Fried Green Tomatoes

Faithfully preserved at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

While I truly love “Fried Green Tomatoes,” starring Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates, I have never taken a trip to visit Juliette, Georgia, where the movie was filmed in 1991. Although the film was released 25 years ago, based on the bestseller by Alabama-native Fannie Flagg, its timelessness endures, attracting visitors from everywhere.

The film tells the story of a housewife who, unhappy with her life, befriends an elderly lady in a nursing home and is enthralled by the tales she tells of people she used to know.

I was fortunate to once live near the Whistle Stop Cafe in Thomasville, NC. At the time, my dad lived in a retirement home, and I often stopped in at the Whistle Stop to pick up a pie to bring him. Looking around, I always imagined the restaurant in the movie must be very similar. It’s a tiny cracker-box of a building at the corner of West Main and Lexington Avenue, hardly a stone’s throw from the railroad track. Tom Lawson purchased the place in 1994. “I started off working with a little country-boy restaurant, back when hot dogs were a nickel and hamburgers were a dime,” he says, chuckling at the low prices.

At the Whistle Stop, the red light became one of his best friends - the bane of all drivers in a hurry. Before anyone had heard of him or sampled his scrumptious desserts, he relied on the traffic signal to stop motorists long enough for him to run out into the road and give them a sample of a pie. “And you’d be surprised - I’ve got folks still coming today who remember that,” laughed Lawson. I’ll never forget him and his comforting, delicious pies.

Rich with character and passion, the Whistle Stop story in the movie is also about Southern cookin’. There’s more to know about Fried Green Tomatoes than you might think. I scour the farms in my area looking for green zebras, German Johnson, and sweet heirlooms. I can’t get enough of them. But every time I tried to use my recipe for Fried Green Tomatoes, I ended up with a big mess. I was about to give up when I met a lady out at Demsey Farms.

Her name was Matty. “To make really good ones, you must use firm and just slightly tart ripened red tomatoes, not ripe green tomatoes, like green zebra tomatoes, which develop a golden strip when ripe, or heirloom varieties. These are all too soft to hold their coating or shape when fried. Toss them into your salads or use them for sandwiches. But if you want to make perfect, delicious Fried Green Tomatoes, they won’t work.” The problem was solved and I’ve been frying them up ever since - with success.

If you don’t have time right now to make your own fried green tomatoes, hang on to the recipes. The tomato growing season will not get underway in the Lowcountry until early June.

Bacon grease is like liquid gold in this time-honored recipe. Use these for appetizers, a light entree, a side dish, in sandwiches, or sliced and served on top of salads.

This recipe calls for a Creamy Bacon Dipping Sauce, simply Southern.

Tides of Tradition is our cookbook section to thank our paid subscribers and all Founding Members. All are welcome to join. Pull up a front porch rocker and sit a spell as we take a deep dive into this Southern goodness. Come on in and make yourself at home.

They are served with pride in some of the most notable restaurants in the South.

At Chef and the Farmer in Kinston, North Carolina, Vivian Howard likes to serve fried green tomatoes with fruit preserves and creamy cheeses like a goat cheese puree or benne-fried green tomatoes with goat cheese coulis and blueberry chutney, which incorporates a Lowcountry staple. Brought from Africa, benne - known almost everywhere else as sesame - was a staple in the garden plots on rice plantations, and its seeds were used to enhance the flavor of everything from rice to cakes.

In Charleston, you can eat them at brunch, stacked atop crab cakes on eggs Benedict at High Cotton.

Recipes include: Classic Fried Green Tomatoes with Remoulade, and

Fried Green Tomatoes with Creamy Bacon Dipping Sauce.