'Everyone comes to Honey's'

By Rose Martelli and

Justin Dillon

Photos by Jason Laughlin

A line of soon-to-be patrons gathers before a sign reading "Please Wait To Be Seated" as "The Love Tester" continually flashes its small neon lights near the entranceway. Laminated yellow menus are stacked in a large glass bowl nearby. The dizzying buzz of overlapping conversations spins through the air as trays of water glasses are delivered to various tables. A song is playing over a speaker system but is too soft and fuzzy to identify.

If the phrase "It takes all kinds" applies to any Durham establishment, it is Honey's-its towering yellow billboard a beacon of refuge for late-night sojourners. Members of a bowling league may be seated next to a table of adolescent couples sneaking a few minutes out of their curfews. A lone customer quietly nurses a cup of coffee at one end of the counter, while a nearby table is littered with the remnants of three full-course meals. The place can contain one solitary cop at 10:30 p.m., then be packed to the brim by 11:00. And while Honey's is open 24 hours a day, it is the after-hours clientele that arrives in high-spirited droves.

About half of this midnight mob is comprised of Duke students, estimates Sherry Fritz, who works the late-night-into-early-morning third shift alternately as a manager and waitress. "Each shift has a whole different clientele," Fritz explains. "People who have day jobs come for breakfast and lunch, in the evening we have a lot of older, retired people, and the third shift, we have a whole lot of different types come here."

This past Saturday night, that "whole lot of different types" included a long table of Northern High School students coming from a benefit concert; two tables and a booth of Duke's Psi Upsilon fraternity brothers and rushees, sustaining a fraternity tradition of Honey's-going after a retreat; a booth of self-labeled "rednecks" who had just come from shooting pool; another table of Duke students who sit mesmerized as one of their friends balances salt and pepper shakers on a knife on a packet of cream on a sugar jar; and a police officer sipping coffee at the counter with Charles O'Briant, a 47-year-old truck driver and Durham native who has been a regular for the last 30 years of Honey's 33-year existence. And while convenience has been a factor in his consistency, O'Briant attributes his loyalty to the people.

"A lot of good folks come here, just regular old working folks like I am," says O'Briant, who usually stops by in the mornings for coffee before work but also spends a few hours just hanging out on weekend nights. "We got a lot in common, made a lot of good friends here over the years. It's a real family-style restaurant."

Across the room in the non-smoking section, Trinity junior Yoichi Yamamoto points to Waffle House's filth as a reason he likes the establishment. "It's so scummy there. In high school that was the kind of place I would go to hang out." However, Yamamoto is quickly cut off by a siege of dissenting Psi U brothers who stand by Honey's as the diner of champions.

"Everyone comes to Honey's-everyone," exclaims Trinity sophomore Greg Rauch. "I've met professors here, I've met Grant Hill here. He came over and talked to us. He was cool." His friend Jeff Hancock, engineering '93, adds, "I once saw Billy McCaffrey at Waffle House. He's a traitor."

The members of Psi U are living proof that the more often one visits a seemingly calm and normal establishment like Honey's, the more likely one is to have a cache of off-the-wall Honey's stories to relate. At each table of fraternity brothers, people are eager to recall the Zing! incident. Their composite accounts of the event read something like this:

Zing! used to be on every table at Honey's, and it was assumed that Zing!, a mysterious condiment that resembles salsa, went with every type of food. One night, Psi U member and Trinity junior Jason Plurad was dared by some brothers to chug an entire bottle of Zing! Soon after the challenge was put forth, a stack of bills accumulated on the table in front of Plurad, so he decided to go for the money. As he tried to down the Zing!, the manager, who walked up behind him, says, "That's enough of that," and confiscated the bottle. Legend has it, perhaps incorrectly, that Zing! has never been seen on a table at Honey's since.

"The worst thing of all is that they wouldn't let him have the joy of finishing the bottle," says Trinity junior Marcus Padow. Bottles of Zing! are still available for retail purchase at the cashier counter, however. As Fritz describes it, Zing! is a hot sauce made in Hillsborough, suitable for eggs, meat, french fries, and the like, but she admits that it is not a best-seller. (Maybe this is because, according to Plurad, the sauce is "a bit chunky, and it doesn't go down too easily.")

While the many tables of high school and college students are loud and boisterous, a booth of four men and one woman, dressed in baseball caps, jeans and nylon jackets, is distinctly subdued as they pick at the remnants of their burgers and fries.

"People know better than to approach people like us," says Durham resident Leo "Big Daddy" Branch, gesturing to his friend Dick Pratt's tattooed forearm. "The only people we really talk to are the waitresses." Branch's male friends are so fond of the Honey's staff, in fact, that they have been known to ask out or date waitresses. Daniel Thomas, a former local who is visiting Branch and Pratt from Orange Park, California, points to the blond waitress he went out with one night. "It didn't last more than one date because then I had to go back to California," Thomas says.

Pratt is more partial to female customers than workers. "I scope out women while I'm here and once I approached a woman at another table," he says, although he won't reveal if his request for a date was accepted. A pack of Kool cigarettes sits next to his emptied plate, although he is in the non-smoking section. "They didn't have any room for us in smoking," he says, "but I'll just wait. I'm not going to light up in the non-smoking section."

These men seem to pride themselves on the reserve they exhibit amongst boisterous groups of high school and college students. "We just come once or twice a week to eat and hang out after bowling or pool," Branch says. "A lot of people come after hitting the bars, but we try to get out before that." These people are equally patient when it comes to sub-par service. On Saturday night, for example, Honey's cream supply had enigmatically soured and curdled, an aberration that became the topic of conversation at a number of tables. But the five "rednecks" crammed into a booth decide that raising a stink isn't worth the effort, and so white flecks float atop their coffee. "We're very friendly people and the waitresses are all OK, so we don't try to bother them," Branch explains.

Indeed, if there is one trait that bonds Honey's patrons from all walks of life, it is the understanding that one accepts the restaurant's shortcomings. Chief among these pitfalls is the knowledge to steer clear of certain areas of the menu.

"If you go to Honey's, you're going to get a hamburger or you're going to get breakfast," Padow declares. Fritz concedes that the Honey Burger and the King Bee, along with myriad breakfast items such as pancakes and eggs, are the restaurant's most popular dishes. And sometimes you'll get a little more than you bargained for, as did Trinity junior Heather Zorn when her scrambled eggs arrived.

"Only at Honey's can you get scrambled eggs laced with the cinnamon from someone else's French toast," Zorn asserts proudly as she shows off her food. Not only does she plan to eat it, but she also calls the strange culinary combination "a stroke of brilliance." While quirks like cinnamon-flavored eggs can result in surprisingly delightful results, other food items should be approached with utter caution, warned Trinity sophomore Matt Ferraguto. "I once wanted to get the meat lasagna just to see what it was like, but the waitress wouldn't let me order it."

While customers can name a waitress or two known for curtness, the waitstaff is overwhelmingly regarded as friendly and caring. Just about every Honey's regular can name you their favorite waiter or waitress and tell you something personal about them. Ferraguto points to a woman in a red Honey's T-shirt and visor and says, "She just put a new carpet in her trailer. It cost $300.'

Obviously, the staff at Honey's isn't shy about serving up a little conversation while dishing out omelettes. Case in point: Susan Chisenhall, 23. She's been working the graveyard shift about four nights a week for the past six months; such a schedule allows her to spend the days taking care of her son Christopher, who's in kindergarten. She wears a heart-shaped locket around her neck which currently holds no photos, but she plans to put a picture of her son inside as soon as she can get one reduced.

Chishenhall says working at Honey's is "mostly the same after a while," although she readily admits the weekends can grow a bit hectic. One of the things she likes best about working at the restaurant is that "the customers are pretty much the same," sticking to eggs, bacon, sausage and the like. But then again, she seems to like a constant clientele that keeps things familiar, especially on nights when the pace can get a bit frantic.

Should the weekend crowd get a little too rowdy, there's almost always an off-duty police officer stationed at the counter. While he may appear simply to be on a coffee break, he is actually paid by Honey's to keep an eye out for trouble. Last Saturday, the presiding cop was Officer B.W. Ray, who's been with the Durham Police for 14 years, before which he served four years as a Durham County Sheriff's Deputy.

"Most of the time, just the sight of the officer deters the troublemakers," Ray says. "They come in the door and they see us sitting here... if we sit back around the corner it wouldn't have any effect."

Ray, whose typical fare consists of coffee and a hamburger, says he usually breaks up heated arguments that could end in fisticuffs, instead of actual fights. "If you've got two guys back there [in the main dining area] who would potentially have a fight with each other, they know a police officer's sitting up here, they'd be a little more inclined not to fight or to take it away from here and go outside."

Like most other patrons, Ray says what keeps him coming back is the people. "I like the employees here and most of the people who come in here are pretty good, decent people. You've got some regular customers that come in here-pretty nice people." And Ray should know a thing or two about the clientele; he can remember years back when Honey's was a drive-in restaurant.

Thirty-year regular O'Briant fondly recalls those days. In 1966-the year O'Briant graduated from Durham High School-customers had the options of table service or ordering meals via speakerphone from their cars. "You could pull up out here and they had the outside speakerphones where you'd order from. You'd order on the speakerphone and somebody'd come from the inside and bring your food out to you, [and] sit out there in your car and eat."

These are the kinds of memories and traditions that seem so unique to Honey's. Sure, it may be odd that people could become this attached to what some might consider a glorified truck stop, but that's just the point: If you don't see the ambiance, you don't go.

Trinity junior Perry Strickland, sporting a tuxedo and fresh from a Chi Omega semiformal with three friends, sees it. He studies at Honey's about five nights a week, and when asked to explain why he keeps coming back, had only this to say: "It's like trying to explain why you love your mother."