http://greencoastrecycling.com

As the tag line says, this business is “Recycling done right”. I can’t name how many pro-bono cleanup projects the company has been involved in — fund raisers, beach cleans, Masonboro, music events — THOUSANDS of hours of good will for the Cape Fear area.

Since moving to Greenfield Lake, we have longed for a good neighborhood bar.  Let’s face it, there are a lot of bars in and around Wilmington.  Since downtown is less than 4 miles away from my front door, any of the bars in downtown could theoretically be a contender.  But then I realized that the application of the word “good” was a qualitative one which raised an important question.  Aside from distance, how do you judge the quality of a neighborhood bar?  I got a call from a friend recently suggesting that I join him at the opening of a great new watering hole near the Lake.  I was indisposed that evening so I took a rain check.  I take recommendations very seriously, so a week later my wife, Tanya and I stopped by.  It was there that my question was answered.

120 Greenfield Street is an address with a history of community service.  For many years it served the residents of Nesbitt Court and beyond as a neighborhood market.  Veteran bar owner Dustin Ricks seized the opportunity to purchase the property in July 2009 and after working 14 hour days for 6 months reintroduced the understated brick building to the residents of Wilmington as Satellite Bar & Lounge, Wilmington’s latest best kept secret…until now.

The décor is hip and sophisticated but not pretentious, vintage but not junky; warm and inviting.  The nuances of the owner’s artistry shine in the chic use of automobile parts as bar stools and door handles.   A grab bar from a city bus extends along the front of the bar providing a foot rest.  The interior was completely gutted revealing massive timber trusses above and a surplus of wood products which were reused in large neo-medieval barn doors and bar surfaces.  A single bank of draft levers that emerge from off-the shelf pipe fittings are reflected in the heavily epoxied wood countertops along with the subdued light from exposed incandescent pendent lights.  The scene is somewhere between an early industrial warehouse and an Alpine ski lodge.  Comfortable reclaimed furniture provides an ample setting for lucid fellowship and best of all, there are no TVs!

A copious selection of 80 varieties of beer combine with a fully stocked bar to quench thirst on any budget.  Sunday afternoons are punctuated with live acoustic bluegrass and a build-your-own Bloody Mary bar.  Future improvements will include an outdoor movie garden and more live entertainment.

Satellite is truly a grass roots endeavor germinating from the salient values of comfort, fellowship, sophistication, and variety.  Most importantly, where gratitude is often lost in the vacuum of mediocre expectations, the owners have clearly stated its importance with a brightly lit yellow sign above the beer coolers; simply stated, “Thank you for shopping with us.”  Ricks sees this project as an asset to the community and is optimistic that it will be in operation well into the foreseeable future, setting a new precedent of quality for the ideal neighborhood bar.

I love cupcakes. Brownies are my favorite, but cupcakes are a close second. For a long time, to get a cupcake in Wilmington you had to head to one of the chain grocery stores or know someone with a killer recipe, and even then you were limited to the ordinary flavors: chocolate, vanilla, and the occasional variation on the theme. It seemed Wilmingtonians placed little value on these miniature confections, which is why I was so surprised when Coastal Cupcakes came along. Operating out of their tiny storefront on Princess Street, they introduced us to interesting flavors (their red velvet is awesome and the coconut is always tasty) and people responded. Wilmington’s cupcake culture was born.

Flash forward a couple of months and Coastal Cupcakes has opened another location at Wrightsville Beach.

Flash forward a couple more months and another cupcakery, Hot Pink Cake Stand, has opened at 114 Front Street.

Has Wilmington followed Charlotte, Charleston and Savannah and broken out of the mold of the mundane, moldering southern city? Are we finally trying to do things in a new and interesting way here? Does the fact that we have not one, not two, but three cupcake confectionaries signal that we are moving in a positive direction economically?

I think it does.

I’ve thought for a long time that one of the things Wilmington was missing, one of the things it needed to push it into a new era of growth and prosperity, was the entrepreneurial spirit you find so often in a city like New York or San Francisco.

Which brings me to Jody Carmichael, owner, baker and head decorator at Hot Pink Cake Stand. She’s got the spirit, and everything from the name of her bakery to her offerings (vegan cupcakes, people) to the chic, New York feel of the interior of Hot Pink Cake Stand shows it.

It’s hip in there. Vibrant colors everywhere—the requisite pink, a beautiful blue tile countertop, colored teapots gleaming on the shelving along one wall, and turquoise table tops at the front. She plays great music via Pandora, her stations seeded by whatever inspires her that day—Bob Marley one day, French Noir soundtracks the next. A cluster of tables by the front door provides a place for a more intimate conversation, or belly up to the bar that runs the length of the open kitchen. From your place at the bar, watch Jody and her crew mix, bake and decorate while they watch you eat. Because of the open kitchen, you can have a conversation with the kitchen staff. What’s this song? What’s your favorite flavor? Vegan cupcakes? The whole place is inviting and comfortable, like a friend’s kitchen, but bigger.

One of the things I think she’s doing right is listening to the community. There’s a growing population of vegans and vegetarians in Wilmington, and they’re often forgotten at our eateries. There is also a growing contingent of people interested in eating local foods and supporting local businesses rather than the chains. Because Jody listens, Hot Pink Cake Stands offers vegan cupcakes. By her own admission, it took a while to fine-tune the recipes, but after a few cupcake explosions, she’s now offering a vegan cupcake du jour (lime and coconut, chocolate coconut with mocha frosting and pistachio and rosewater, to name a few).

She also serves Old Wilmington Tea Company’s tea and coffee from Carolina Coffee. Both of these businesses are local and their products are fresh, better than what you’ll get off the shelf at Harris Teeter and for sale in Hot Pink Cake Stand.

Hot Pink Cake Stand isn’t just about the cupcakes though. Jody’s taking orders for celebration cakes she decorates with fondant, which she calls “fun, like Play-dough, but tastier.”

And she’s looking to the future with an innovative eye. She’s looking into the requirements to hold wine tastings, where she would pair her own cakes, cupcakes and muffins with wine, making for a truly decadent evening.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, stop by and sit at the bar for a while, see if I’m right about the entrepreneurial spirit there, try a cupcake and some tea, talk to Jody. Hot Pink Cake Stand is having their grand opening celebration on Saturday, January 30; maybe I’ll see you there, I’ll be the one with the beard and the cupcake.

The place does booming business and yet all the employees are fast, helpful, and offer service with a smile.

There are a handful of eateries in Wilmington that I’m proud to take visiting family and friends to, and this is one of them.

Since moving into our place near Legion park on Carolina Beach Rd, we’ve saved a ton of money and had (quite frankly) much better vegetables on our table since discovering Country Fresh Produce. They carry more varieties than most grocery stores, and the prices are phenomenal. That being said, I have had a couple folks say something like: “It looks kind of dusty in there…” or the like. Please, it’s what a produce shop should be: colorful, relatively inexpensive, and well stocked with fresh veggies. Oh yeah, and it smells like veggies. They also carry eggs, some pork products (all from NC), superb boiled peanuts, and more than I have time to outline here. Go there (map). (910) 763-6122

Sunday 10AM, 90 degrees. It’s worth it.

Britts Donuts, Since 1939

The owners seem like great people, and spread it around by hiring, in my experience, serious and extremely hard-working young washers, by writing irreverent and funny and sometimes useful information on their little lightbox, which faces along CBR, by offering nice extras but also lots of no-nonsense service, by remembering you or seeming to, taking care of you while you wait. Good stuff.

In this series, the Grove pays tribute to the Cape Fear region’s more unique and particularly notable watering holes. These are the places most locals cherish above all others and pray that tourists never discover. They are the stuff of frothy legend. They are small and dirty. There are generally at least two drunks on rotation who’ve seen too many moons and just as many years either at sea or behind a hammer—regulars, battered but not broken, damn beautiful people. No chair or barstool is alike, and cigarette smoke flows—regrettably for some—as freely as the alcohol. There are centuries-old ballast stones…somewhere. And, most importantly, unlike many restaurant bars on the planet these places celebrate their stature by operating in complete autonomy. Cheers to that…

The Fat Pelican (map)

We start at the Fat Pelican in Carolina Beach. Approaching the Pelican’s teal façade and wooden door from the road, you’d think you were walking into any other bar. Nothing special—a couple of neon signs, mock-parking signs with the catchy little sayings like, “Hippies Use Side Entrance.”

What hits you first is the odor of dust and old wood, smoothed and sanded down by resting hands, elbows, and 21 years of the bottom of a beer bottle. There is smoke. There is always smoke. The bar is on the left after the entrance, and when I came in, there stood a charming older lady with silver hair eating a single-serve bag of pretzels. Surrounded by old beer bottles, scattered trinkets, and pictures of everything from fishing trips to family portraits and drunk folk (young and old alike) wearing funny hats and memorable outfits, she’s watching golf. A young girl leaving as I come in says, “Catch ya later Suzie Q.” Perfect.

I ask Suzie a few questions about the bar—how old it is, who opened it, etc—and she rapidly points me to a patron playing arcade-bowling in a small alcove between the bar and the sitting room. Though the Pelican looks like its been there forever, he tells me the place opened in 1988, and that it started off as a small beer and wine shop that sold minor food items like baguettes and other sandwiches. He also tells me that the original bar was much smaller. It’s easy to identify where it was because it’s the only part of the overall place that has solid flooring. Everything outside the original space, which is more like a tunnel than a room, boasts mostly earth, scattered bricks, wooden boards, and badly worn carpets as ground cover.

I ask the guy a few more questions and in true bar-style he says he’ll talk with me more after his bowling game is over, so I make my way back the true heart of the Fat Pelican: the tractor-trailer beer fridge.

Now, the story I’ve been told by some locals is that the trailer had been on the property long before the bar ever existed—stranded by some poor trucker who got it stuck in the sand and decided to leave it—and that, miraculously, somebody started serving beers out of it like some magic fridge you see in football commercials.  The truth, according to another source, is much more logical: the original owner backed a refrigerated tractor trailer on to the lot for the very purpose it serves and the Pelican is built around it.

End to end and floor to ceiling, the trailer is slam packed to the gills with six packs. Many are fine micro brews in multiple fermentations and flavors you might only find from a couple of states—Cottonwood, Belle’s, Dogfish and the like. There are also your standard mega brands and international beers—Miller, Budweiser, Dos Equis, Stella, and so on. After a few minutes I decide on an Oberon, a wheat beer from Belle’s Brewery in Michigan with the slightest tint of orange in the finish.

Outside, the colorful exterior and patio is filled with dozens of old graying plastic lawn chairs both weatherworn and cracking from the weight of too many beers, I hardly expected to find an abandoned game of chess, four or five moves deep—just one more of a thousand glorious surprises that hang out in back of the Fat Pelican. Half of an old boat acts as a late night bar. Old golf clubs line and help hold together the fence protecting the place from the street and alley that flank it. There are scattered umbrellas, an old furnace standing by itself, and at least a dozen other icons of what it means to be at the beach: paddles, a water-logged surf board or two, wooden pelicans, wooden tuna, and flags of all kinds.

When I finally sit down to soak it all in, a chubby black lab walks slowly out the side door and, grinning, lays down right beside me in the sun for a few minutes. His name is That-a-Boy… “Boy” for short. He’s happily a bar-dog, and sits there briefly before he begins to scratch and lick. After a moment or two of typing, I hear him reach out with a calm, Sunday afternoon yawn, and that’s it. He gets up, shakes, walks back to the door. And then, he stops to look at me. No sooner do I get up to open the door for him than Boy mouths a rope hanging from the door handle, gives it a tug, swings the door open all by himself, and trots back inside. What that means to me is simple: Boy says, “Come on back inside… you need another beer.”

Before leaving, I stop at the bar and pay Suzie $4 for my “premium.” A pretty standard price… hefty. Though somehow, buying a beer at the Fat Pelican is like buying an experience. And though this can only come out somewhat redundant, the truth is simple: you don’t go to the Fat Pelican just to drink a beer… you go to drink a beer at the Fat Pelican.

We went to the grocery store in nearby Siler City to get basic supplies and returned to picnic and have a bottle of beer on the front porch as farm-day-trippers were filing out — to watch the sun go down over the hen house, watch the peacocks strut around the front yard. There were just a couple other over-nighters — a nice family from Charlotte who keep bees and hike the Appalachian Trail a lot — our farmer-hosts Brit and Kathryn, and us. It couldn’t have been better.

We stayed in the back bedroom suite of the Inn, which gives out on a fireplace and the little living area of the original log cabin structure there since 1800. You can also stay in additions upstairs or (I think) in one of the other buildings on the farm. Things remain mysterious there in a good way, because you’re sort of left to fend for yourself, to poke around, serve yourself breakfast, explore.