The dining room of The Restaurant at the Durham Hotel
Just before the evening becomes too dark to see the skyline from the roof of The Durham Hotel, our denim-aproned, Converse-wearing waitress walks the carrot dog to our table.
I spent the drive from Raleigh into downtown Durham considering the technique behind a vegetarian hotdog, so I'm now on the edge of my soft, brown leather seat: Is the carrot churned through a meat grinder? Made from bits and bobs? Is the casing shaped from carrot skins?
"This," I whisper, "is not what I expected."
My partner looks at our carrot dog, at me and again at our carrot dog: "It's exactly what I expected," he replies.
This is because it's exactly what it sounds likea hickory-smoked carrot, stuffed in a squishy bun and topped with green tomato chow-chow (or your choice of sauerkraut, sweet onion relish, ketchup or mustard). It is firm, like a snappy-skinned sausage, and very smoky. As with any good ballpark dog, the bun is buttery, the relish bright.
Much like the broccoli dog at Amanda Cohen's Dirt Candy or the Carrots Wellington at John Fraser's Narcissa, the carrot dog looks at our meat-obsessed culture and laughs. There is an animal-made Butcher's Hot Dog, too, but this carrot is bold and independent, funny and chic, the sort of city slicker your sad, suburban, crisper-drawer vegetables want to become.
The carrot dog is also the last thing you'd expect when you hear the name Andrea Reusingwhich you probably have, if you live in the Triangle and follow the area's food scene. Reusing opened her farm-focused, Asian-fusion restaurant, Lantern, in Chapel Hill in 2002. Nine years later, she earned a James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Southeast, and Lantern became a destination on the national map. In a profile with The Huffington Post's Makers project, she explained, "The practical translation of that is that you get to do things that you didn't get to do before."
When Reusing announced that, after more than a decade, she was taking on a second culinary venture, she couldn't stress enough that the two concepts are unrelatedAmerican not Asian, a hotel instead of a stand-alone spot. "This will not be a Lantern in Durham," she told Eater.
Served on the roof, just after the sun slips away, the carrot dog says she wasn't kidding.
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The Durham Hotel opened in July. The building, which previously housed the Home Savings and Mutual Community Savings banks, was built in the late '60s. The restaurant floor is a red, beige and black carpet, in a bold, modern design. Imagine a beautifully high-budget Mad Men set.
There are navy seats and mustard chairs, booths of supple camel leather and golden geometric lanterns, a two-floor window and some enormous greenery. With her wide skirt swaying back and forth as she shows you to your table, even the host seems plucked from mid-century America.
Reusing spearheads the entire food operation at the hotel, including the 80-seat restaurant (you're practically in it as soon as you walk in) and the rooftop lounge and bar. They serve from separate menus, and their names are, well, minimalistic: The Restaurant at The Durham and The Roof at The Durham.
There is a "lobby lounge," too, which blends into the restaurant so seamlessly you may have trouble telling the two apart. From 5 to 7 p.m., through the winter, the lobby lounge offers $1 oysters on the half shell, as many or as few as you'd like. The Restaurant, on the other hand, offers oysters at market price, with a minimum of six per order. I saw several groups sit down at a restaurant table only to have a brief, confused conversation with a server before relocating to the lounge.
The hotel also features an all-day coffee shop, which will soon offer lunch specials. And breakfast. And room service for guests. And as of this Sunday, brunch, too. This is a lot for me, the humble eater, to track, let alone Reusing, who maintains her flagship restaurant a dozen miles away.
For now, though, let's escape to the roof, to the top of the city. The sky is a swirl of ash and indigo, and the wind is awful. Just as I wonder how the hotel plans to use the space year-round, I notice heat lamps. I wish they were on.
Our server accessorizes the carrot dog with "picnic eggs" and fried chicken. The former is just one egg, sliced in half. It's a damn good deviled egg, even for $4. You can pick between smoked fish and N.C. trout roe or last summer's chiles. No matter the question, my answer is always smoked fish. Piled atop a mountain of creamy yolk, it lends the egg a savory oomph. The trout eggs, orange and nearly glowing, are delightfully crunchy and amusingly meta.
The fried chicken is less North Carolina than chic North Carolina hotel. Three iPhone-size pieces of boneless, dark, tender meat come with a beautifully bumpy, shattering crust, more like airy tempura than the standard sturdy coating. Bread-and-butter pickles curl together like flower petals, and a tangy remoulade swishes beneath it all. It's not the Southern fried chicken an out-of-towner might expect.
The concise rooftop menu includes items like beef tartare with potato crisps and guacamole with masa tortillas, too. But I have to pass: After being stalled by those temptress $1 oysters, my partner and I were behind schedule to fit in The Roof before our reservation at The Restaurant. Our server was on it, though; food arrived in less than 10 minutes and the check promptly thereafter.
Downstairs we went, where dinner begins with bread from Chicken Bridge Bakery: sour, wide-crumbed, wildly good. I was studying the menu when I noticed a woman at a nearby table shunning hers. "I already know what I want," she said. "The burger."
My partner and I give each other the nod.
But first, drinks. The cocktail menu is gin- and rum-heavy, with dramatic names that feel silly to say aloud"The Undeniable Truth, please," or "El Rosario, por favor!" The former tweaks a classic martini, with dry gin, dry vermouth and citrusy orange bitters. In lieu of a drunken green olive, an orb of extra-virgin olive oil floats around and, every now and then, makes an intense sip softer and richer. El Rosario features cachaça and Fernet-Branca, sweetened by honey, speckled with black pepper and decorated with a giant mint leaf, a fragrant fascinator.
The main menu splits into several subsets: raw bar (oysters and caviar), appetizers, boards (cured meat or cheese), entrées, small vegetable plates (all for $7) and beef. The last category includes a Wilkshire Farm bone-in ribeye with a roasted marrowbone and beef-fat fries. It can serve two to four people. On my first visit, the smallest option was 34 ounces, for a little more than $90.
But then there's the steak's humbler cousin, the burger. Topped with shaved pickle, red onion and cheese (American the first time, Cabot Clothbound Cheddar the second), it arrives on a buttered potato bun with fries and pickled carrot salad. The diner nearby was right: It is fantastic enough for a return trip. Made from a dry-aged, house-ground blend of chuck, brisket and short rib, the patty is liberally seasoned and lick-your-wrists greasypure, primal, expertly executed American comfort food.
I can't help but wonder if that's the whole point. The Durham's menus, if anything, feed upon familiarity. The ambiance may be ornate, the prices nearly special-occasion, but the food concept is downright homey, even whimsical.
Take the salads. One is a "wedge," with roasted squash, marinated kale, blue cheese, pepitas and pomegranate. The squash is the wedge. I ordered the chopped salad, with Russian dressing, tomato, pickles and hard-boiled eggthe same mishmash I've ordered at Jewish delis and shore dives. Sound familiar to you, too? At The Restaurant, instead of a rushed, rough chop, the pieces are pristinely cubed. Rather than a cloyingly ketchup-heavy Russian dressing, this version is vinegary and bright.
The scrapple and the barbecue shrimp shouldn't be missed, either. The former is a cornmeal-crispy pork terrine, with a center as lush and fatty as pulled pork. A sunny-side egg oozes yolk everywhere. The acidity of pickled local apples lures you out of the porky rabbit hole. Four shell-on, wild-caught shrimp swim in zesty hot sauce. When I pressed our server for the specific ingredients, she replied, "Oh! There are so many. Let me find out for you."
Otherwise friendly, attentive and authoritative, she never did.
The small vegetable plates rotate. In the few months The Restaurant has been open, pole beans with country ham have made way for roasted sweet potato with chile, honey and cider vinegar. A turnip gratin with garlic and cream and roasted broccoli have stuck around.
The last was truly delightful. Two mammoth spears, stalks and all, stretch the entirety of the plate. Charred in places to the point of blackness, it takes polite restaurant conventions, tosses them off The Roof and speaks instead to the dark depths of your soul. Like the broccoli, the roasted pork chop shoves the boundaries of char, showing a fiery boldness that acclaimed chefs like Francis Mallmann have also explored. The burn on these dishes offers bitterness to contrast sweet, crust to contrast fat. It is thrilling.
Other entrées, though, less so: Roasted-to-order, the chicken is good but not great. The smoked cauliflower cassoulet is deceptively vegan, with squash, butter beans and a creamy potato sauce conjuring a gooey smoked Gouda. Served in an oven-hot ramekin and topped with crispy crumbs, it, too, is comforting and incredibly rich given its constraints. Inevitably, it's less satisfying than the burger or chop.
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Froufrou spots like The Restaurant often share several themes: meta-minimalist names, a seriously polite staff, picture-perfect decor, dim lights. Dessert, too, often falls somewhere between an afterthought and a disappointment.
Here, surrounded by the machinery of the hotel's hospitality industry, that's not the case. Like the savory menus that play around with cookout classics, the sweet options are down to earth: coconut cake, chocolate pudding, ice cream sundae. I ordered the first and the last and can recommend both. The cake sports six layers, with toasty fresh coconut and shiny meringue. It is moist and dense and rich in a tres leches sort of way. If your grandma was an award-winning chef, this would be her signature. And the sundaewith roasted banana ice cream, salted caramel, peanut brittle and brûléed bananasis good enough to finish, even after you've already had too much.
As I did just that, I looked around the dining room on a crowded Saturday night.
"How many people do you think are actually staying here?" my partner asked.
"That guy," I said, pointing to a middle-aged man in a suit. He sat in the lobby lounge, with a laptop as a companion. "For sure."
No one else seemed to fit the mold.
If a hotel is a transitory space where people never stay too long, the true challenge of its restaurant is not winning over guests but locals. Against a veil of socioeconomic concerns about gentrification and strata of race, class and privilege in the city, The Durham's restaurants are at least standing on their own merits, attempting to welcome locals with food that doesn't clash so much with its surroundings.
If you do stop by for dinner sometime, I'll be the one sipping an olive oil cocktail and forgoing the menu. I already know what I want.
This article appeared in print with the headline "Guest rewards"
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Photo by Alex Boerner
Dry-Aged House Blend Burger
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Photo by Alex Boerner
BBQ shrimp
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Photo by Alex Boerner
The El Rosario cocktail
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Photo by Alex Boerner
Bartender Brian Markham pours a Green Man porter
