Holiday Food Drive at the Farmers' Market

The Carrboro Farmers' Market is hosting a holiday food drive this Saturday, December 12th, for hungry families in Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Orange County, and Durham. Fresh Food for the Holidays will accept your tax-deductible donations of food or money to prepare meals to deliver to sister organizations for distribution.

The Farmers' Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday and is located at West Main Street and Laurel Avenue. Additional information can be found here.

Cliff's Meat Market

100 West Main Street, Carrboro, NC 27510
919 942 2196

Cliff's Meat Market is the epicenter of Carrboro's carnivorous food scene. Cliff Collins opened for business in the 1970s and has supplied many of Carrboro's best restaurants ever since. Cliff's offers a range of meats from the standard (ham hocks, ground beef) to the less-standard (rabbit, pork belly, carne al pastor), and if you aren't exactly sure what you're looking for, just ask Cliff for help (he's far from shy).

In addition to meat, Cliff's offers an array of groceries, with beer, wine, and Latino fare (fruits, vegetables, and spices) well stocked and fairly priced. Cliff's is open until six (closed Sundays) and catercorner from Tyler's Taproom. Parking can be an issue, but there is a small gravel lot next door and a larger lot behind The Clean Machine.

Bon Appetit Write-up of Chapel Hill/ Carrboro and Durham

The piece from Bon Appetit is a nice little appreciation of what local farmers and restauranteurs have created in Chapel Hill/ Carrboro and Durham: a symbiotic relationship between food producers and food preparers in this half of the Triangle. If you're like me, you can get a little sick to the stomach after reading too much food writing; it's often so decadent that reading it feels like eating an entire meal of desserts. But I like Andrew Knowlton's write-up because it gives equal praise to the local growers who make luminous establishments such as Acme and Watts Grocery possible. Enjoy.

Carrboro's Local Farm Tour

Carrboro's urban farms will be on display this Saturday. The fifteen-stop tour, beginning at 3 p.m. and ending with a potluck dinner at 7 p.m., will start from the future site of Carrboro Raw (bare lot between the Spotted Dog and Maple View).

Katie's Soft Pretzels to Close

Carr Mill Mall's pretzel outlet, Katie's Soft Pretzels, will close this month. Further details and an appreciation from the Chapel Hill News can be found here.

After-School Farm Tour

The Quite Contrary Farm now offers Carrboro children a chance to learn about urban farming. Beginning September 14th, the group will meet at Carrboro Elementary Monday through Thursday at 2:30 p.m. to walk to the farm. Find further details here.

Chapel Hill/ Carrboro Restaurant Tour

Triangle Food Tour operates restaurant tours in Raleigh, NC and our little abode, Chapel Hill/ Carrboro. For the Chapel Hill/ Carrboro tour, a group (ten max.) of adults will meet at the Franklin Hotel, departing at 2:30 p.m. to sample the town and its flavors at six to nine restaurants. A $28 ticket gains access to the tour, so it may just be a great deal and fast way to acquaint oneself with our town's culinary establishment. As of today, Chapel Hill/ Carrboro slots remain open for October 24th.

Chapel Hill/ Carrboro Write-up in "Garden & Gun"

The newly published article, "Life on the Hill," comes from Garden & Gun, the Southern interest magazine. Messieurs Tower and Brown get much right in their piece, including their observations on how Chapel Hill and Carrboro have an identity crisis -- is this or is this not a Southern town? -- and how the town's denizens benefit enormously from this and other such tension: rural and urban, provincial and cosmopolitan, town and gown, old and new.

What does this have to do with food? Because of the tensions above, we are all proud owners (figuratively, of course) of restaurants serving up on any given night Pho, tacos with tripas, neapolitan pizza, sole meuniere, shrimp 'n' grits, goat curry, and quail stuffed with foie gras. We are a town with many types of people who contribute both the know-how and the market to make such food offerings possible. One group comes from North Carolina towns, many smaller than Chapel Hill/ Carrboro, and this group is usually excited to live in a town as cosmopolitan as Chapel Hill/ Carrboro, and they are open to trying whatever they find here; another group comes from cities outside North Carolina, maybe California, the Midwest, or wherever, and they seek the variety of foods here that they had back at home; there are also those who love Chapel Hill/ Carrboro's very manageable size, but who have traveled widely in the US and abroad and who don't believe our town's small size locks us into a provincial menu. We are a small town with a tight community, but we have much to offer and a world of experience behind our offerings.

This is not to overstate our case, though. I must admit I am envious when friends from New York relate stories of avant-garde theatre and ordering Ethiopian food at 4 a.m. Yes, we are certainly lacking in some areas of food and culture, and although we have much that is to be envied in some respects-- try finding decent NC barbecue in NYC -- we will also always be playing catch-up in others. What I wouldn't give for a Carrboro Arthouse Cinema or a decent Cuban restaurant! But to have what we have in Chapel Hill/ Carrboro, with great public schools and affordable housing to boot (I didn't say "free housing"), we can be pretty proud of ourselves. "Life on the Hill" should appeal to Chapel Hill/ Carrboro residents, ex-patriots, and future citizens.

Looking Glass

The Looking Glass, another relatively new coffee house for Carrboro, opened in April 2009 at West Main Street and West Poplar Avenue in the section sometimes called Midtown Carrboro. The Looking Glass offers another alternative to Carrboro's long-established coffee spots, the Open Eye Cafe and http://www.weaverstreetmarket.coop/, and it has some distinct advantages over those two downtown spots. First, Looking Glass is located in the middle of Carrboro, where Carrboro's population mostly lives, so it easily accessible; second, it is spacious inside and never feels crowded; third, it offers ample parking, a semi-precious resource in this town; and last, the outdoor seating and shade trees offer a pleasant alternative to the Open Eye's sun-bleached front porch.

The Looking Glass is an earthy cafe with high-quality coffee and tea products, with sandwiches and pastries. Interestingly, it features a boutique in the business's rear resembling a very clean "head shop," with skateboards, incense, and other related products. The walls feature local artists' work and the cafe hosts music. Closed Mondays, though, which is a bummer.

The Station

The Station is a relative newcomer to Carrboro's late-night scene, but it has quickly established itself on the Carrboro/West Chapel Hill bar circuit comprising also Fuse, the Reservoir, the Orange County Social Club, and other longer-established watering holes. Located at Main Street and Roberson in downtown Carrboro in an old depot, the Station is officially the bar section of Southern Rail, but much like Tyler's/the Speakeasy and the Lantern/Lantern Bar, the Station feels like a wholly separate entity from its restaurant counterpart. The Station has an entirely different vibe from Southern Rail, remaining pretty quiet at dinner hours and becoming very busy and staying that way until close at 2 am. Most nights have live music or a DJ, and Wednesday nights have the especially popular Station Trivia, MCed by Mark Dorosin (of Hell Trivia fame) and beginning at 9 pm. Drink specials Sunday through Thursday. No membership required.

The Open Eye Cafe once promoted itself as Carrboro's Living Room, so the Station should consider billing itself as Carrboro's porch. On most weekend nights, the front and back porches are spilling over with Carrborites (Carrburghers?) as well as others making the trip from Durham and Raleigh. One doesn't see many college students at the Station, with most patrons comfortably in the 25 to 35 year-old range: this might be a turn-off for some, but it is a great selling point to many locals unaffiliated with the university. The Station's interior is non-smoking, a fact which will itself become trivia once all of North Carolina's non-private-club bars become smoke-free next year.

Johnny's

Johnny's is a coffee house occupying half of the old bait-and-tackle shop on Carrboro's West Side at W. Main Street and Westview Drive. Johnny's is in the rear half of the building -- a tienda is inside the front entrance -- and offers coffee roasted by Jessee's, sandwiches by Annie's Apron, pastries from Durham's Guglhupf, local produce, and more. The biggest selling point may be the enormous patio to rear and side of Johnny's, with enough tables for a small army of locavores. Nights feature Bingo, catered dinners, and other events. Cash only, but fortunately there is an in-store ATM.

Welcome to Carrboro Food

Welcome to Carrboro Food, promoting Carrboro, NC's food outlets to residents and visitors. I will not write reviews myself, but encourage others to post comments on their own experiences eating or shopping in town. My desire is simply to create a useful site on Carrboro's restaurants, coffee houses, grocery stores, or specialty outlets for gourmands and cooks of all stripes.