Victoria Bouloubasis

“The life of the party at a beefsteak used to be the man who let out the most ecstatic grunts, drank the most beer, ate the most steak and got the most grease on his ears.” So wrote North Carolina native and renowned author Joseph Mitchell, whose 1939 opus in The New Yorker, “All You […]

As if we needed another excuse to eat local, Downtown Raleigh Restaurant Week (DineDowntownRaleigh.com) is upping the locavore ante in its third year. If you haven’t made reservations for the rest of this week’s special prix fixe, you still have time to savor the specials through Sunday. Twenty-eight restaurants in the downtown vicinity are offering […]

I’ll never forget my first Greek grilled cheese. As an awkward teenager touring UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus, I followed a pack of cool college kids up a rickety staircase on the corner of East Franklin and Henderson streets to Hector’s. That sandwich as a concept seemed brilliant to me: grilled cheese mushed into a pita, dressed […]

A homemade double chocolate cookie would probably calm anyone’s nerves. But add a pinch of real lavender to the batter and you’ve got an extra soothing dose of sweetness. Kifu Faruq is behind Kukia’s Cookies (kukiascookies.com), a recently launched business offering organic “cookies with a conscience.” Her Chocolate Lavender and Southern-inspired Chocolate Chip Lavender Pecan […]

One carefree sunny afternoon, while rocking on her front porch in Boylan Heights, Liza Zaytoun got to nibbling on a BLT. And then the wheels in her head started turning, remembering the days when she was tied to a cubicle for eight hours with no time to sit like this. It felt good to sit […]

Babylon 309 N. Dawson St. Raleigh 919-838-8595 Monday-Sunday 6 p.m.-2 a.m. At its soft opening earlier this summer, Babylon beckoned diners through a towering gate cut into a brick wall high enough to mask the lavish world unfolding inside. There in the center of a muted brick courtyard reminiscent of old city riads in Marrakech, […]