a place · NCKeaton's Barbecue

A chicken house in the crossroads community of Cleveland, Rowan County, west of Salisbury, where since 1953 the chicken has been fried (or baked) and then dipped whole in a hot vinegar-and-tomato barbecue sauce — 'dipped chicken', a North Carolina barbecue of its own kind. Burette Walker 'B.W.' Keaton, a Black railroad man laid off in 1953, started it in a shack and turned down moves to Statesville and Charlotte; he died in 1989, and his niece Kathleen Murray has run it since 1991. Half or whole, white or dark, hot or mild, with a slice of white bread and a hot vinegar slaw.

B.W. Keaton lost his railroad job in 1953 and started selling chicken from a shack on Cool Springs Road. The lore, as Our State tells it: the Schlitz Brewing Company offered $10,000 for the sauce recipe and Keaton countered at $100,000; a shotgun lived under the checkout counter; no weapons, no swearing, no photographing the staff; no utensils, because he did not believe in them. He refused offers to relocate to bigger towns. David Cecelski wrote it up for the North Carolina Folklife Institute in December 2010 as a place found on the back roads between Statesville and Winston-Salem, the chicken fried or baked and then dipped in the hot vinegar-tomato sauce, with a slaw of cabbage in a spicy red dressing of vinegar, tomato, cayenne and celery seed. Keaton died in 1989; Kathleen Murray, his niece, took over in 1991. Cash orders want exact change in small bills; cards are taken over five dollars.

Chicken is fried or baked, then dipped in the hot vinegar-tomato sauce and served with a white-bread bun — half or whole bird, white or dark meat, hot or mild sauce. The sides are secondary; the slaw is cabbage in a spicy red vinegar-tomato dressing. Plastic forks are now available; the founder did not provide them.

Open Tuesday 11 to 2 and Wednesday to Saturday 11 to 2 and 5 to 8, closed Sunday and Monday, at 17365 Cool Springs Road, Cleveland — hours as the restaurant's site listing and Our State give them, with the warning that they vary. Cash preferred.