Piedmont Restaurant will serve its last meal on February 22, after an out-of-state investor purchased the building and gave them the boot.
The restaurant sent out a press release on Tuesday afternoon stating that buyers from “outside of North Carolina” had purchased the space on Foster Street that Piedmont currently leases. The new buyers, according to the Piedmont release, intend to “recapture” the space.
Piedmont’s last night will be on February 22. Owner and executive chef Jamie DeMent says that she plans to go ahead with serving a previously-planned five-course “California Wine Dinner” on Thursday evening.
Piedmont Restaurant was opened in 2006 by Triangle restaurant veterans Andy Magowan, Abby Pearce, and Drew Brown. In 2010, current owners Jamie DeMent and Richard Holcombe purchased the restaurant with a vision of transforming the Italian menu into one that prioritized locally-sourced, seasonal Southern cuisine.
“Piedmont is the perfect Durham restaurant because diners care,” DeMent told the INDY. “The food that’s on the table here, we know the farmers, we know the fisherman, we know who dug up the beets. It’s not just hurting us, it’s hurting the purveyors.”
DeMent and Hocolmbe also own Coon Rock Farm, a fifty-five-acre family farm which runs along the Eno River and supplies much of the restaurant’s produce.
The building’s new owner is an investment group from Washington, D.C., Dement says. They gave the restaurant until the end of February to clear out of the former 1930s Nash dealership. DeMent says they have no plans to relocate.
“We’re devastated,” Dement says. “That’s an understatement, to be honest.”
Contact deputy arts + culture editor Sarah Edwards at [email protected].
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So the Piedmont was operating with no lease? Why would somebody do that? That seems like an exceptionally bad decision (for this very reason).