Landmark Cypress Grill — a herring shack that was the last of its kind — burns down

For more than 70 years, a rickety herring shack stood on the banks of the Roanoke River, where diners in-the-know flocked for fish fried to death and eaten bone and all.

Cypress Grill only opened from January to April, when the herring moved up-river to spawn, but the tin-roof cabin attracted diners from 100 miles away — drawn by the seasonal tug of oily, pungent swimmers served by the dozen.

“It takes a certain alchemy to turn an overgrown, bony sardine into a regional icon,” Raleigh outdoors writer T. Edward Nickens wrote for Smithsonian magazine in 2000. “Some folks request fish barely fried — this is called “sunny-side up” — so that the skin can be scraped away to reveal the flesh beneath. But far more ask for their order “cremated,” cooked so long that the fish turns a deep chestnut brown, and hardens up so you can eat one like a cob of corn.”

Cypress Grill burned down late Sunday night. The fire’s cause is under investigation, but its loss stung fried fish fans across the state, many of whom made at least a yearly pilgrimage. By Nickens’ reckoning, the grill ranks among the last of its kind.

“Cypress Grill is just as true to that region, and that river, as anything we’ll ever see,” he said Monday. “It rose to prominence on the herring runs, which are a thing of the passenger pigeon era, almost.”

Situated on a steep rise in tiny Jamesville, pop. 464, the Cypress Grill building dates to 1936. It burned down 10 years later and was quickly rebuilt, becoming a landmark in the wild swamps of the Roanoke region, home to coffee-colored waterways with names such as Devil’s Gut. Despite its obscure locale, it made the pages of The New York Times.

In its golden era, the grill and Jamesville by extension lived off the herring’s annual arrival. Boats would drift around the Roanoke, pulling huge nets that caught shiny fish by hundreds of thousands. Around town, nearly everyone kept a barrel of corned herring to get them through lean winters.

In days when herring practically leaped out of the water, Cypress Grill’s longtime proprietors Leslie and Sally Gardner could buy their inventory just by walking outside their front door. But years of overfishing, pollution and dammed rivers slimmed the herring harvest to a fraction of its glory-day totals, and in recent years, it came from waters as distant as South Carolina.

But enthusiasm never slacked off.

In Raleigh, insurance agent John Grimes recalled growing up around nearby Williamston and Washington, where his father would pick him up from school with fishing rods in the car. On those days, he knew he’d spent the afternoon chasing rockfish but have dinner at Cypress Grill regardless of their catch.

Rather than the herring, he favored rockfish roe, which he still calls “poor man’s caviar,” and pecan pie for dessert.

“When I think about Cypress Grill, love is what I think,” Grimes said. “For those of us who grew up in Eastern North Carolina, our lifeblood is the Roanoke, the Tar, the Pamlico. It’s our soul. The smell of the Roanoke River mixing with the smell of fried herring, that smell will forever be in my brain.”

It was not clear Monday whether the Gardners will rebuild or reopen.

“We wanted to take a moment to ask that you all keep our family in your prayers as we deal with the tragic loss,” said the grill’s Facebook post.

This story was originally published July 23, 2018 at 9:01 AM.