Fried flounder, lemon meringue pie and 80 years of family history at this North Carolina restaurant
A time-worn menu from 1946 still hangs inside Riverview Café , a wooden building just feet from the New River in Sneads Ferry, North Carolina. Jimmy Lewis opened the place that year as an oyster bar, and four generations of his family have run it since. Johnny Terwilliger, Lewis’s grandson, washed dishes here as a sixth grader, then bought the business from his uncle in 1987 at age 23. The kitchen still fries shrimp and Stump Sound oysters, and the pies trace back to the original baker Janice Terwilliger, Lewis’s daughter and the namesake of the family's shrimp trawler, Miss Janice. The food itself, which is all prepared from scratch, is a draw, but so is the restaurant’s history. Some diners return to revisit memories of childhood special-occasion dinners, and waitresses have been known to remember a regular's usual order. Ask for a back table by the window for river views looking toward Camp Lejeune. Start with crowd favorites like flounder (fried or broiled), collard greens and hush puppies, then finish with a slice of lemon, Key lime or coconut cream pie. Whatever you order, it's going to be fresh. "I have been cleaning fish that were literally swimming an
