Three generations, one parking spot
Our Story
We get asked about the name more than we get asked about the chicken, so here's the whole thing, year by year, the way Dale tells it at Thanksgiving whether you want to hear it again or not.
The flat tire
Wade Pruitt pulled his new Bel Air up outside a closed filling station on Mill Race Road to deal with a flat. He was still there three hours later, talking to whoever stopped. By the next week, people were leaving notes on the windshield asking where to find him. He started keeping a fryer going so he'd have something to hand them.
The sign catches up
For three years it had no name anybody agreed on. Regulars just said they were headed "to the chicken sedan" — meaning Wade's car, and increasingly, the chicken. Loretta Pruitt, tired of correcting people, painted CHICKEN SEDAN on a board and nailed it above the door. The argument was over.
The fire
A fryer fire in February closed the kitchen for four months. Half the town showed up with hammers and the other half showed up with casseroles. Wade always said the rebuilt kitchen was better than the original, mostly because Loretta finally got the stove she wanted.
The recipe, written down
Loretta's chicken salad had never existed on paper — she "just knew" the proportions. Her sister talked her into writing it down before a church cookbook deadline. It's the only Pruitt recipe that's ever been typed up, and we still keep that original page behind the register.
Earl takes the keys
Wade and Loretta's son Earl took over daily operations, though Wade kept coming in most mornings to "supervise," which meant sitting by the window and telling new hires about the fire.
A second sedan, in Drayton's Mill
Earl opened a second location twenty minutes east, on Ferry Landing Road. He brought the recipe and left the original Bel Air right where it was — there are two restaurants now, but only one car.
Dale Jr. joins
Third generation, same fryer schedule. Dale started on dish duty at fourteen and worked every station before anyone let him near the register.
Big Verna gets a paint job
For the fiftieth anniversary, the original car — known by then as Big Verna — got a proper restoration and a carport built around her, out front of the Catawba Forge location, where she's been parked since the day Wade first stopped there.
Dale Jr. runs both locations
The breading recipe hasn't changed since Loretta wrote it down. The hours haven't either — closed Sundays and Mondays, same as always. Big Verna's still parked out front of the original. Stop by and ask Dale about the fire. He'll tell you.
"Earl Pruitt says he's not trying to compete with his father's chicken, just trying not to embarrass it. Judging by the line out the door on opening day, he's managing fine."
— Drayton's Mill Courier, October 1995Want the short version?
A car. A flat tire. A line of regulars.
Wade Pruitt named a restaurant after the place he happened to park, and the town named it for him before he'd thought to. Sixty-some years on, we're still serving the same plates, in the same two towns, with the same car still parked out front.