the local restaurants. In summer, when people are more relaxed and daylight lingers well into the evening, experiencing first-class dining within a small town setting truly combines the best of both worlds.

Nestled among the small shops in downtown Rocky Mount sits The Prime Smokehouse. Since its opening in 2013, it has become a mainstay of the city, drawing in diners from across Eastern North Carolina and beyond. Once you step inside, you can expect a casual atmosphere and an upscale meal.

Proprietor Ed Wiley III, with his wife Yalem Kiros, and lifelong friend and business partner Harold Worrell Jr. decided to become a part of Rocky Mount’s downtown revitalization efforts, eventually closing their first location in North Raleigh and turning the historic locale into their flagship restaurant.

The Prime Smokehouse offers live jazz and Texas-style barbecue, both inspired by Wiley’s late father, Ed Wiley Jr. The elder Wiley was a saxophonist who toured the southern and midwestern United States as part of the group of night clubs and restaurants known as the Chitlin Circuit. These businesses served a primarily AfricanAmerican clientele during the nation’s Jim Crow-era. Once he and his wife settled in Philadelphia, he began a catering business.

“My father fried the best chicken, made the ooziest baked macaroni and cheese, and collard greens and ham hocks to die for,” Wiley said on the restaurant’s website.

His father, who was from Texas, was known for his barbecue.

“The meat would slow-smoke and tease us for half a day before, in my father’s eyes, it had reached the perfect level of smokiness, tenderness and overall deliciousness,” Wiley said.

The Prime Smokehouse is Wiley’s way of carrying on his father’s legacy. Many of the recipes on the menu were learned by working alongside his father as a teenager.

In North Carolina, where summer and barbecue rank among the most iconic of couplings, a helping of ribs and chicken with a side of macaroni and cheese and a mason jar glass of iced tea can be considered a perfect meal. The Prime Smokehouse is a Twin Counties treasure and a dining destination worthy of a Tuesday lunch or Saturday night out.

Fans of Lou Reda’s: An American Table will notice a completely different atmosphere at the Tap@1918 on the campus of the Rocky Mount Mills.

That is what local restaurant partners Lou Reda and Justin Gaines, partners also at Lou Reda’s: An American Table, are going for at Tap@1918.

The name is based on the year the former

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Left) Tipsy Tomato owner Angelo Carlone turns a pepperoni and pickled chiles pizza while cooking it in the wood fired pizza oven at the pizzeria at Rocky Mount Mills.

Right) Amanda Wood, back right, and Jordan Lancaster, front right, share a laugh while celebrating Katie Lassiter’s, left, birthday at the Tap @ 1918 at the Rocky Mount Mills.

mill house was built and the restaurant is centered on being a tavern featuring classic tavern favorites like burgers and fish and chips while also venturing out into dishes not currently seen in the Rocky Mount area.

“If you didn’t know we were behind it, then you wouldn’t have known it’s the same two guys,” said Gaines, who is also head chef of both restaurants. “With both of us growing up in the Northeast, we saw tavern written all over this place. We wanted to make sure this place didn’t mirror Lou Reda or any other restaurant in Rocky Mount because we need more variety in Rocky Mount. With this being a pub, we’re trying to bring a little more excitement to Rocky Mount.”

Reda said Lou Reda’s is geared a little more toward family and fun, while Tap@1918 is more for adult fun where people can hang out, drink a few beers, eat some burgers and watch sports on the big screen TVs.

“Lou Reda is more of a different place where you may go there for a meal and may get a drink and may not,” he said. “Here it’s the other way, where we want you to go for the drink, cocktail and here we have 20 beers on tap and then we have some great food to eat.”

The 3,500-square-foot mill house where Tap@1918 is located features seating for 160 people with 56 seats on the porch and 30 on the outside patio. The inside of the restaurant has seating for the main dining room, including five flatscreen TVs and a back dining room area for seating equipped with more flatscreen TVs.

Gaines said the restaurant brought down a friend from Rhode Island, who is a renowned cocktail mixologist, to put in a cocktail program at Tap@1918 for customers looking for something other than beer like gin, scotch, bourbon or whiskey.

The restaurant also features local dessert selections from Miranda’s Sweet Addictions and Pound by Pound Specialty Bakery, Gaines added.

Tipsy Tomato was the first restaurant to open at the Rocky Mount Mills, and owner Angelo Carlone knew that becoming a tenant there would take his local pizzeria to the next level. The renovated mill house the pizza restaurant occupies has some seating inside the restaurant and outside tables and chairs on the patio deck for people to eat and enjoy the fresh air.

“It’s been huge,” Carlone said, “and people have been lining up before we open the doors for dinner. We’ve had a tremendous response from the community.

Tipsy Tomato also sells domestic beer and features a custom wood fire oven, which allows it to stand out from other local pizza establishments, said Evan Covington Chavez, development manager of the Rocky Mount Mills.

“As far as I know, this is the only wood fire pizza place in the area, and everything is going to be baked in that oven whether it’s bread or lasagna,” Covington Chaviz said. “What that does is allow the food to be cooked really well, but there is also a crispiness to the crust and a flavor to the crust that you get from a wood fire oven that you don’t get from a traditional pizza oven. This also gives Angelo a great chance to be creative with the type of pizza he wants to make.”

Carlone said he loves the family-friendly atmosphere associated with the Rocky Mount Mills, as weekends are filled with people throughout the campus enjoying craft beer and engaging in other activities that the Mills hosts during the year.

“I feel like the community support here at the Mills is through the roof, and it’s only going to grow,” he said. “Eventually, you’re going to see out-of-town consumers come here, so that will allow me to have my product reach people that aren’t from here. That’s going to be a big deal to get my product out further, and definitely the Mills is on the verge of blowing up.”

Chantay Sanders pours a beer for a customer at the Tap@1918 at the Rocky Mount Mills.

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