Beating uniformity with a corn stick

My uncle, who ran his own Heating & A/C service, was the first to bring a bag of Parker’s corn sticks home. For my Muslim family, corn sticks were the safest food at a barbecue place besides slaw and boiled potatoes—the green beans had pork in them and we were cautious of cross-contamination. Even B’s barbecue chicken was off-limits when I was growing up.

Beyond the taste, I think we got into corn sticks to participate in Southern food culture, since the ability to talk about Parker’s with conviction greased one’s social acceptance. We never had the ‘cue at Parker’s, but their corn sticks became as ubiquitous as homemade rotis at our family dinners.  

Corn sticks are basically hot water cornbread–just cornmeal, fat, and boiling water–with a teeny bit of baking soda for rise, baked into 8-inch sticks and then deep fried for maximum crispness, the right amount of craggly-ness, and a faintly moist interior. They taste of pure white cornmeal and the oil they’re fried in. It’s the perfect antidote to soft barbecue; the ideal complement to slaw or vinegar-based sauce. It is not a long or finger-shaped hushpuppy: that’s just a big hushpuppy. It’s also not a cornbread stick, which is typical cornbread (made with eggs and baking soda) baked in molds shaped like small ears of corn. With those, the soft-to-crisp ratio is roughly 9-to-1. 

Cornbread sticks, not corn sticks

Corn sticks are about 80 percent crisp, 10 percent  less crisp and 10 percent medium soft. You can eat them plain, dip them in ranch, or soak them in potlikker; last Thanksgiving, I sliced them up and used them in a fattoush in place of pita bread. They take on other flavors easily, but their core of cornmeal always shines through. 

I only recently realized corn sticks aren’t a big deal outside of Eastern North Carolina. And as someone who, upon driving into Greenville, instinctively stops by Parker’s to pick up a couple dozen corn sticks, it makes me both proud and sad that they aren’t ubiquitous. Why are they only found in one section of one state? Who there still makes or sells them? And how will I live if they’re no longer around? I decided to map a Corn Stick Circuit to explore just that.

Before we set out on the Corn Stick Circuit, here’s some background information. You won’t learn much by Googling the item. I uncovered just two major sources.  A Reddit thread is a great starting point for learning why they’re loved and where to find them. The other is a blog post written by John Tanner, the Virginia/DC Metro Regional Smoke Detector for TrueCue.org, an organization committed to sniffing out real wood-cooked barbecue. TrueCue was co-founded in 2013 by none other than John Shelton Reed, a Southern historian and barbecue oracle, and Dan Levine, better known as The BBQ Jew. Tanner’s posts on making corn sticks make for great reading on the finer points of hot water cornbread. I did find a TikTok video about Parker’s corn sticks too. 

Corn sticks are mostly found and discussed in the real world. These days, probably one-third of barbecue places in Wilson, Edgecombe, Martin, Pitt, Greene, and Wayne counties serve them. The rest serve hushpuppies. All the big operations in the area serve corn sticks, namely Parker’s in Wilson, Parker’s in Greenville (different ownership), Adam’s Roadside in Goldsboro, Shaw’s in Williamston, and Marty’s in Wilson (owner Lawrence Ellis is the son of Wilson barbecue legend Bill Ellis, also a believer in corn sticks).

The corn stick circuit mapped out

You can certainly find them in other counties and towns. Carolina BBQ in Garner, near Raleigh, is the farthest west I found them; its inclusion in the Corn Stick Circuit is due to it being the closest to RDU airport. I hear you can eat them in Wilmington, Hertford, Fayetteville, Kinston, and New Bern too. 

After hours of searching through pictures of barbecue places on Google Maps and Yelp, I decided to visit the following locations: Carolina BBQ in Garner; Marty’s BBQ and Parker’s Barbecue in Wilson; Adam’s Roadside in Goldsboro; Bum’s in Ayden; Parker’s Barbecue and B’s Barbecue in Greenville; Shaw’s Barbecue House in Williamston; and Gardner’s Barbecue in Rocky Mount.

My college-aged nephew, who grew up in Baltimore and California, joined me for the tour. He was eager to explore but I could tell he was equally excited that I rented a white Ram 1500 pickup truck. I rambled on and on about our family memories along the main roads and back roads, like the time my brothers and I made it from Wilson to Greenville with the “empty” gas light on the entire way. 

When we pulled up at B’s Barbecue, he peeked into the smokehouse and stared back at me with bulging eyes. “This is the most amazing place I’ve ever seen in my life, on God,” he finally said. For the next few hours, he thought a lot, out loud, about learning the art of Eastern N.C. barbecue chicken and opening his own stand. A prouder uncle, I couldn’t be. 

Bum’s in Ayden, NC

By the time we left Bum’s in Ayden, we realized that all the corn sticks we’d tried so far tasted nearly the same. The staff at Bum’s told me they bought them from Atkinson’s–and so does everyone else. It wasn’t exactly a secret; Atkinson’s was mentioned in the Reddit thread, and I knew their hushpuppies were really popular. Most places that serve their corn sticks serve their hushpuppies too. In fact, in Bob Garner’s 1996 book, North Carolina Barbecue, he talks about the hushpuppies at White Swan BBQ in Smithfield: “You won’t be able to stay out of the basket of hush puppies they bring to your table at the Swan…. Oddly enough, [co-owner Lynwood] Parker is quick to mention that the hush puppies are made from an Atkinson’s Mills mix that’s available in area stores.”

We set off from Bum’s toward Adam’s Roadside in Goldsboro. Halfway there, I pulled over in Snow Hill.

“This is nagging me. We gotta get to Atkinson’s Mills,” I told my nephew while munching on maybe my ninth corn stick of the day. We suspended the circuit and headed for the source.

On Monday morning, I called Atkinson’s and Joseph Wheeler, one of several Wheelers managing the family business, answered immediately. He’s the main salesman and even fixes customers’ hushpuppy machines when needed. We chatted for a few minutes about where to purchase their corn sticks; when I said I’d like to learn more about their history, he kindly said he’d call me later that day.

I walked into their office, a former double-wide home, and saw a few folks at their desks. Someone kindly asked if I needed help and I stammered something about speaking with Joseph. He immediately called out to me from his office. I apologized for my impatience. He graciously took it in stride and proceeded to take me, my nephew, and my niece on a tour of their grounds.

It turns out that while Atkinson’s does make corn sticks, it’s a very miniscule part of their operation. Each week, they ship hundreds of thousands of pounds of dry grocery mixes and frozen foods nationwide. Atkinson’s has operated in some form since 1757. The original mill was first built by John Richardson, eventually passing down in the family to Mary Atkinson.

Ray and Betty Wheeler bought Atkinson’s from Mary Atkinson’s nieces in 1971, and their children and grandchildren (including Joseph) have taken over the business. They’ve rebuilt, modernized, and expanded, and now sell cornmeal, grits, cornbread and hushpuppy mixes, chicken and seafood breading, and frozen foods such as hush puppies, pastry, cornbreads and, of course, those corn sticks.

Atkinson’s started making corn sticks in the mid to late 1970s. Now they produce them for nearly all places that sell them, who’ve otherwise been Atkinson customers for decades.

Atkinson’s old mill facility

As we toured, I could see the operation’s evolution laid out before me. We walked past a few old family homes, 100 feet from the old mill; Ray Wheeler still lives in one and the other served as the Wheeler family home in the 1960s-70s. We passed the homes and walked into a shipping warehouse, where forklift operators were packing tons of dry goods onto distribution pallets.

A metal door at the end opened into a slick, tall mill facility where they were grinding cornmeal on giant millstones, some over 100 years old. The cornmeal was light and feathery, yet I felt its absence when it slipped through my fingers. We then walked into a newer frozen food plant, where I saw an endless stream of freshly fried hushpuppies on a conveyor belt leading into a giant freezer. Stacked on the other end of the facility were enough boxes of frozen hushpuppies to fill a few semi-rigs.

We finally made our way into an older, hotter, lower-lying building with a familiar smell in the air. Wheeler noticed my excitement and confirmed we’d reached the room where corn sticks are made. They bake and freeze them here, and customers typically deep fry them at their restaurants or homes. They custom-built the belts and tracks with dips and turns through giant ovens; it was like a Rube Goldberg machine for preserving culture. I said it was a dream come true to see this and he suggested I dream bigger.

They’re the last ones making them. Sensing a pit in my heart and stomach, he quickly assured me they’ll continue to do so. 

As for an origin story for Eastern North Carolina corn sticks, it’s as hard to nail down as finding a corn stick in Seattle, where I live now. According to Ray Wheeler, corn sticks probably originated at Bob Melton‘s Barbecue restaurant in Rocky Mount, in operation from 1922 to 2002. Henry Parker Brewer, one of the Parker Brothers, worked there and brought them to Parker’s Barbecue in Wilson, which the brothers opened in 1946.

From there, corn sticks’ fame grew. Larry Dennis, pitmaster at Bum’s in Ayden and an Atkinson’s customer, first served corn sticks in the 1980s, when he ran out of cornbread one day. He laughed when I told him I’m still trying to hunt down the original corn stick.

Dennis remembers that Respess Brothers Barbecue in Greenville, which closed in 1972, used to make them in-house, but he didn’t credit the restaurant with inventing corn sticks. He suggested an origin theory that I’d also been gnawing on. Simply put, follow the pans.

Atkinson’s corn stick pan

It gets a bit tricky, merely because the same pans used to make corn sticks can be used to make the immensely more popular corn bread sticks. Used, vintage “corn bread stick” pans cost upwards of $75 on eBay. There are two main production-level corn stick pans. One is the old Griswold Manufacturing cast iron No. 22 pan. Griswold, an Erie, Pennsylvania company, went out of business in 1957. Wagner Manufacturing Company in Sidney, Ohio, also made the No. 472 pan that looks closer to what I saw at Atkinson’s. Wagner went out of business by the 2000s and though the brand was revived in 2024, it seems the company stopped making corn stick pans well before that. 

Dennis suggested maybe corn sticks originated in Pennsylvania, along with the Griswold pan. I’ve been following every lead in Pennsylvania (and Ohio, just in case) to see if that’s true, but so far, no luck. I did however find a record of a Griswold No. 22 pan dating back to 1890 (!) that was used by the Judge Augustin Harris Hansell family of Thomasville, Georgia. Which means people ate something shaped like corn sticks elsewhere in the South. For what it’s worth, I reviewed diners’ pics of more than 25 barbecue places in Southern Georgia but couldn’t find a single corn stick; I did notice that plenty of them offered hand-cut fries, though.

What I felt on this trip is something that Southern eaters have been grappling with, and adjusting to, for decades: Disappearing foods, or at least the thought and the fear of its possibility.

I spoke with John Shelton Reed and asked him if he’d ever heard of a food item disappearing in his barbecue travels. He said nothing has flat out vanished, rather they’re just available at fewer and fewer places. He mentioned he could regularly find barbecue snoots in Black-owned barbecue spots in Memphis but can now only find them in one or two places in Eastern St. Louis—a micro-micro-region of snoots. John Tanner mentioned foods like onion sausage in South Carolina. And plenty of us have personal barbecue side favorites across the South that we hope keep on keepin’ on, such as barbecue hash, burgoo, Brunswick stew, or tamales.  

A fact of life and capitalism is that when one of the old barbecue places close down, and most will eventually, they’re often replaced (if at all) by the newer types of places, what Reed calls the “International House of Barbecue” model: usually chain or pan-barbecue places that offer Texas-style brisket alongside sliced or pulled pork and other meats, with several types of sauces available.

With that non-regional approach, they prioritize mac-n-cheese, barbecue beans, hush puppies or cornbread, and a fairly uniform coleslaw, regardless of where they open. What they won’t offer are local sides, like corn sticks, or red, yellow, or white slaw. 

Boiled potatoes in ketchup and onions with spices

When we talked about my corn sticks plan, Reed happily recalled where he’d tried them. Later, with a quiet gravitas in his voice, he asked if I would check in on boiled potatoes too. We love them in Eastern N.C. and there are plenty of recipes that call for boiling potatoes in ketchup and onions along with some spices. Atkinson’s, of course, sells a seasoning mix as well. 

I’m pleased to report that every place I went to still sold them. 

Even with the potatoes accounted for, I understood the seriousness in Reed’s voice. There’s something about a barbecue tour that reveals how fragile joy can be. I’m an optimist, though. Discovering that they’re still loved and thriving makes me feel the same. I’m a corn sticks person, and I plan on keeping it that way.

S. Farhan Mustafa is a James Beard Award–winning food and culture writer. He’s currently based in Seattle, but his heart lives at any Bojangles’ or buffet. His work has appeared in Gravy, The Bitter Southerner, and Texas Monthly. If you’ve had corn sticks, let him know!