Tar Heel Traveler Eats: Food Journeys Across North Carolina

by Scott Mason

Scott Mason is the Tar Heel Traveler and he loves to eat hot dogs, cheeseburgers, barbecue, biscuits, and ice cream served in crumbling cinder-block buildings and ramshackle dives along the back roads of North Carolina. As a full-time feature reporter for WRAL-TV in Raleigh since 2007, Scott has discovered that North Carolina is filled with many amusing characters and out-of-the-way places, all of which are part of his Tar Heel Traveler television segment that airs Monday through Thursday on WRAL's 5:30 pm newscast. The most popular stories are always about the hole-in-the-wall hot dog dives, cheeseburger joints, barbecue places, and ice cream parlors he has visited. He has featured dozens of such places on TV and now on paper he expands each story. Each chapter of Tar Heel Traveler Eats focuses on a particular restaurant as seen through the eyes the reporter who stumbles upon these classic dives. He peppers each chapter with dialogue and descriptive detail that includes the often inspiring stories of how these places began. These stories are not only about the nothin'-fancy kind of places that are close to people's hearts, but also about the culture, tradition, and heritage of North Carolina.