Return To The Filling Station

By Beth Yarbrough

Originally published as “Fine Food At The Filling Station” several years ago, a repost of this one always brings smiles.

If I did not know for a fact that Octavia Spencer won an Oscar for her performance as Minny Jackson in the movie The Help, I would swear up one side and down the other that I had found Minny herself, frying chicken in the back room of a filling station in Estill, South Carolina.

Now hold that thought.

It happened years ago on one of our runs between our house in North Carolina and my sister’s house on St. Simons Island in Georgia. Interstates notwithstanding, we traditionally roll due south, straight down Highway 321, until we hit I-95 above Savannah. It’s a beautiful short hop from there down to Georgia’s Golden Isles.

Early one Sunday afternoon, we pulled into the Marathon station in Estill to top off with gas. I was preoccupied in the car with my phone while Joe (the Hubs) pumped the gas and then went inside. I did, however, glance up just in time to see him come out the front door gnawing on a piece of fried chicken.

I’ll pause here to explain that Southerners are not so picky about where they eat, but they will fight you in the middle of the street over what they eat and how it is prepared. We will sit on a tree-stump by a riverbank and happily devour catfish fried just after it has been caught, dangle our legs off the edge of a high back porch with a chilled wedge of watermelon in our hands, and even shuck an ear of Silver Queen corn right off the stalk in the middle of a cornfield in order to enjoy that sweetness at its peak.

So it came as no surprise to me that Joe was emerging from the filling station with a piece of fried chicken. What happened next, however, did turn my head.

He was settling into the front passenger seat and I was about to pull out onto the highway when he said, “Wait just a minute. Pull over into this parking slot. I’m going back in. This is the best fried chicken I’ve ever put in my mouth.”

I can tell this now because his long-departed mama would have taken strong issue with that statement - and rightfully so. She was the fried chicken queen and we all knew it and she knew that we knew it. As her daughter-in-law (and a halfway decent cook in my own right), I wouldn’t have dared challenge her.

And yet here we were, and her own son was saying it out loud. He had found the holy grail of fried chicken. I found out five minutes later that he wasn’t just blowing smoke. After returning to the car with a big box full of drumsticks, thighs, and breasts, I was testifying right alongside him.

We decided it must have been fried in lard or Crisco, and we still don’t know to this day what they do with the coating. Completely absent of anything discernible such as extra peppers for heat, or herbs and spices - it simply stands on its own merit - a perfectly salted, exquisitely proportioned layer of the best, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth crunch that God ever put on this earth. And that is before you even get to the juicy chicken underneath.

Estill, SC is a small town. Opportunities for restaurant food or fast food are scarce. That may explain why there is a place called Bobop’s Chicken across the back portion of the Marathon station. And the quality of that chicken explains why the parking lot is always full. There is actually a little buffet menu featuring home cooked side dishes to go with the main attraction - but the chicken will never be upstaged.

We were so impressed that we got out of the car and marched ourselves back inside. We needed to shake the hand of the cook. I briefly even thought about a full-court bow, but decided that the man behind the cash register might look askance.

She was large and in charge at the fryer, and her smile reached clear down to the Georgia line. I’m pretty sure they could hear her laugh down that way as well. After paying our respects and telling her a dozen different ways how good her fried chicken was, we promised we would stop back by on our return trip.

That was ten years ago, and we are still stopping by. The first few pieces are eaten hot, right there in the parking lot of the filling station. The remainder is carefully wrapped and sealed and taken with us for the next meal. And out of a compulsion that we can’t quite explain, one or the both of us, during the first few hot bites, invariably says, “This is the best fried chicken I have ever put in my mouth.”

If you are a food critic, or a food influencer on social media, or a chef looking to learn more than what you already know, or a cookbook author, or magazine contributor, or simply a traveler in search of the very best - here is a tip. You would do well to get yourself onto Highway 321 in South Carolina and roll toward Estill. Once inside, understand that you are in the presence of greatness. Just order the chicken, get on back outside, and try not to cry while you’re eating.

You can thank me later.

Photos by Beth Yarbrough.