The NY Times seems to have a growing fondness for our area and our "gastronomical" delights. Its great to see our corner of NC getting its due.
Btightleaf, Downtown, great bars and dining spots, nightlife locales, ballpark, performing arts center - what more can you ask from a town?
Durham Dining: Pies, Panini and Barbecue
An office party at Revolution.
By INGRID K. WILLIAMS
A DECADE ago, a suggestion to head downtown for dinner in Durham, N.C., would have been derided for falling somewhere between foolish and absurd. The area, full of vacant tobacco warehouses and boarded-up storefronts, was anything but a dining destination.
“It was pretty much a ghost town after 5 p.m. or so,” said Kelli Cotter, who, with her husband, Billy, opened the panini shop Toast in downtown Durham three years ago.
But in the last few years, downtown has been transformed — a ghost town no longer — and an exciting, unexpected food hub has emerged.
“It’s been on this very slow, not too steep path to revitalization,” said Phoebe Lawless, who opened the bakery Scratch last year.
Durham’s downtown comprises a hodgepodge of disparate micro-neighborhoods (called districts) that radiate from the City Center, a compact urban triangle. When I lived in Durham in the mid-2000s, downtown’s progress was nascent. It began in the American Tobacco district, an area adjacent to the City Center that was once dominated by a blighted former tobacco factory. Now that district has grown into a full-fledged entertainment complex, bookended by the still-handsome Durham Bulls minor league baseball stadium and, since 2008, the $44 million Durham Performing Arts Center.
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