Ham's Restaurant

A regional, family friendly casual dining chain, Ham’s Greensboro locations include 3709-J Battleground Ave., 3017 High Point Rd. and 699 East Cone Blvd. This review will largely cover the original Friendly Avenue location, which will close Sunday after 75 years. All locations share a common menu featuring appetizers, salads, sandwiches, burgers, pasta, steak/chicken/seafood entrees and desserts. Drink and food specials change daily. Please contact your nearest location to ask about trivia, bingo or karaoke.

In many ways, Ham’s has been my culinary guiding light as a Southerner. When I arrived in New Bern from New Jersey five years ago to begin my journalism career, Ham’s was among the first restaurants I lunched at with coworkers. I was intrigued by the menu, which offered delicacies unavailable (and, in some cases, unheard of) in the Garden State. My first time out, I went with the shrimp burger: a delectable wad of fried shrimp served on a bun with slaw. Later, I graduated to shrimp and grits and the Cajun skillet, a shrimp/sausage/rice concoction that quickly became a favorite. A year into life as a Carolinian and Ham’s was a fixture in my regular restaurant rotation.



As I moved from New Bern to Elizabeth City and from my first reporting job to my second, I learned that aside from a Waffle House and a church every few miles, the South did not necessarily lend itself to homogeneity. New Bern was a placid-but-developing city filled with Northern transplants and retirees; Elizabeth City was a restless little town forced, somewhat reluctantly, into growth by the spillover from the Virginia Tidewater. There was no Ham’s in Elizabeth City and nothing really like it, either. And while I did find a few reliable places to eat, my cravings for lowcountry and Cajun fare went largely unfulfilled.



When I moved to Greensboro nearly two years ago, hopefulness returned to my life and so did Ham’s. The Friendly Avenue location was a nine-minute walk from my friend Andrew’s house and thus a logical destination.



My first time in, I was initially disappointed. One glance at the menu told me the original Ham’s was a different breed of restaurant from the New Bern location (the New Bern restaurant, to my understanding, was a separate franchise spun off the original). My Cajun skillet and shrimpburger were nowhere to be found, replaced instead by far more pedestrian offerings. Also, original Ham’s felt cheap; less a dining establishment than a funhouse. A model train chugged back and forth along one wall, reinforcing the notion that this is a place where nothing gets taken too seriously.



Fortunately, my initial pessimism ended once the food arrived. I went with a Cuban sandwich, something that, while not rare, was at least not a burger or a BLT. It was done right and the choice of sides (options included slaw, vegetables, homemade chips and my eventual favorite, potato salad) was a definite plus.



What made me a convert, however, was the cookie skillet. This decadent dessert featured soft chocolate chip cookies served sizzling hot on a skillet, topped with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and chocolate sauce. It required at least two people to finish, took a toll on your stomach and made you feel like a glutton, but it was all worth it. The cookie skillet transcended Ham’s the way Don Mattingly transcended those lousy Yankees teams of the 1980s. At an easily splitable $5.99, it was a bargain too.



Needless to say, I went back. The cookie skillet became a rite of friendship with me. I would bring new people to Ham’s and get them to sample it, pressing strongly for their opinion (most had favorable things to say). I even created a facebook group to stress the dish’s superiority.



Return visits to Ham’s fell into an easy, comfortable rhythm. Andrew and Anna (of previously mentioned baking fame) and I frequently ended up there on Tuesdays to take advantage of the dirt-cheap $2.99 (with drink) Charlie’s Cheeseburger special. Utterly unpretentious (there were no caramelized onions or bleu cheese crumbles to be found), the Charlie’s burger was simply satisfying. In time, I also developed a predilection for the Big Island Chicken Sandwich, a moist and flavorful teriyaki grilled breast topped with ham, Swiss and pineapple. Neither that (at $7.29) nor the fried chicken salad ($8.49) were particularly good bargains, but they were both filling and pleasing just the same.



Ham’s casual atmosphere, which I initially took for a liability, quickly proved to be an asset. A given night featured at least one screaming young child and plenty of garrulous adults, but it was a comfortable loudness. It was liberating. I could talk freely and not have to watch what I said because the odds were slim that anyone beyond my table would hear it. If diners at nearby tables weren’t caught up in their own conversations, there was a good chance the bantering of others would drown out any inappropriate comment my group should happen to issue (and we issued plenty).



The one major drawback to Ham’s was the maddening, almost IHOP-like inconsistency. On some nights, servers were swift, attentive and genuinely pleasant and personable. On other nights, they were slower, more frazzled and rhetorically violent (“Is everything excellent?” How does one comfortable say “no” to that?). Though the food was usually satisfying, the quality of the cookie skillet varied from visit to visit and a bad Charliesburger put Andrew and Anna off Ham’s for weeks. The best that can be said is that there was never a wait for a table, no matter what the crowd.



Because I am not a native Greensboroian, I cannot identify Ham’s with my childhood. I’ll miss the Friendly Avenue location for its convenience, but I won’t feel like I’m losing a major part of my past when it closes. If anything, it makes me feel like I am evolving, moving on, pressing forward. Ham’s will shut its doors a month before I am set to finish grad school. Just as the Ham’s in New Bern was different from the Ham’s in Greensboro, a different Zac ate there. It’s likely that the next time I visit a Ham’s, both it and I will have changed once again. And while economic constraints may, unfortunately, force Ham’s to trend downward, I can only hope I’m headed in the opposite direction.



7/10

Our final cookie skillet: