A few years back, on a few menus around the Triangle, the word “local” started cropping up here and there. You might have seen a salad made from “local greens” or an appetizer of “local heirloom tomatoes.” As time went on, restaurants would sometimes specify the farm that the produce came from. For certain restaurants, […]
Besha Rodell
Posted inNews
Enoteca Vin’s Ashley Christensen
Late in the spring of 2004, Ashley Christensen, the then 28-year-old chef of Enoteca Vin in Raleigh, was feeling a little down as she walked around the State Farmers’ Market one morning. She had just seen Food & Wine magazine’s annual Best New Chefs issue, and instead of being inspired by it as she had […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Kung pao shrimp, minus the MSG
The modern pan-Asian restaurant is almost as trendy these days as the tapas lounge. From corporate success stories like P.F. Chang’s to the new, locally funded, Asian inspired noodle bars and dim sum restaurants opening all across the Triangle, there is a new appreciation for Asian food that is both serious in terms of cuisine […]
Posted inGuides
A cornucopia of Triangle farmers’ markets
State Farmers’ Market 1201 Agriculture St., Raleigh Monday-Saturday 5 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday 8 a.m.-6 p.m. year-round The State Farmers’ Market in Raleigh hails from a time before farmers’ markets were part of the local and sustainable food movement. For the most part, the market was founded and is run in order to support North Carolina […]
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The life of a tomato
Joan Holeman holds her hand out and displays the seeds she has saved from last year. She and her husband, Charles, have been growing German Johnson tomatoes on this land for 15 years. Charles’ family has been farming on this land on and off for well over 100 years. Late in the winter, Joan sows […]
Posted inNews
Dine for relief
It may seem a little strange, the idea of going out and having a good old time, drinking wine and eating food, in order to help the victims of a natural disaster. I touched on this briefly earlier this year, when the tsunami spawned a flurry of benefit dinners, and it was as true then […]
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Giorgios is cookin’
If you have followed the career of Giorgios Bakatsias in the Triangle, you will know that the man always has something new up his sleeve. It’s as if Bakatsias has an endless supply of money to throw around in order to entertain us, and the results are quite varied. From the over-the-top conceptualism of Spice […]
Posted inFood & Drink
The blackberry scavenger
During the last few weeks in May, I set out one early evening with my son for a walk around our leafy Chapel Hill neighborhood. I pushed him in his stroller up the steep hill toward the older part of the neighborhood, where the houses are so cute they make my heart ache. Midway through […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Federal flavor
Chef Andy Magowan and his sous-chef Brian Avery walk an interesting line. They cure their own meats and make their own sausages; their pasta is handmade; they shop for local and organic produce at the Durham Farmer’s Market … and yet their place of employment, Federal on Main Street in downtown Durham, looks like, smells […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Bill Niman: An all-natural, pig-farming rock star
Bill Niman is something of a celebrity in the restaurant world. “He’s such a rock star,” one female maitre d’ sighed to me a few months ago. Not a term you would usually hear used to describe a pig farmerbut it’s true. Niman and his company, Niman Ranch, have almost single-handedly changed the face of […]