Tom Angleberger

The New River Valley-based reporter answers your questions Mondays in his column, What's on Your Mind?

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With all the booze and fatty food we have this week, it's like an Ask The Readers party around here.

You were invited to help me answer some questions and you've done a great job so far. Now it's time to enjoy a greasy slice of Davis Pizza, nibble some deep fried goodies from the Chick-A-Sea restaurant and wash it all down with some local brew.

I've been after the secret ingredient in Davis Pizza for a long time. I never got to taste any, but the stuff seems to be legendary around here.

And the legend of the long-gone restaurant on Roanoke's Williamson Road sometimes says that beer was what made the recipe magic. That's what I have been trying to confirm or deny for some time. But this latest batch of responses suggests I will not get easy answers.

"Unfortunately the 'secret ingredient' was the two elderly ladies that made the pizzas," wrote Karen St. Clair of Hardy. "They must have worked there forever and looked to be 100 years old before the place changed hands.

"I grew up in the Williamson Road area and would give anything to have a Davis Pizza right now. They were masters at their craft and if someone thinks they can duplicate their creation, they might as well give it up now."

A similar response came from Sharon Terrell of Roanoke, who worked for Davis Pizza one summer.

"Mrs. Davis made her dough from scratch ... wasn't nothing secret about any of it."

Well, that might explain why no one has been able to tell me the secret. But there is another possibility: No one knows the secret. "Mr. and Mrs. Davis lived across the street from me as I was growing up," wrote Jane Vaught of Stewartsville. "They had no children so I was very close to them. No one knew the ingredients but the two of them."

According to Vaught, the Davises died without spilling the secret.

"If anyone writes to tell you they knew the ingredients, they can only be guessing."

Well, as long as we're guessing:

"Well, one thought about the 'secret' ingredient in the Davis Pizzas: grease -- and a whole lot of it," wrote Mike Hamlin of Ironto. "The stack of newspaper they put under each and every pizza would be soaked with grease by the time it made it home!"

"Davis Pizza's secret ingredient was a combination of one cup of lard [and] the newspaper ink that separated the pizza from the box," declared Frankie Bobbitt of Salem. "But it sure was good."

As for the Chick-A-Sea recipe, we've got a little something more to go on, although it's not quite a recipe.

Twig Gravely, a local historian who seems to be angling for my job, turned up the following on Roadfood.com, a Web site started by real food experts Jane and Michael Stern.

Someone claiming to have been a Richmond-area Chick-A-Sea manager in the 1970s posted a few Chick-A-secrets. The chicken was put in salt water. Then it was double-battered in seasoned flour. After a stint in the refrigerator, it was pressure cooked in peanut oil.

Sounds reasonable enough, but awfully hard to replicate.

Meanwhile, Gravely also sent some sad news about the Mary B. Open Kettle Chicken and Dumpling Dinner Kit: It's no longer being made, which explains why my reader couldn't find it.

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As usual, this Ask The Readers included a question about a long-gone local distillery. I'm amazed by the amount of alcohol we used to legitimately produce around here. It is a bit of history that might have faded away if not for all the old bottles and promotional materials that keep turning up.

This one was a gallon-size glass jug from the T.F. Bailey Distillery of Ferrum.

"Mr. Bailey distilled on our farm," said Jim Shively, who described his farm as being a mile north of Ferrum proper. "North Carolina went dry first, so he moved to Virginia so he could continue."

That explains the presence of at least one of those liquor companies, and maybe others.

If you've got a question, e-mail it to woym@roanoke.com or leave it on my voice mail at 777-6476 (please be sure to speak clearly and spell your name). I'll need your name, location and phone number or e-mail address.

Look for Tom Angleberger's column on Mondays.