Around Town: Carolina Inn Updates Dining Areas, Menus

Posted on July 15, 2016

Less than a decade shy of its 100th birthday, The Carolina Inn has reinvigorated its approach to food and drink at its Crossroads restaurant.

Out went the formal dining room and the cramped bar tucked behind it, replaced with an open floor plan with more flexible seating and eating arrangements. The inn hired 3 North, based in Richmond, Va., and the design firm that did its 1995 renovation, to modernize the space. The designers flipped around the layout, so the bar is the first thing patrons see. They removed the tablecloths, added sleekly modern tables and chairs and installed banquette seating across from the bar.

Now the dining areas can be separated by sliding glass panels or opened to the bar area for larger celebrations, such as Tar Heel victories. General manager Mark Sherburne calls the Crossroads remake “an evolution” and allows that some longtime patrons might miss the more formal dining room.

Meanwhile, menu changes include more sharing options, more appetizers and other starter items, all locally sourced 
when possible, by chef James Clark. The brunch buffet has been scaled back, but Clark has introduced a new selection of entrees and self-serve sides. Sherburne says pricing remains roughly the same.

The makeover includes a new outdoor dining area with fire pits and, for the time-pressed, a “grab-and-go” market near the entrance to the restaurant, offering Muddy Dog Coffee espresso drinks, croissants, salads and sandwiches.

Hours: breakfast 6:30-11 a.m. Monday-Saturday, until 10:30 a.m. Sunday; lunch 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Saturday;  dinner 5:30-9 p.m. weekdays, until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday; brunch 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday

Crossroads at The Carolina Inn, 211 Pittsboro St., Chapel Hill, 919-918-2777

 

Plenty on Midway’s Plate

Here’s something for everyone who has ever bought some particularly fetching root vegetable at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market and then wondered what to do with it.

Durham native Kathy Ellis Gunn, a woman with deep roots in the food business, says everyone should know how to buy and cook fresh, seasonal ingredients. So she recently opened Midway Community Kitchen on the corner of West Rosemary and North Graham streets. The idea: Let people take charge of their food destinies.

The former store has been remade with a professional galley kitchen running the length of the back wall and long butcher‑ block tables seating eight or more along the front by the windows. Cookbooks tossed invitingly on the tables express the prevailing attitude: There’s the No Time to Cook Book and Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook. A garage door, repaneled in clear glass, slides down to separate the eating space from the kitchen. “It’s very sculptural,” said Fran Ferrell ’90 of the Village Baker, who stopped work in the kitchen to demonstrate for a visitor.

Patrons can take cooking classes from guest chefs, such as Ricky Moore of Durham’s Saltbox Seafood Joint, or learn how to handle a whole hog with Ross Flynn of Left Bank Butchery in Saxapahaw. Dull knives? Learn how to sharpen and use them properly. Clueless children? Send them to a kids’ cooking class. Aspiring chefs can rent space in Midway’s commercial kitchen to prepare foods for sale.

Gunn also plans to offer healthy grab-and-go foods made on site. She hopes Midway will attract UNC students and frazzled workers who rely too much on prepackaged fast food.

Hours: 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Sunday, or by appointment.

Midway Community Kitchen, 505 W. Rosemary St., Chapel Hill

 

Invest in Stocks at Farmers Market

Speaking of the Carrboro Farmers’ Market, a new vendor, stock maker Kate Elia, spends hours over a hot stove so home cooks can invest their time elsewhere.

Elia is on a mission with her Growers and Cooks to support responsible producers and bring high-quality stocks to home cooks. She simmers bones of only pasture-raised animals, fresh herbs and vegetables and makes basic chicken, vegetable and smoked-pork stocks, as well as seasonal specialties. Home cooks can use them to deepen flavors of cold summer soups or freeze until needed for cold days when 
only hot soup will satisfy. Elia’s website, growersandcooks.com, has recipes and ideas, not only for soups, but also for rice, grains, breakfast dishes and other menus.

Elia is a Chapel Hill native; her mother, Jean Elia, is associate provost for strategy and special projects at UNC. After college at Vanderbilt University, Kate moved to California to harvest vineyard grapes, quickly learning that “wine is not some luxury product. It’s a farm product.” Next she went to New York, producing videos for Wine Spectator. She soon found she was spending her free time talking to the farmers at Union Square, cooking and experimenting with stocks. So she came home to purvey her stock in trade at farmers markets (she’s also selling at the Eno River Farmers’ Market in Hillsborough), in a growing list of local food retailers and online.

Hours: 3-6 p.m., Wednesday, April-November.

Growers and Cooks, Carrboro Farmers’ Market, 301 W. Main St., Carrboro

 

Closings

Vinyl Perk opened on Rosemary Street in 2013, serving coffee and old-fashioned-but-currently-hip vinyl records. As in those jukebox diners of old, coffee-sipping patrons could play the songs of their choice but without paying a quarter. The landlord, owner of the barbershop next door, didn’t renew the lease, so owner Jay Reeves is looking for space in Carrboro. … The Chapel Hill Fan Shop — which has been in the small row of shops behind Vespa Ristorante at 306 W. Franklin St. selling souvenirs to Tar Heels fans for two years — closed in mid-June. The store manager said that the corporate owner, Follett, decided to close after losing to Barnes & Noble College in its bid to take over UNC’s Student Stores. … Carrboro’s Peccadillo bar, tucked speakeasy-style behind the Carolina Car Wash and Detail at 100 Brewer Lane, closed in April. Owner Tim Neill, who opened the bar in 2011, also closed his Bar Lusconi in Durham.

— Ann Loftin