Inside The Royal — possibly Albany's first-ever New Orleans-style restaurant — Nick Turner sat at a table sporting a yellow beanie and black t-shirt, his inked arms crossed. Behind him, autumn trees in all their glory were visible from the restaurant’s large windows. A tall liquor shelf sits square in the middle of two television screens and a pinball machine.
Nick Turner, of the local food truck Nick's Soul Food, sits at at table in his new brick and mortar restaurant in Albany while discussing a name change and his plans for continuing to bring southern food to the mid-Willamette Valley. He set down a feast: fried soft shell crab on a bed of collard greens, red beans and rice, a fried catfish po'boy and a bowl of gumbo. Turner grew up in the southside of Birmingham, Alabama.
When he was 13, he got a job at a place called Uncle Sam’s Barbeque where he learned everything: how to make barbeque sauce, work as a line cook, run the cash register and serve tables. “No matter what else I've done, I've always been involved in a restaurant,” he said. A catfish po'boy is among the menu items at The Royal, which includes a variety of Louisiana and Cajun-based cooking with the occasional bit of Pacific Northwest flair.
Even before all of that, Turner's first memories of making food for his family every Thursday night in fifth grade from a kids' cookbook. “It was real simple stuff, but it made me feel like an adult,” he said with a laugh. Growing up, his father took him t.
