A Chicken Shack, a Homecoming, and a Blessing
After years away, a pastor finds his way back to North Carolina and to the comfort of Slappy’s Chicken, which serves up crispy drumsticks, spicy sauce, and a taste of grace.
Slappy’s Chicken Winston-Salem | best fried chicken North Carolina | Justin Cox food and faith
As a child, my Great-Aunt Emmie carried me and my younger sister to church in her 1960s Ford Galaxie. We’d wait on the front steps of the double-wide trailer my parents were paying 18% interest on during the Reagan Administration and watch for that boat of a car to swing into the driveway.
Sitting up front with Aunt Em and her stained, tissue-packed, Dixie Snuff cup was out of the question. We’d decline the offer and slide into the back, ignoring the seat belts that suggested safety but provided little. For the next couple of bumpy miles, we’d pinball around and collect bruises from an automobile cast in pure steel until she finally cruised to a stop in the gravel parking lot of the small Baptist church.
Aunt Em wasn’t a Baptist, but she got cozy with this crowd after our family fell out with the Methodists. The sour feelings started with the passing of her father, Addison. You see, Add meant to leave a sizable amount of his meager farmer’s estate to the Methodist church, but his act of benevolence didn’t sit well with some of Aunt Em’s brothers and sisters. They contested the will and won. Methodists don’t have a formal process for excommunicating folks. Still, a vote can remove a member, or in this case, an entire family. My people saved church leadership the trouble and saw themselves out.
Aunt Em found a community at her new church; she got involved and sang weekly in the choir but never officially joined the congregation. Years later, when I asked my mother why that was, she told me Aunt Em wanted to be buried down at the Methodist church with the rest of our people.
“Couldn’t she do that, anyway?” I asked.
Her feet barely skimming the floor, my mother crossed her legs in the cushy living room chair before making a point I should have known already. “Well, yeah. But burial plots run about four times as much if you ain’t a member.”
I reckon Aunt Em figured the Methodists had enough money already.
Slappy’s Chicken Winston-Salem | best fried chicken North Carolina | Justin Cox food and faith
Even with a chauffeur, my attendance was sporadic most of the year. Summer months were different, especially during the week of Vacation Bible School. For five days, I made crafts and listened to teachers describe a God I didn't know, yet somehow knew me.
A few of us unchurched kids always huddled among the regular churchgoers. With ease, those kids could find any book in the Bible, detail Paul's missionary travels, and quote long sections of scripture. I also had a gift for memorization and could monologue almost the entire stand-up set of Eddie Murphy’s Delirious. Be it the work of angels or common sense, I kept this secret to myself.
Likewise, in the Fall, Aunt Em would take us back to church for homecoming—a high and holy day in rural churches where they invite former ministers back, choirs perform special music, and folks openly practice gluttony in packed fellowship halls.
The spread was always divine—half a dozen deviled egg trays, containers of potato salad, stainless steel Gastronorms stuffed with hamburgers, hotdogs, and any other meat that wandered too close to the hellfire hot grill. Corn on the cob, baked beans with strips of bacon floating on top, coleslaw, pickled things in blue-hued Mason jars, tea towel-covered baskets stacked with cathead biscuits, skillets of cornbread, and caldrons crammed full of mac & cheese.
The dessert table was equally sinful. Warm banana pudding with pristine meringue perched on top, all manner of tiered and sheet cakes, cobblers with every sort of berry, and pies with butter crusts as flaky as a seasoned politician. And just as surely as a brass cross sat in the sanctuary, a group of men took shifts churning homemade ice cream outside. It was heaven on earth.
I’d watch the food arrive in the laps of women who didn’t see the purpose of owning measuring spoons. They’d march their offerings in with reverence and line them beside one another in meticulous fashion. Watching this procession, I wondered how many nine-by-thirteen casserole dishes one splintering table could hold? I knew miracles were real because those surfaces never gave.
I took advantage of the sort of grace extended at these meals, where after a blessing that was always too long, the preacher bellowed, “All right then, let’s let the women and children go on ahead.” So, up to the front of the line I’d go—ignoring Jesus’s words about how, in his kingdom, the last will be first and the first will be last.
While everything at these banquets was tempting, the smell of crispy poultry skin was impossible to ignore: It permeated the off-white walls with an intoxicating aroma that hung in the air like the most genuine of prayers. My fried chicken leg secured, I’d head to my place at a kid’s table, where I secretly scrutinized the Almighty for limiting the lowly chicken to only two drumsticks. I would have gone with a hexapod.
Munching away, I’d look around at faces I knew but didn’t have first names for. Rural communities rarely produce strangers, and mine was no exception. You knew everyone, or you sure as hell knew ofthem, even if you weren't close. Long before 23andMe, Aunt Em showed me how keen eyes could connect people to their family’s gene pools. Once, in a local fish house, pushing her along in a wheelchair, she asked me to stop at a table.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Is your last name Beeson?”
A man deep in a pile of popcorn shrimp looked up. “My mother was a Beeson,” he said.
Twirling her pearl necklace between her fingers, she nodded before adding, “I could tell. You got ears like a Beeson I went to school with.”
Slappy’s Chicken Winston-Salem | best fried chicken North Carolina | Justin Cox food and faith
Homecomings, potlucks, dinner on the grounds. Reasons for the saved and sinner alike to get together and remember that they were part of something bigger. The invite went to everyone: the introvert, the gossip, the hermit, the socialite, the old widow rumored to be a witch, and me—a seldom-seen kid who showed up a handful of times a year. Every soul, a returning prodigal child, welcomed back into the fold in celebration. And while a preacher might invoke shame from the pulpit, nothing resembling guilt existed at these extended communion tables.
Thanks to Aunt Em and those people, I learned what I knew to be church—a group of people who understood that community was holy and that breaking bread together could transcend an often hard and mundane life. In some ways, I believed my fried chicken leg acted as an enchanted totem, helping me enter such a space.
I’ve been looking for fried chicken that does the same ever since.
This has equated to me putting away my fair share of Foghorn Leghorns over the years. I imagine my family name terrifies chickens in coops from the Carolinas to the Delta.
Great power and skill demand immense responsibility; as a Southerner with high cholesterol, I'm a chicken expert, so I can authoritatively compare fast-food chains' seasonings and which gas station chicken packs the loudest crunch. I can readily share several pan-frying methods and express passionate opinions on the ideal oil for deep frying. My lifelong education on the subject has left me with experiences ranging from tasting what simply satisfies to the life-altering.
A disclaimer: This ain’t no restaurant review. No ratings from me. No stars are attached to subjective praise and criticism. I’m neither retracing foodways nor lending my pen to anything resembling food porn.
I want to tell you about the latter as best I can.
But first a disclaimer: This ain’t no food review. No ratings from me. No stars are attached to subjective praise and criticism. I’m neither retracing foodways nor lending my pen to anything resembling food porn. “Oh, baby, this coleslaw is creamy and titillating” isn’t where this is going. How many times can you say a dish is delicate, mouthwatering, earthy? No, I’ll save you from describing the collard greens as “lush.” I’ll leave that to Pete Wells, Ruth Reichl, and other former New York Times restaurant critics.
Instead, I want to tell you why, when folks come to visit me, there is a particular place I take them to.
I’ll tell you that whenever I’m in there, it’s always someone else’s first time. People spread the news. It’s the opposite of Fight Club—you do talk about it. You want others to know. To eat there is to become a follower. An evangelist of what is downright good.
Slappy’s Chicken Winston-Salem | best fried chicken North Carolina | Justin Cox food and faith
I’ll tell you how I see people from all walks come through those doors. Doctors from major hospitals sit in scrubs next to road construction crews. Old blue-haired ladies sit beside two men in lawncare shirts whose English is shakier than mine. That somehow the Vineyard Vines crowd and the barfly in a studded leather jacket who’s soaking up yesterday’s Mickey’s Malt Liquor find common ground there. Class, ethnicity, background, or politics do not matter. No gatekeeping takes place at the altar of deliciousness.
I’ll tell you about the staff who work the counter and fryers. How they guide people through the ordering process and spin food out a window faster than a beagle picks up the scent of rabbit. I’ll tell you too that the owner wanted to do something simple, and how he and his buddies wanted to create a place for service industry people. Something unpretentious and without all the fuss. Somewhere they’d like to go after working a shift in other more refined restaurants. How he wanted to recreate what he had as a kid when his family ate at spots like Keaton’s Barbecue outside of Statesville, North Carolina.
I want to tell you about the chicken. How you get it upper, lower, quartered, halved. That the sauce can be served separately but is better when it’s slathered all over and becomes a messy affair. Tangy, strong, and oxblood-like in color, the liquid seeps down into your cuticles and lingers with you long after you finish. Grabbing a dozen napkins is a must.
I’ll tell you about the sides, essential and solid. No overload of choices here, thus proving wrong the notion that variety is the spice of life. Collards, baked beans, and mac & cheese with Cheez-Its crumbled and dispersed throughout. It’s the sort of infusion you’d come up with yourself as a kid when your parents weren’t looking. The potato salad has tested my marriage and left me with scars. My wife has sunk a plastic fork into my hand when I reached over to try and sneak some of hers. The chicken salad doesn’t suck, either. It’s the sort of thing a man would trade his soul for during the midnight hour at some unknown crossroad.
Slappy’s is an unconventional establishment with old skateboards hung on the walls, run-of-the-mill tables and chairs, random yard-sale-find trophies scattered about, and a framed picture of country music legend George Jones displayed with prominence. Strings of Christmas lights wrap around pillars and up toward the heavens. Ductwork and bag-in box soda syrup refills are exposed in the dining area. Le Bernardin this is not. But it slings the finest deep-fried bird I’ve ever tasted.
I want to tell you all this and kindle a spark of curiosity—a warm flame causing you, dear reader, to make a trip there and, after witnessing it and tasting it, cuss the heavens that you didn’t know about it sooner.
But most importantly, I want to tell y’all how a chicken shack called Slappy’s helped me find my way back home.
Slappy’s Chicken Winston-Salem | best fried chicken North Carolina | Justin Cox food and faith
In 2024, I traveled back to my home state of North Carolina more times than I had in the previous five years. I had plenty of circumstances to blame for my lack of visitation: a global pandemic, small children who despise car seats, and a spouse who abhors the idea of flying on a plane with said company. Every time an opportunity presented itself, we found a rational reason to stay sequestered away in New England. Returning was admitting I missed being there, so I kept away.
That’s a story in and of itself.
Everything shifted when my mom called with news about Dad's health. It was his heart. Another procedure. Another surgery. Another reminder that he and my mother had never met their youngest grandchild in person. I knew the excuses had to end. We planned to make the twelve-hour drive a week later.
After arriving and spending a few days with my parents, my wife and I stole the kids away to show them more of what we loved and missed about the South. We spend a whole day perusing our old stomping grounds of Winston-Salem, a city constructed of grit that has yet to be sanded down. There’s an edge to W-S, a griminess that garners a level of pride for those who call it home. You’ll find it between the lingering dust of empty textile mills and the soot of smokestacks turned landmarks, remnants of the previous century’s industries. There’s new life popping up, too, and this merging of the old and modish has produced a come-what-may, laissez-faire attitude. Winston-Salem isn’t competing with the state capital of Raleigh or the “Queen City” of Charlotte. It’s comfortable in its own scuffed-up shoes.
By mid-afternoon, we were starving. I tried to think of an establishment capable of satisfying the limited palate of two miniature furies. My wife, Lauren, read my mind before I could speak the name.
“What about Slappy’s?” she said.
I took a layer of rubber off the tires and a year off each of our lives as I whipped the SUV around, knowing that farther down the road, around a few more corners, something close to salvation awaited me.
By no stretch is the South in short supply of chicken shacks. They are on every corner, competing only with steeples for prime real estate. Bojangles, Popeye’s, and Church’s fit the chain-store bill. Prince’s Hot Chicken in Nashville, Willie Mae’s Scotch House in New Orleans, and Danny’s in Niceville, Florida, are institutions with their own cult followings. Since 2016, Slappy’s has turned the same sort of heads.
Calling what founder and owner Scott Brandenburg has going an example of being in the right place at the right time fails to fully describe what he has created. Slappy’s might not be lightning in a bottle, but it’s a six-pack of absolute thunder. The place has collected local awards like my youngest collects random rocks—by the handful. Yelp reviewers called Slappy’s the best fried chicken spot in North Carolina in 2024.
I received a call from the church I interviewed with. They wanted me as their pastor. Watching my children inhale Slappy’s mac & cheese, I silently celebrated and mourned that my father wasn’t here to see my return.
Numbers don’t lie. The people have spoken.
We arrive, devouring everything on the menu like a plague of locusts. We depart in a full and euphoric state. Even Dionysus, the Greek god of parties and pleasure, would approve. We took a couple of days to recover, then returned before heading back north on a trip that was as beautiful as it was short.
Two weeks after leaving North Carolina, I was back and standing at the counter at Slappy’s, picking up a Styrofoam box of comfort. I’d flown back alone after receiving one of those phone calls you hope you never get. My father had suffered a massive heart attack. He left this life too early at age sixty-four.
Two months later, I’m at Slappy’s again. This time, coming down to interview as a pastoral candidate at a church in the next town over from where I grew up. The search committee had given me a few hours before our informal dinner meet-up. Knowing I'd be well-fed, as is typical of hospitable Southern churches with their pasta salads, I still couldn't resist. I drove the half-hour to Slappy’s and returned to the hotel, where I placed my order of dipped chicken and two sides of collard greens in the compact hotel fridge. I ate it cold the following morning before a 6 a.m. flight. Heartburn on an empty stomach never tasted so good. Tums were invented for times such as these.
A month goes by, and I sit in Slappy’s again, surrounded by my family. After a whirlwind weekend of preaching and countless handshakes, I received a call from the church I interviewed with. They wanted me as their pastor. Watching my children inhale Slappy’s mac & cheese, I silently celebrated and mourned that my father wasn’t here to see my return.
Slappy’s Chicken Winston-Salem | best fried chicken North Carolina | Justin Cox food and faith
As I write this, my family and I are starting life over again in the familiar. Back home in North Carolina, we're unpacking boxes filled with things we shouldn't have moved. Putting off what needs to get done, I ruminate on the journey that got us here. I don’t cling to the notion of providence. Still, several fortuitous events have been at play that I can’t help but recognize.
Along the way, I searched for answers about why I wanted to come back. Those I’ve received aren’t straightforward. They are cloudy and mystical—more a practice in attempting to read the stars. Yet, my draw toward Slappy’s is at least one constellation I’ve put together.
In times of crisis in my life, through the chaos and crazy, I have sought safe people and places. I have done so because I know my own limitations. Wisdom has shown me that coming out unscathed rarely happens alone. I need people to lean on, and I need places of refuge. Slappy’s is that for me because it transports me to those fellowship hall meals long ago. It grants me the feeling of belonging. I could use some of that right now. Maybe we all could.
So I take my family to Slappy’s at least once a week. Pulled there by a supernatural force the same way some people go into the Bermuda Triangle. It’s more than a routine for us; it’s a ritual—up there with baptism and the laying on of hands. A rite: grabbing some chicken reminds me I’m connected to others. Slappy’s makes this possible. It welcomes those like and unlike me. We come as we are, an unconventional congregation wanting to be seen and fed.
Sounds a lot like a church to me. A house of prayer where neighbors take care of one another. A homecoming where everyone leaves with full bellies.
Here’s to the sacred places, where you can get what you need and leave the bones.
Read the Rev. Dr. Justin Cox on why “Cornbread Is Personal”
Justin Cox is an ordained minister, late-night baker, and storyteller. His writings have appeared in Mockingbird Magazine and the Baptist Peacemaker. He’s a regular contributor at Good Faith Media, Baptist News Global, and The Christian Citizen. In 2025, Justin and his family returned home to his beloved South, where he talks excessively about a radically inclusive Jesus, the sacredness of Waffle House, Baptist iconoclast Will D. Campbell, and his patron sinner Anthony Bourdain. He rambles from time to time at blacksheepbaptist.com
Lauren Pack is a Christian witch and a lover of all things curious and enchanting. A devoted collector of vintage glass and antique oddities, she believes every piece holds a story worth telling. Her fascination with folklore and cryptids fuels a lifelong passion for the strange, the mysterious, and the magical. When she’s not chasing chickens or tending her garden, Lauren can be found devouring an ever-growing collection of scandalous smut or exploring historic cemeteries with her family.
Oh Justin, I can hear this story in your voice! How wonderful! I look forward to seeing you at our next monthly group with Chuck and talking more about it. I’d give up a plate of local fried oysters for a plate of chicken and collards! Congratulations on a great piece of work. Best, Deb
Thanks Deb! I’d be glad to swap you a plate of fried chicken for some oysters!