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| - The night before we left Charlotte, we decided to go to Mert's downtown, but when we got there, we discovered that once again we had managed to visit North Carolina during a basketball tournament. Parking was pretty hard to find, traffic was heavy and we decided we would not get into the restaurant, so we used our fall-back, Leroy fox, based on reviews for the fried chicken.
Ms T had chicken fried chicken, which is a breast that is fried and served with pepper gravy. She substituted mac 'n cheese and grits for her sides. I had fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and green bean casserole.
The fried chicken is good, a little non-traditional with a fairly heavy coating. The coating is however, crisp and well salted. The chicken was moist and hot. There was plenty of black pepper and a fair amount of sage in the coating making it somewhat unique. I did like it.
Ms T's chicken fried chicken was Ok, nothing really special. We both found the pepper gravy to be too pasty thick, like it is only thickened with flour and not cooked down cream, but it also had good black pepper flavor, which I like. The mashed potatoes were certainly home made.
The cheese grits had good corn flavor and were not overcheesed. The mac 'n cheese was cavetappi with a smooth white cheese sauce. It was a creamy style, not baked or if baked, not in a small pan that allows it to setup. The green bean casserole was the only miss for me. The green beans had a lot of strings in them so Leroy needs to find a better supplier of green beans. I don't know where you would even go to find green beans that are stringy these days. The casserole was over thickened a little.
All in all this is pretty good food. I would say strong three stars, not quite four, but it wouldn't take much to fix a few details and be there.
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