1. Thai Cafe
City: Durham, NC
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (919) 493-9794
Address: 2501 University Dr., No. 10
Description: Thai Cafe serves a wide variety of carefully prepared, authentic dishes using impeccably fresh ingredients in a cheery setting. Their drunken noodles and massaman curry are memorable, as are the wonderful basil rolls. Entrees can be ordered in three degrees of spiciness—“spicy,” “hot,” or “Thai hot”—and the kitchen faithfully follows that order. The menu includes just two desserts, crème brulée and coconut cake, and both are lovely, creamy sweet finishes to a flavorful meal.
2. Guglhupf
City: Durham, NC
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (919) 401-2600
Address: 2760 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd. (U.S. 15-5
Description: With its airy, stone-and-light architecture, innovative salads and sandwiches, and delicately rendered pastries and cakes, Guglhupf feels like a mini vacation to a hip European city—not even the fact that you order at the counter takes away from the experience. The bakery turns out beautiful breads, cakes, cookies, and tarts. Their strudel is a flaky work of art, and their ethereal cream puffs put the stale imitations sold at grocery stores to shame. But before you even think about dessert, you will spend a while choosing from the cafe’s entrees, sandwiches, and salads. It’s a rare menu that offers you the choice of schnitzel or Niçoise salad, and the paninis are always a good bet.
3. Ninth Street Bakery
City: Durham, NC
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (919) 688-5606
Address: 136 E. Chapel Hill St.
Description: You can find Ninth Street bread in grocery stores and restaurants around the Triangle, but if you want it just-out-of-the-oven fresh, stop by the bakery in downtown Durham for a cinnamon roll and a cup of coffee, or a sandwich and bowl of fresh gazpacho. Ninth Street specializes in organic breads, pastries, and cookies. It’s cheap, too. All sandwiches are $5 and come with chips or baby carrots. Ninth Street is open for lunch only.
4. The Original Q Shack
City: Durham, NC
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (919) 402-4227
Address: 2510 University Dr.
Description: This democratic restaurant cooks up as much beef and chicken as it does pork, which pleases transplants unfamiliar with North Carolina’s preference for pig. Choose from smoked pork butt, chile-rubbed beef brisket, smoked chicken and turkey, St. Louis cut pork ribs, and smoked sausage. Sauces come on the side in two versions, a tomato-base spiked with chipotle and a vinegar-base with a hint of tomato and chiles. Sides like macaroni and cheese and fried okra are as good as the meat, and no one can resist adding a jalapeño deviled egg to their plate for 35 cents.
5. Blue Coffee Cafe
City: Durham, NC
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (919) 688-2233
Address: 202 N. Corcoran St.
Description: In downtown Durham, Blue Coffee is a roomy space with comfy couches, coffee drinks fueled by beans from local roasters Broad Street, and pastries from Ninth Street and Sweet Jane. There’s plenty of room to spread out, and kids are welcome to play at a table their size. The crowd is an interesting mix of suits, moms, and downtown hipsters.
6. Four Square
City: Durham, NC
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (919) 401-9877
Address: 2701 Chapel Hill Rd.
Description: Four Square’s beautifully renovated Victorian mansion is home to an eclectic menu. Start with pretzel-crusted oysters with green apple and endive sauerkraut or country ham–cured sea scallops, and move on to local barbecued pork belly with steamed buns and Asian pear relish or dolmas made with local collard greens and butternut squash. Finish things off with fig and coriander cheesecake or caramel corn and apple crepe. The by-the-glass wine list is extensive with a worldly scope that echoes the international inspiration of the menu. The setting is at once elegant and understated.
7. Nana’S
City: Durham, NC
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (919) 493-8545
Address: 2514 University Dr.
Description: Owner and chef Scott Howell studied at the Culinary Institute of America and cooked with renowned chefs around the world before returning to his native North Carolina. His menu is infused with his love of Southern food and his passion for French and Italian culinary traditions. Dishes could include venison carpaccio in a fennel crust and a grilled chicken over ratatouille and fried green tomatoes finished with red wine–thyme jus. It’s Southern fusion cooking at its highest level that puts the spotlight on locally grown produce and North Carolina’s coastal catches. The atmosphere is as invigorating as the menu, with walls painted in bright, warm reds and yellows and adorned with the works of local artists.
8. Piedmont
City: Durham, NC
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (919) 683-1213
Address: 401 Foster St.
Description: House-made charcuterie has put Piedmont on the national map as a destination for inventive food. The chefs use just about every part of the locally raised pigs they buy, rendering them into luscious pâtés, pork belly raviolini, and the like. The daily changing menu also includes dishes made with North Carolina fish, locally made cheese, and vegetables. A little cheaper than some of the more formal of the Triangle’s farm-to-table temples, Piedmont is a good place to sink your teeth into the area’s local-oriented food scene. The setting is an urban-chic renovation of a downtown Durham warehouse, comfortable but spare. Piedmont is also a popular brunch spot.
9. Bullock’S Barbeque
City: Durham, NC
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (919) 383-3211
Address: 3330 Quebec Dr.
Description: If you’re looking to sample a wide range of down-home Southern cooking, all of it prepared as if you were visiting family, Bullock’s Barbeque is the place to go. It’s a low-slung brick building that has all the ambience of a church fellowship hall decorated by scrapbookers. The food comes piled on the plate, and it’s clear that presentation is not a priority. What comes first is taste. Barbecue sandwiches, fried chicken, country ham, macaroni and cheese, turnip greens, and fried flounder sandwiches all come out just right. If you want to know what banana pudding is supposed to taste like—vanilla wafers soggy-crunchy from the creamy custard combining with slightly overripe bananas to create a wave of mild comfort—you’ll find it here.
10. Toast
City: Durham, NC
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (919) 683-2183
Address: 345 W. Main St.
Description: Everything Toast touches turns to sandwich gold, and the soup is nothing short of miraculous. Locally grown produce and meats go into the creative sandwiches that offer combinations of kale, ricotta, and sausage or mortadella, provolone, and pickled red onion. One of the homemade soups is always vegetarian, and they are anointed with top-quality olive oil. The cooler is full of specialty sodas and local beers, and Italian wines are available by the glass. It’s a small, popular downtown space that gets packed at lunch time. Large tables are scant, so be prepared to split up if you come with a group of more than five.
City: Durham, NC
Category: Restaurants
Address: 401 E. Chapel Hill St.
12. Vin Rouge
City: Durham, NC
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (919) 416-0406
Address: 2010 Hillsborough Rd.
Description: A short walk from Ninth Street, Vin Rouge offers a dinner menu that is a study in French classics. Poisson du jour, bouillabaisse rouille, and trout amandine are all can’t-miss choices. Two prix fixe menus—a three-course and a four-course—offer choices of house-made sausage du jour, salad Niçoise, and croque madame. The wine list provides a good variety of selections from throughout France, and the beer list includes several Belgians that suit the hearty fare. White tablecloths, red walls, and warm lights create a comfortable but elegant setting.
13. Wimpy’S
City: Durham, NC
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (919) 286-4380
Address: 617 Hicks St.
Description: Wimpy’s grinds the beef for its burgers fresh every morning and makes chili from scratch. That’s helped make this take-out place near Duke’s East Campus a Durham landmark for more than 20 years. The classic Carolina Burger—with chili, slaw, onions, and mustard—should be enough to satisfy most appetites. Those seeking a gullet challenge can order the Garbage Burger, a double cheeseburger topped with bacon, lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion, mayo, mustard, ketchup, chili, and coleslaw. If that’s lunch, plan on a small dinner.
14. Sitar India Palace
City: Durham, NC
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (919) 490-1326
Address: 3630 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd.
Description: Sitar offers lunch buffets every day and dinner buffets on Friday and Saturday nights. Saturday nights also feature sitar and tabla music. Among the favorites at Sitar are the naan stuffed with homemade cheese, the vegetable vindaloo, and the tender fish tikka. The large dining room features a brilliantly colored mural, and the bar area is cozy.
15. Pop’S
City: Durham, NC
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (919) 956-7677
Address: 605 W. Main St.
Description: The wood-fired pizzas at Pop’s are so good, it’s a wonder they serve anything else. In fact, once you have the pie with house-made meatballs, broccoli rabe, Parmesan, and roasted garlic, you might not ever order anything else. But you should, because it would be a crime to miss Pop’s Big Bowl of Mussels in their glorious white wine broth spiked with garlic, chile, and roasted tomato. Pop’s uses local and seasonal ingredients to great effect, and changes its lasagna and soup selections daily. The interior is cozy-cool with old wood floors, exposed brick walls, and soft lights.