Recipe for recovery: a robust new restaurant scene has turned downtrodden downtown Kinston into a dining destination.

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Chef & the Farmer in Kinston serves a sage-brined bone-in pork chop, with pickled apples, Gouda and onion pudding and collard greens, for $33. It's fancy fare in rural Lenoir County, where nearly a quarter of the population lives in poverty. "I hadn't lived in Kinston since I was 14 and didn't understand how economically depressed it was," says chef Vivian Howard, who opened the downtown restaurant with husband Ben Knight in 2006. "All the buildings around it were boarded up. Everyone thought it was a bad idea." But the restaurant gradually gained notice and inspired others to invest in downtown Kinston. "If they hadn't taken a big leap,

I don't know if I could've put $5 million into downtown Kinston," says Stephen Hill, who started Mother Earth Brewing LLC in 2009. Last year, Howard and Knight opened Boiler Room, an oyster bar, while Hill opened an Asian restaurant and music venue.

Howard's tale makes a nice economic-development story, but traditional theory holds that restaurants don't drive economies. "It's called the export-based theory," says Bill Lester, an assistant professor of city planning at UNC Chapel Hill. The $560 million investment Wichita, Kan-based Spirit AeroSystemsInc. pledged to build airliner fuselages at North Carolina Global TransPark, an industrial park about 5 miles north of downtown, injects money into the local economy. New restaurants just take dollars from existing businesses.

But Lester says economists are coming around on comestibles, allowing that culinary centers can draw new revenue. Local officials say that's happening in Kinston, especially after Howard and director Cynthia Hill, a Pink Hill native, launched A Chef's...