Project 20/10: Foodie movement gives Durham a new regional positioning (#15)

It's not Durham's only brand imagery. It's not Durham's dominant brand imagery. And it's not anything that other communities aren't positioning themselves towards as well.

But it's hard to look back on the 2000s and not see the rise of Durham's "foodie" movement as one of at least the twenty biggest stories of the decade.

As with other trends on BCR's Project 20/10 list, this is one which reflects in part a national movement, the rise of gourmet-eating as a trend throughout the decade, paired with rising interest in concepts like Slow Food and locavore dining that were nowhere to be seen a decade ago.

It would be too easy to think of this as a catch-all theme capturing the number of new restaurants that have opened in Durham over this decade. That's part of the theme here -- but it seems to be part of a bigger story.

And given Durham's support for home-grown chef talent, and for turning chefs into entrepreneurs helming their own kitchens, it's one that will likely have an impact on Durham in the coming decade.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There's a history waiting to be written on the rise of Durham's foodie movement. It traces itself back at least to Mary Bacon of Anotherthyme (among other restaurants), and saw progress in restaurants and catering firms through the 1970s and 80s.

In the late 1980s, Ben and Karen Barker opened Magnolia Grill, which would go on to earn the late, lamented Gourmet Magazine's pick twice as one of the best dozen or so restaurants in America.

During the 1990s, Nana's opened, as did Pop's, itself founded with the support of Nana's Scott Howell and the Barkers. And, of course, George Bakatsias became a serial restauranteur, with outfit after outfit in Durham.

Most of these new restaurants featured outside investment, but traditionally had a strong ownership stake by the chef him or herself. And the chefs who understudied in the kitchens of the Barkers, Howell and others would frequently go on to open their own restaurants in turn.

The 2000s saw a sharp uptick in the number of local restaurants aiming for the eating-out crowd, especially in and around downtown. Rue Cler became the first new restaurant in years to open up in the city center district; in a matter of years, Revolution and Dos Perros followed, along with options like Toast and, this year, Beyú Caffé.

Watts Grocery and Piedmont both earned buzz in online food message boards like Chow. And online blogs like Carpe Durham and Eat at Joe's became popular destinations.

(That there are a dozen or more food blogs in Durham compared with a much smaller set of news and political blogs says something about the appetite -- pun intended -- for this type of coverage.)

At the same time, a significant growth in Durham's Latino population saw the Bull City become a magnet of sorts for Mexican and South American cuisine, with 

With a few notable exceptions (Starlu being perhaps the most prominent), locally-owned restaurants fared well throughout the decade. 

Chain restaurants had more closures, though that didn't reflect a reduction in their numbers -- given that most of the closings stemmed from the demise of South Square and the ensuing closure of a half-dozen or so chain restaurants around it, while an equal or greater number of such establishments popped up further south on 15-501 nearer I-40 and at Southpoint.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So what makes this a top-20 trend for the decade?

First, the level of attention the restaurant scene has garnered regionally and nationally, most notably with Bon Appetit's naming Durham and Chapel Hill as the small-city foodie capital of America.

In conversations with friends outside the area, I've noticed how many of them around the Triangle have come to think of our two cities as places to head to dine out. (Raleigh, of course, has seen a similar growth in dining options in recent years as well.) That's a positioning and placement that I don't think existed a decade ago.

Second, the locally-grown element behind much of Durham's food gestalt is likely to have an impact on land uses in the broader region.

A big part of the success of the western half of the Triangle as a foodie draw has come from the focus on locally-sourced ingredients and foods, a movement that took off quickly in the Durham community.

The Durham Farmers Market was born at the decade's start, and drew a geographical line in the sand, allowing only vegetables and other products produced within a certain radius of Durham to be sold at the market.

From a small start in the parking lot of the old Durham Athletic Park, the market grew to a Measurement Inc. paved parking lot nearby, and finally to a dedicated pavilion in Durham's new Central Park downtown.

That's increasing interest in new start-up organic farms and businesses throughout northern Durham County and especially in less-developed Orange and Chatham, providing an interesting use for land in the northern Durham case that's poorly suited to suburban development thanks to watershed concerns -- though worries over non-organic agriculture's impact on water supplies looms large over discussions of Falls Lake pollution.

(In the case of Coon Rock Farm, the whole thing is an in-house virtuous cycle, with the agricultural venture of a onetime software entrepreneur plowing its wares back into Raleigh's Zely & Ritz and, when the project finishes coming together, downtown Durham's restaurant Eno -- which itself has drawn one of the country's most prominent farm-to-food restaurateurs from Portland, Ore. to the Bull City.)

And the interest in all things foodie has carried over into the city itself. SEEDS has become a successful non-profit by creating urban gardens and giving a new outlet to local youth, while the NEEM project 

A third factor in the importance of this movement: it's primed to be a positioning for travel and tourism to Durham in the coming years.

Business travel has been poised for decline for a couple of decades, fostered by better collaborative technologies, cost-consciousness over travel for training and conventions, and especially by system-shocks like 9/11 and the current recession.

And while sports bring in a significant tourism draw to the Bull City, and the DCVB's done a good job of marketing the range of activities in the city, I'd wager that dining (coupled with place-based tourism and an interest in Durham's industrial history) could become an über-theme for the city, much as visitors think of "the arts" when heading to Asheville, or history when venturing to Charleston.

Similarly, restaurants and dining have emerged from a recent Downtown Durham Inc. retail study of downtown as one of the best positionings for Durham's resurgent urban core. As the Herald-Sun noted in a recent article:

There aren't enough people living in the City Center -- the area within the downtown loop -- to support grocery stores and other neighborhood businesses, and suburban consumers can't be counted on to sustain demand when there are malls and shopping centers competing for their attention. 

That leaves Food and Beverage businesses, a segment with an existing foundation in the City Center, that could highlight a unique element of that area, meet existing demand and possibly come to be a symbol of Durham. 

"Food and Beverage meets these needs for you," said Heather Arnold, a consultant with Retail Compass. "It gives your culture another layer to organize around."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It may seem a stretch to imagine Durham's foodie excitement from the aughts turning into big business in the teens.

But it may not be such a crazy idea. Restaurants are the kind of business where one plus one can often equal three.

Young chefs want to learn from the best chefs, and gravitate towards cities like San Francisco, Chicago, Portland and the like where those options exist.

That they can then turn around and be welcomed into what's a fairly tight-knit group of chef/restaurant owners and find appreciation and economic success in that same community creates a virtuous cycle for further growth.

The kudos that Durham and Chapel Hill earned this decade for their farm-to-table and restaurant scenes may fade as a fad in the next decade. 

I suspect, though, that this is going to become a more and more distinct, and pervasive, theming for our little slice of North Carolina.

Comments

[Natalie]

I would add The Federal to the list of foodie places in Durham. It opened before Piedmont and Rue Cler and I think paved the way for a lot of the other places in the city center.

[Todd P]

The closed restaurant list in the South Square area is a long one of mostly regional or national chains, with many of the locations now vacant. I count at least 13:

Darryl's
Tripps, then On the Border (now Torero's in this spot)
O'Charleys (there was something before O'Charleys that also failed)
Applebees
Damon's, then Varsity Ale House (now a club?)
Pizza Inn
Boston Market
Macaroni Grill
Joe's Crab Shack
Western Steer Steakhouse (now the ABC Store)
Lone Star Steakhouse (moved to New Hope Commons)

[Jeremy T]

Todd: That's a pretty impressive list of failures. The 'upscale chains' in the mall proper seem to still be sticking around, presumably due to people hitting them up after a shopping trip, but perhaps people find this area simply too chaotic to be a dining destination in and of itself.

Which makes me wonder; if downtown ever manages to establish itself as something other than a place to eat, and traffic and parking become more troublesome, will people start abandoning the restaurants there and flee back to the burbs?

[Bryan Gilmer]

Didn't the founding chef of Piedmont in fact first make his name in Durham by cooking at The Federal and creating a menu of surprisingly fantastic food for a pub?

Also, surprised that the AmBacco restaurants as well as FourSquare, Guglhupf and Foster's didn't rate a mention. All doing fantastic things with fresh, local ingredients.

I would note as well that a key factor in supporting this food scene is Duke, with its well-paid faculty and staff, and until recently, generous expense accounts -- as well as all the affluent parents who come into town to eat, themselves, and/or leave a high-limit AmEx card with little Sally or Johnny Duke.

[Bull City Rising]

All: Great point on the Federal. FWIW, I left off Guglhupf, Fosters, and Four Square since they predate this decade, and I was trying to hit some historic highlights, not comprehensive lists of what came when -- but they are all certainly worthy of mention.

ATC has lots of solid dining options but none of them (I think) fit the locally-sourced food and chef-ownership models, though Tylers does get some of its food product locally. Well talk much more about ATC later on in the countdown (which is, by necessity, a broad thematic look at these issues.)

[Stockard Channing]

ATC's dining options are pretty weak in my opinion, other than Mellow Mushroom.

[Seth Vidal]

fowler's existed before the decade but I dare-say parker and otis is significantly better than fowler's was and I feel like I can rely on parker and otis to do great things with food.

Also I don't think enough good things can be said about Toast. They do simply wonderful things and if you've not tried the Tuscan Kale pannini you really do NOT know what you're missing. :)

Finally, while it may not count as a restaurant I'd like to think there is fair bit of 'foodie'-ness in locopops. Summer and Connie make wonderful flavors and in just a few short years locopops has established itself as nothing short of an institution of durham. I also think the amount of community involvement they have fostered with their work with seeds and the pup-pops sales is an excellent example of business doing WELL for themselves and doing GOOD for the community.

[Emily]

Well Guglhupf the bakery proper was there, but the cafe portion (where you can order sandwiches, salads, soups, etc. and all of the tables/water feature/etc) didn't open until 2004.

[TSQ75]

I'll add to the Local/slow food movements have been the surge in CSA enrollments. People are much more apt to support their local growers directly now by cutting out market middlemen and paying them directly...

and in that same vein, the resounding success of the charter season of Duke's Walking Fish CSF program (Comminity Supported Fishery), the first of it's kind on the east coast, outside of New England. Teamed up directly with an assortment of Cartaret County/Beaufort area fisherpersosns, It's first enrollment saw 400 or soo members.

that's really saying something...