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I have a great weakness for sweets and when I heard that a bakery had opened in downtown Durham almost three years ago, I was thrilled! Scratch Bakery was an instant success and had throngs of people coming to try out its homemade pies and cakes. Unfortunately due to my busy schedule, I hadn’t actually eaten there until recently.
I found out they were also serving lunch, so my friend, Kent and I decided to try out their lunch service. Scratch [...]

When I first heard people talking about chicken and waffles I thought, “Hmm…that sounds like an interesting combination.” I also thought it must be a Southern phenomenon as most of the places I heard that were serving chicken and waffles were places in Georgia.
So when Dames Almost World Famous Chicken and Waffles opened in downtown Durham, I was delighted. I knew that I’d eventually try it out! Every time I’d come by, there was a huge long line to get [...]

On the corner of Geer Street and Foster Street in downtown Durham is a quaint, little restaurant that has quickly become one of my “You have to try this place” restaurants when someone comes to town. Geer Street Garden is located in an old gas station and has lots of charm. Old brick walls, exposed air ducts with a sealed foam ceiling and a bull on the wall reminds you that you are in an old part of Durham, just [...]

Foodies in the Triangle region get really excited when Triangle Restaurant Week comes around. Triangle Restaurant Week is a week-long celebration of culinary excellence that features some of the top-flight restaurants in Durham, Raleigh, Cary, and Chapel Hill. Most of the restaurants will offer a three course meal for just $30 or some for $20. Considering that most of these restaurants would cost $60 or more for a three course meal, you better bet that we are going to attend [...]

Ah the sacrifices I sometimes have to make for you, my readers! I sacrificed counting my calories for you (twice, actually!) in the past few weeks so I could check out Rise in Durham.
Ever since I heard that the folks who created Only Burger were going to open a doughnut shop, I was anxious to try it out. Rise is located in a strip mall behind Streets at Southpoint near the Target. They specialize in doughnuts and biscuits. The place [...]

I was very flattered to get a tweet from Kim @TriangleLocalista to meet me recently. If you are ever looking to find out where to shop, eat, or play, Triangle Localista is a great source to find out what’s happening in the Triangle area. Kim is very enthusiastic about our region, so it was really nice to meet someone who cares about this region as much as I do!
We decided to meet at the Page Road Grill, a new restaurant [...]

If you haven’t already noticed the Triangle region is becoming a real Mecca for local breweries. Just this week, Fortnight Brewing Company announced it is fully funded and will be purchasing property somewhere in Cary. Fortnight’s beer will focus on making English beers.
Also this week, Crank Arm Brewing Company announced it will be locating in downtown Raleigh in the Warehouse District at 319 West Davie Street. Business partners Adam Eckhardt, Michael Morris and Dylan Selinger plan to feature two flagship [...]

One kind of restaurant that had been missing in the RTP area until very recently was one where you could take clients, or meet for business. You had to drive over to the airport area, or meet in one of the cities nearby to do that. Yet over 39,000 people work in RTP. Luckily a few years ago Mez, a contemporary Mexican restaurant, opened up on Page Road, just outside of the RTP boundaries. Now it has become the place [...]

I have eaten at Watts Grocery several times for lunch and thoroughly enjoyed it each time I have eaten there. The restaurant features ingredients from local farms, and typically uses items that are in season. Chef Amy Tournquist grew up in Durham and has been very committed to making this an icon in the restaurant scene and she has certainly succeeded in fulfilling her vision. But I had never been to Watts Grocery for brunch until a few weeks ago [...]

The other day my husband and I were taking our friend, John, around the Triangle. It was his first visit not only to RTP, but to the United States. He had traveled all the way from South Africa for a conference at the place where I work. We wanted to make sure he had a chance to try some North Carolina barbecue, so we took him to the Original Q Shack in Durham.
The Q Shack has been around for many [...]

Sometimes you want something light and comforting and nothing fits the bill better than Pho. What is Pho, you ask? It’s a Vietnamese dish that is soup filled with lots of great ingredients including noodles, vegetables, fresh herbs and more.
The other day I was meeting some old friends for lunch and it was very hot outside, so none of us wanted a heavy lunch. Besides, as gals in our forties, we are all trying to stay trim and fit! We [...]

My friend, Tom, and I wanted to go to downtown Durham the other day to have lunch. We were headed to Dames Chicken and Waffles, but it was closed due to a problem with their air conditioning unit. So we started to walk down Main Street and just a couple of doors down was a new place called Taberna Tapas Diner. So, we decided to give it a try. The inside of the restaurant was really attractive, with exposed brick [...]

When my sister and I were younger, we were picky eaters (I was even more so than my sister). One thing we hated were beets. That was not the fault of the beet, but  in the way they were prepared. Back in the 70′s, people mainly ate them as canned beets or the dreaded pickled beets. To me, they were sour and bitter.
This was not the fault of our mother, either, who was actually a great cook. She was before [...]

One of our favorite Thai restaurants in the Triangle region is Thai Cafe in Durham. This restaurant has been around for many years, because it delivers consistent, high quality Thai dishes at an affordable price. Owners Oddy and his sister Kanchana have built a reputation as being one of the better Thai restaurants in the area.
Scott and I stopped by to eat dinner there recently when we were having a craving for Thai food. The restaurant is located in a [...]

 
One of my favorite RTP-area lunch places is Cafe Meridian, located off of Highway 55 near Meridian Parkway. This place has a variety of hot and cold dishes, some with a Mediterranean flair. The place was originally called Doce and was owned by George Bakatsias, but he sold it a few years ago to Rich and Gina Kazazian. It was a good move. The Kazazians take pride in their restaurant and consistently produce fresh,  high quality foods.
The menu has some [...]

I don’t know about you, but one food I usually crave is a good pizza. Nothing is better than one that is steaming hot, right out of the oven, with lots of mozzarella cheese and garlic!
There have been a couple of food trucks that feature pizza that have popped up in the Triangle area and one I particularly like is Pie Pushers. Pie Pushers truck is mainly seen around the city of Durham. They serve pizzas that feature locally grown, [...]

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not a big beer drinker, but when I do drink it, I want a really good, locally crafted beer. One of my favorite places to go these days is Fullsteam Brewery in Durham. Durham is the home to many tremendous local, independent restaurants and this brewery fits well with the food scene.The most admirable thing owners Shawn Lilly Wilson and Chris Davis are doing is to create a southern-style beer.
Fullsteam has a fun, [...]

I was roaming around one of the many food truck rodeos the other day, chatting with the proprietors and trying many goodies. One of the places that caught my eye was the The Parlour  Ice Cream food truck. How can you not like ice cream? Our friends at BikeCOFFEE said that this truck is trending as one of the best restaurants on Yelp. That’s got to tell you something!
This ice cream really is “the bomb” too! They had so many [...]

With the weather being so warm lately, I have been thinking about wanting to eat outside and I always loved to go to A Gracious Plenty on Cornwallis Road and Alston Avenue because they have a really nice patio section. I had noticed recently that the sign had been changed and was no longer called A Gracious Plenty anymore, so when my friend and financial consultant, Kent Thompson, asked me to go to lunch with him, we decided to eat [...]

Most days when I’m at work, I’m too busy to think about getting in the car and traveling somewhere to eat lunch. I usually try to make lunches ahead of time, but there are days I just don’t feel like cooking either. These days there’s a solution to this problem and it’s called Lunchbox N’ More. Thao Beck, formerly one of the partners of the Mom’s Delicious Dishes food truck, has started a new business.
Each week Thao emails her menu [...]

After spending a day watching documentaries at the Fullframe Documentary Festival and feeling uneasy about the world, it was a nice relief to take a stroll down Foster Street and see a sunny, pink daisy on the door that immediately made me smile. “It’s Daisy Cakes!” I declared. I had heard about Daisy Cakes back when they just had their food truck and were serving their cupcakes at the Durham Farmer’s Market.
About a year ago, they purchased this cute little [...]

I’m not usually a big fan of sandwiches, but some places make them so well that they are a pleasure to eat. Toast, a little sandwich restaurant in downtown Durham, is one of these places. Toast opened up about three years ago and calls itself a Pannioteca (Italian sandwich shop).
Toast uses a farm to fork concept and buys ingredients that are in season and are local and pares these ingredients with meats and cheeses that they buy from Italy. The [...]

For several months I was writing reviews on Eat It, North Carolina, thanks to Charlie Brinson. He has been a great mentor and I so appreciate having been able to write entries on his blog. But it was making me feel really guilty that I was writing so much on someone else’s blog. That was one reason I decided to branch out on my own. So, in order to entice you to check out his blog, I’m going to give [...]

Durham, as many people know, has become the hip place to be in the Triangle. Much of this can be attributed to the dozens of new restaurants that have popped up in recent years, along with the development of the American Tobacco complex and the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC). But, there were also some groundbreaking restaurants who had started the trend years before it became popular to hang out in Durham after dark, including Pop’s Restaurant, A Durham Trattoria.  [...]

My friends and I went to Gregoria’s Kitchen for dinner tonight. I have to explain that these two couples, and my husband and I all met in Tampa back in the early 1990′s. Having lived in Tampa and having Cuban food easily available anytime we wanted it, we became Cuban food snobs. So, every Cuban place that has opened in the Triangle (except the Old Havanna Sandwich Shop) has not come even close to what we think of when we [...]

Last night I ventured out again to meet fellow foodies at the G2B Gastropub in Durham. Andrea Weigl, food writer for the News & Observer, and Johanna Kramer, better known as @Durhamfoodie, hosted the Winter Triangle Foodie Tweetup event. I had never been to G2B before, so I was excited to try their food and also to meet a bunch of new people (even though I feel like I know some of them from reading their Twitter feeds and blogs [...]