It is what it is and that’s all it is, but what it is, is my mother’s favorite – Captain Stanley’s

There is a perfect comfort in knowing exactly what to expect. One goes to The Restaurant. One orders The Usual. It arrives in The Proscribed Time. It tastes exactly like The Last Time and The Time Before.

It can be called consistency but it's really more than that. McDonald's is consistent. Wendy's is consistent. But one can't really call those restaurants. They are, in reality, small factories that churn out food and sell directly to the public.

Not that there is anything wrong with them. In traveling through strange cities on the way to someplace else for very serious reasons like business trips, they can be the difference between some minor sustenance and nothing at all. There is nothing worse than a meal of mystery food before a four hour C-level business development meeting. The sword of Damocles is a giant dollar sign and its trigger is the festering lunch one hastily ate and is desperately trying to keep down.

Sadly, I digress. This was all about her Imperial Majesty Le Grand Dame's favorite lunch in the world and this piece should center on that.

When my parents used to take us to the beach, the trip to Calabash was de rigueur; it was something we simply had to do. The first shrimp I ever ate all those years ago was a battered and fried affair. As a mere child, I remember the shrimp boats at their docks, the smells of the sea air and the ever present aroma of the fried shrimp. There were literally mountains of teeny-weeny little shrimp coming out the various dockside kitchens. Pop would pick out a promising looking place and we'd go in and order. The portion that arrived on my Dad's plate always looked like half a football. He loved it. I loved it. What's not to love?

Alas, getting that style of seafood inland – a hundred miles from the shrimpers – was something nearly impossible to contemplate in my youth. When my parents moved to Raleigh, they found this place and it solved the problem. Shrimp had been abstracted away from the ocean. There was no need to venture down Interstate 40 to back back and get The Usual..

Recollection: the first time Her Imperial Majesty and I ate there, Das Kinder was a toddler. We met the Paternals at the location in Garner. When we sat, we promptly ordered and our food arrived – steaming hot – in a little less than a minute. I remembering remarking at the time that I had waiting longing in a fast food drive thru.

This is not high end gourmet, nor is it "oh-so-trend-oid." The cuisine is old school fish camp, and very much what it's like at the hundreds of fried fish joints that dot the North and South Carolina beaches. And what is striking is that over the years is that it has been a model of consistency.

I got what I always get: Calabash-style popcorn shrimp. For those readers unfamiliar with the concept, it's essentially very small de-shelled and deveined shrimp, battered and fried in peanut oil. While not terribly healthy and certainly an acquired taste, what they serve at Captain Stanley's is as good as it gets and easily the equal of anything at the coast. My mother got what she always gets, the fired tilapia. It too was a flawless example of fish camp fare; lightly battered and perfectly fluffy. Her Imperial Majesty is not of these parts and ordered the broiled salmon. It too was a flawless execution. Everything was served with a choice of two vegetables, a seemingly bottomless basket of hush puppies and a seemingly endless river of sweet tea.

Truly ethnically Southern? You betcha'. Consistently yummy? Absolutely. High end gourmand? Nah, that would go against its DNA. No, what it is, is an institution. It stands athwart the rip tides of culinary faddishness and delivers something very near and dear to my heart: paleo-seafood. It is as simple as when I first tasted that first fried shrimp all those years ago. It has stayed perfectly true to its DNA and that's why it rates four stars in my book.

Captain Stanley's Seafood Restaurant

One location

3333 South Wilmington Street

Raleigh, NC 27603 | (919) 876-8662


Cuisine: Old school fish camp cuisine

Rating: ****

Prices: $$

Atmosphere: Very relaxed

Noise level: Nothing out of the ordinary

Open:

North Raleigh Hours:

Mon - Thurs:		11:00 am		-	2:30 pm
		4:30 pm		-	8:30 pm
Fri:		11:00 am		-	2:30 pm
		4:30 pm		-	9:00 pm
Sat:		11:00 am		-	9:00 pm
Sun:		11:00 am		-	8:00 pm

South Raleigh Hours:

Mon - Thurs:		11:00 am		-	2:00 pm
		4:30 pm		-	8:30 pm
Fri:		11:00 am		-	2:00 pm
		4:30 pm		-	9:00 pm
Sat:		4:00 pm		-	9:00 pm
Sun:		Closed

Reservations: I wouldn't bother.

Other: Come hungry. Leave sated.

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