What’s Good Here? Cribb’s Sandwich and Sweet Shop
What’s good here?
The first thing most people think of when Cribb’s Sandwich and Sweet Shop is mentioned is a rooster.
Not just any rooster – but 8-foot-tall Fuzzy Feathers – a giant rooster shop owner Joe Cribb purchased and placed in front of his restaurant several years ago.
Ironically, once customers give the food at Cribb’s a shot, it’s still chicken that they are most likely to remember.
Chicken salad, that is.
In fact, Cribb estimates he makes about 60 pounds of chicken salad each week – an impressive amount for a shop that isn’t open past 3 p.m.
The recipe is a simple one, consisting of eggs, sweet relish, mayo, seasoning and chicken. The shop’s other homemade sandwich spreads are also popular – pimento cheese (the secret recipe for which was created by Cribb’s wife and co-owner, Lisa), egg salad and tuna salad.
Cribb’s also offers housemade soups year-round, including corn chowder, chicken and rice, chicken bog and Indian Squaw – the customer favorite that Cribb created from an old Boy Scout recipe that includes corn, potatoes, onion, ground beef, tomato sauce and brown sugar.
Customers looking for a deli meat sandwich can choose from local meat wholesaler Caughman’s Meat’n Place meats including ham, turkey and roast beef – a special variety Caughman’s carries just for Cribb’s, according to Cribb. Side dishes include housemade potato and macaroni salads.
As the name indicates, sweets are half the business at Cribb’s. Cribb offers eight to 10 varieties of housemade cookies and bars daily, such as banana cookies with vanilla or chocolate frosting, lemon bars, white chocolate and pecan cookies and, of course, chocolate chip cookies. There’s also always a pie on tap, usually Caribbean fudge, coconut custard, pecan or pumpkin, and the No. 1 customer favorite offering – cake, which is made fresh and changes daily (with 30 varieties). Cribb derived his most popular cake, the caramel, from a recipe he saw in The State newspaper 18 years ago when his shop opened.
“My family sampled everything first, of course, and they loved the cake, but they didn’t like the icing,” Cribb said. “It was too sweet. So I put it aside and thought, ‘I’ll never make that again.’ But I kept thinking about that cake and kept playing around with the icing until I got it right. Now, it’s my most requested cake.”
The lemon-on-lemon, German chocolate, strawberry jam and banana cakes (think banana bread mixed with banana pudding) also rank at the top of customer favorites.
What else?
Cribb’s also has its fair share of breakfast patrons, many of whom stop by to grab one of Cribb’s popular cinnamon biscuits.
“When I was 12, I asked my parents for a Betty Crocker Cookbook,” Cribb said. “In that cookbook, there was a drop biscuit recipe with cinnamon in it. I made one like it but then decided to put a cinnamon roll twist on it with a glazed topping and a couple of other changes.”
How did Cribb’s Sandwich and Sweet Shop get its start?
After working in the printing business for 17 years, Cribb saw the writing on the wall that layoffs might be coming down the pike in the late 1990s.
“I just started praying and asking God to show us what He wanted us to do,” Cribb said. “One night, Lisa and I were driving across the Lake Murray dam and it was like God said, ‘This is it. This is what I have planned for you.’”
The couple opened the shop a few months later in August 1997.
Although Cribb has had no formal restaurant or chef training, he grew up as the son of Columbia bakery shop owners and helped in the kitchen at home from a young age.
“When I was 12 years old, it my responsibility to have dinner on the table when my folks got home from the shop every night,” Cribb said. “Some kids watched TV, but I watched the oven. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
What does the place look like?
The decades-old hardwood floors and a mix of wood tables and chairs at Cribb’s give the restaurant a nostalgic charm that feels a little like walking in for lunch at your grandparents’ house in the country. The Fuzzy Feathers theme continues subtly inside with rooster decor in the form of folk art paintings, decorative plates and figurines.
Who eats here?
Located off Main Street on Church Street in downtown Lexington, Cribb’s draws a lot of in-town professionals but also has a wide array of customers, including countless parents with kids who ask to stop at the shop with the big rooster for a special sweet treat.
Cribb’s Sandwich and Sweet Shop
108-D S. Church St., Lexington
HOURS: 7:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Friday; 9 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Saturday; closed Sunday.
PRICES: Prices range from $2.25 for a cinnamon biscuit to $7.25 for a chicken salad sandwich basket, which includes a side and pickle. The most expensive item on the menu is a large-size deli salad topped with ham, turkey and roast beef for $9.95.
INFO: (803) 808-6004.
Janet Jones Kendall/Special to Go Columbia
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This story was originally published June 24, 2015 at 9:31 AM with the headline "What’s Good Here? Cribb’s Sandwich and Sweet Shop."