Our anniversary/my birthday dinner

We have this neat little, I mean little restaurant just a few blocks from us called the Bean Barn. We have driven by it each time we have gone to town for 25 years and never stopped to eat there. They are quite unique. They have been written about in Southern Living Magazine, as well as the newspapers in our surrounding towns and other local magazines. I guess what caught our eye was a TV mention of it several weeks ago.
They are only open for breakfast and lunch. They open at about 6 AM and close at 2 PM. But I think the cooks are there about 5. Their speciality is pinto beans. They cook their own beans fresh every day. They put them on to soak before they close the restaurant each day, then start them cooking when they open the next day. Their breakfast menu looked reasonable. They serve breakfast until 10:30 AM. I thought it would be only men patrons and most of them farmers at that. But there were nearly as many women and children as there were men.
They serve beef stew and hamburgers along with the pinto beans. They suggested to us that a lot of people got a plate that was half beans and half beef stew. So that is what we ordered. Maybe they had a lot of beef stew left over that they wanted to get rid of. LOL They asked if we wanted cornbread or white bread. Well, if you are going to eat pinto beans, you have to have cornbread. White bread with pinto beans is for sissies. Their cornbread is good. Joe said almost as good as mine. We had only heard of eating mayonnaise with pinto beans once before. A dear friend of ours who was raised in Shelton Laurel, NC would only eat beans with mayo. If you don't know Shelton Laurel, well, that's another story. The men who were at the table behind us asked for mayo and on the beans it went. I'm not ready to try that yet, but someday I may have to.
We had already decided we were going to get a piece of pie if they had it. We had thought that the TV program we saw about the restaurant said they made their own pies on site. We ordered coconut cream pie and it was good, but not homemade. The server opened it from a bought pie case.
The dining area is small, very small. Maybe they can serve 25 people at one time. But around the dining area are showcases of old, old things. They had more empty drink bottles of so many different kinds of soft drinks. Some brands that I have not seen or thought of since my father had a country grocery store. It was an interesting lunch and we will definitely return sometime. Maybe for breakfast the next time.
No supper will be served at this house tonight!