Bremerton eatery is a family affair: Sisters put plenty of soul into their soul food
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BREMERTON - Nanette Lewis and Tonita Naylor may fight about any number of things - they're sisters, after all - but the one place they don't squabble is in the kitchen, where they've always agreed on what makes a great meal.
Fried chicken with crisp skin and secret spices, corn bread made from scratch, pork-simmered greens and hickory-smoked barbecue.
The two, who've cooked together since they were children, have hosted every family get-together and reunion since they got homes of their own. The praise is universal.
"Everybody always says, 'Oh, that was so good. Is there any more?' " said Naylor, 40.
The sisters come from a long line of chefs and restaurateurs in this Kitsap Peninsula city where their grandfather, Albert Thomas, found work in the shipyard and settled after World War II. Their grandmother, Emma Thomas, ran a well-known restaurant called Emma's Barbecue, and their brother, Tony Thomas, owned a chain of restaurants in the area called Soul Brothers.
Now, at the urging of family and friends, the sisters opened Heckle & Jeckle's Chicken Shack earlier this month at the corner of Sixth Street, right where it turns into Kitsap Way. A number of their customers remember their grandmother and come in to see if they measure up to her in the kitchen.
"Oh my, yes. Their chicken is really going on," said Carla Miles, a regular customer. "I wouldn't be down here like I am just about every day if it wasn't real soul food. Even I can't cook it like this."
The venture was funded from savings and personal loans from friends and family.
"You have to love to cook and we love to cook," Naylor said. "That comes from our roots. It comes from our culture and it comes from our blood."
For the past several years, the two women have worked as youth counselors at a group home in Seattle. But when their brother closed his restaurants - including one at the same site - because of ill health, it was suggested that Naylor and Lewis fill the niche.
It took them six months or so to make their plans, gather their nerve, come up with a menu and settle on a name. Heckle and Jeckle were their nicknames from childhood, when they were always up to something, so they went with that.
Silvia Klatman, executive director of the Bremerton Chamber of Commerce, agreed that although the city is suffering economically, the sisters have a good chance to make a go of it in this diverse military town.
"We have people from all over the country and all over the world here, and historically, ethnic restaurants do very well," Klatman said.
Dick Myers, a manager at Dave's Guns and Loans down the road, has been up to the Chicken Shack a half-dozen times since it opened. "I get the chicken breast on a bun with potato salad and beans," he said. "It's real breast meat and it's real good."
The sisters' large and extended family is proof, they say, that once folks try their cooking, they always come back.
They put up a No Credit sign, penciling in the word family between the no and the credit.
"It's sort of a joke," said Lewis, 37, laughing. "But you know, we have a very big family and they all love our food, and you know how family can be."
Christine Clarridge can be reached at 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com.