Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:50:37 -0500
From: Mike Fox
Subject: The “truth” about the General Store Cafe
My wife and I have been to the General Store on many occasions. The objective fact of the matter is that they are extremely inconsistent. You can have an awesome dining experience on one visit, and then a terrible one on the next visit and then an awesome experience on the following visit again. There is no pattern that I can discern, and I think this partially accounts for why you see such divergent opinions and reviews.
But there is much more to it than that. The General Store appears to be a cultural touchstone in Chatham County, being a locally owned place with a bohemian sensibility. Some people love that sensibility and will overlook any flaw no matter how serious, but people who don’t like that sensibility will amplify any flaw, no matter how minor. When you see someone post, like was done today, that they won’t go because they offended by the chatlist
behavior of people who like and defend the General Store, and “those aren’t the kind of people” they want to hang out with, then you know the criticism is cultural or even political and not related to the quality of the food and the service. Likewise some of their defenders do seem to protest too much and I wonder if they’ve eaten at the same General Store I have.
But also, a lot of the community is “bought in” to the General Store, some more literally than others. Remember they sought small investors and sold psuedo-bonds to their faithful customers to help finance their expansion, so some community members are literally “bought in.” But many that aren’t financially bought-in are emotionally bought-in because the General Store represents what they want to see more of in Pittsboro and Chatham County.
As a result opinion on the General Store is polarized and you have to read chatlist posts (for and against) through that lens and it’s very difficult to get objective assessments of the food and service.
Mike