In Italy, after 50 years in business, stores and cafés can apply to enter their names in the Registro dei Marchi Storici di Interesse Nazionale (Register of Historical Trademarks of National Interest).
In practice this means, if one were to open a café across the canal from Caffè Florian in Venice, it would not only be illegal, it’d be an insult to the country’s deep respect for its history.
In Wilmington, we have a store with the longevity and respectability to immediately qualify for such a registry: Zora’s Fish Market at 1411 Castle Street.
The woman who deserves the credit for establishing such a store is Zora Singleton, who opened her market in 1956 when the store was still heated with coal, Eisenhower was in the White House, and actress Polly Bergen was the Azalea Queen.
She’d bought her uncle’s store, Williams Seafood, changed the name and began a long run as an honest broker, a trusted merchant and a friend to everyone, no matter what they looked like.
“She helped everybody,” says Sylvia Cobb, who worked for Zora at Zora’s “It didn’t matter what color you were, she did not want to see anyone go hungry.”
Zora let customers run a tab, and pledged she was always paid back. Cobb recalls numerous times when Zora would throw in an extra spot, mullet or flounder on top of an order to help out a customer.
Cobb remembers a time she went to the store and saw Harlequin Romance novels on the shelf across from the register on sale for five cents. Someone must have sensed something; she was asked if she liked to cook.
As a matter of fact, she did. Not long after, she was in the kitchen turning out lightly coated fried fish gutted just minutes before. Popular items included fried crabs, salmon patties, crab cakes, shrimp burgers and fried okra.
“I made tips,” she says. “Everyone loved Miss Sylvia.”
One time the Temptations were in town for a show. They called ahead and the bus stopped by to get plates to go.
“They tipped really well,” she adds.
Right about the same time, Zora’s granddaughter, Judy Chesson, the youngest of six, was behind the counter standing on a Coca-Cola crate ringing up sales.
“I remember one of the first times I helped out,” she says. “A woman came in and asked for a dollar’s worth of the least expensive fish at 19 cents a pound.”
Chesson said OK and watched the woman “dig a worn-out blue bandanna from her bosom,” to count out her coins.
“Bigmama,” says Chesson using a family nickname, “saw it and came over to ask how many young’uns she had to feed. The woman said she had a dollar.”
“She took me in the back room and told me something she wanted me to remember for the rest of my life: ‘Always give them what they need to feedtheir family, but never take away their dignity.’ I’ve never forgotten that.”
Zora asked again. “Bigmama didn’t want to know how much money she had,” says Chesson. “She asked how many she had to feed and if her husband worked.” He did. “She packed up enough fish for her family and only charged a dollar.”
“She took me in the back room and told me something she wanted me to remember for the rest of my life,” says Chesson. “‘Always give them what they need to feed their family, but never take away their dignity.’ I’ve never forgotten that.”
During a particularly hard time of racial tension as Castle Street changed, Chesson says a man once reached over the glass to grab a shrimp. “Bigmama slapped his
hand,” she says. “She’d picked up a flyswatter, hit him and said, ‘Don’t you steal from me. I’ll give you anything I got, but don’t you steal from me!’”
Zora’s work life didn’t start in a fish market. For a while she worked at the shipyard, until an accident with a lathe cut her little finger down to the knuckle, says Chesson. “It healed; but there wasn’t nothing she couldn’t do with that hand. Back then, you took what life handed you: It could ruin you or you could deal with it.”
The shipyard in the rearview, Zora joined her uncle, known as Uncle Bird, at his first market, Williams Sea- food in the Brooklyn neighborhood. From there they moved to an open air market on Castle Street. The next step was a brick and mortar at 1411 Castle, where Zora planted a garden. They also bought the house next door, where family lived.
Zora regularly cooked for a crowd using produce from her garden and fish or crustaceans from the market.
In 1976, after 20 years at the helm, Zora sold her market to her son, Jim. Zora continued to work there until the business was sold in 1983. She died in 1991.
After that, the market changed hands a few times, sometimes back to Zora’s family. In 2018, owners Kim and Garry Hines sold it to Ronald and Rovanda Williams. Williams moved his Ronnie’s Cooking Shack operation from Third Street to Castle. He named it Ronnie’s Crab Shack at Zora’s.
He also brought an employee with him, Teresa Diane Cobbs—known as T—Sylvia Cobb’s sister.
In 2024, Ronnie was ready to retire and sold Zora’s to Lydia Clopton and Dean Neff, owners of Seabird Restaurant just down the street a bit and a few blocks south of the fish market.
Not long after the transfer, Neff went to City Hall’s department of planning and development to
see about a permit for an outdoor patio. Behind the desk was Judy Chesson.
Once they realized the connection, they talked, laughed and cried about Chesson’s memories of Bigmama.
“I heard the market was up for sale,” says Neff, who had never been in it. “I understood its historical importance: I didn’t want to get it torn down. Condos are everywhere. I had to figure out how to make it work.” He did.
Neff is determined to keep Zora’s a neighborhood market as well as a place he can buy seafood for Seabird.
“It’s about getting to the source of things,” he says. “We want to continue on that journey.
If you walk into Zora’s today, it’s pretty much the same as it ever was. The counter and the ice-lined displays of fresh fish still bank the right side of the market.
Ronnie’s menu is on the wall. Snapshots of Zora, her family and dedicated employees hang framed near the door. The fish is wrapped in newspaper.
“I understood its historical importance: I didn’t want to get it torn down."
The kitchen, under renovation, is at the mercy of permitting; The market is open Wednesdays through Sundays. Fresh fish is delivered regularly.
Keep an eye on the front window, if they have crabs, a neon sign shaped like a crab is lit.
Next year Zora’s will celebrate its 70th anniversary, more deeply cementing its place as a historical trademark of national interest and as a reminder of the importance of mom-and-pop markets. They make a city more walkable and create connections within the community. With Zora’s success, we can boost our local economy and keep our food sources close to home.
The other day, T was behind the counter, when Wilmington native John McCorkle, who, at 82, remembers going to Zora’s with his father, stopped in. It’s always been a friendly place, he says. “Part of growing up in Wilmington was going to Zora’s to get fresh seafood.”
1411 Castle St. Wilmington
This story appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of Edible Port City.
