Karah-Leigh Hancock
The Valdosta Daily Times
ADEL — Ian Crabill and Jon Lipsey are two men who can cook — and cook well.
So, they decided to open up their own restaurant, Forty One Feed Store, in Lipsey’s hometown of Adel.
Both Crabill and Lipsey went to culinary school — Crabill in Chapel Hill, N.C., and Lipsey in Atlanta.
Cooking is something both men had in common.
While Lipsey grew up merely two blocks from the restaurant’s home in downtown Adel, Crabill grew up in the Charlotte, N.C., area, and later married a girl from Adel who was good friends with Lipsey.
“(Cooking is) kind of what I’ve always done,” Crabill said. “Since I was 15, I got my first job in a restaurant. My uncle had a restaurant in downtown Philly. When I went up there for summers, I messed around with his (kitchen). I always worked in restaurants going through college.”
“I was just a bad college student,” Lipsey joked. “I was a good cook but a bad student.”
The restaurant opened on Jan. 12, closing eight days later after a small fire on the roof. However, business has been good for the two men who love to cook.
“We’ve done about four times what we projected on our business plan on a weekly average,” Crabill said. “We were closed for two weeks after (the fire). We had quite a bit of water damage from that. It was a little setback, but it’s picking back up.”
Q: How did you get the name for the restaurant?
A: (Lipsey) It used to be a feed store for 50 years or something, so everybody always knew it was the old feed store. We were between naming it The Feed Store or 41 South so we just put it together. Forty One South Feed Store. Instead of cows, we feed people.
Q: What are your most popular items on the menu?
A: (Crabill) At lunch we sell tons of cheese steaks and burgers. At dinner we sell a lot of pasta and a lot of steak and crab cake. We do different fish specials at least every other night, depending on how busy we are. This past week we had fish flown in from Hawaii. We’re trying to do fresh fish every night. There’s plenty of places to get fried catfish or flounder.
Q: What are your most popular deserts?
A: (Crabill) Between the peanut better pie and the brownie. For the peanut butter pie, we make our own graham cracker crust. It’s basically a peanut butter moose with whip cream and a bittersweet chocolate sauce on it. The brownies are all made with German chocolate that we have ‘Fed Ex-ed’ (in). We’ll make a batch of brownies and there’s 18 pounds of butter, sugar, eggs, chocolate, flour and pecans all in that thing to make those brownies.
Q: What are your favorite things to prepare?
A: (Lipsey) I mainly do the pizzas. That’s kind of my area.
A: (Crabill) My favorite is specials. I like cooking everything. Just, you know, coming up with something. Like last weekend, I did beef tenderloin medallions over blue cheese grits. We try to come up with a different soup. We try to make everything from scratch as much as (possible).
We cook all of our sauces for the pizza. We buy whole hams with the bone and slice our own ham. We grill the chicken. We do all of this stuff. We make all of our salad dressings. Our shrimp are hand breaded. We cut the steaks by hand every day. We cut all of our french fries. Our vegetables are all fresh.
Q: Do you have a kids’ menu?
A: (Crabill) We have a little kids’ menu. The kids’ menu basically covers our cost for making those things because you don’t want to go somewhere for a kids meal and you get two chicken fingers and fries; it’s ridiculous. We really tried to make it a family friendly place. We have a baby changing station in the back. We really tried to make the place a little something for everybody.
Forty One South Feed Store
Location: 130 S. Hutchinson Ave., Adel
Phone: (229) 896-1616
Hours: Generally open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, but does stay open later on Fridays.
