Media Continue to Rave About Durham

This week Durham has caught the attention of several major national publications like The New York Times, Garden & Gun, Bon Appetit, and The New Yorker with its spate of notable restaurants and features.


Garden & Gun readers lauded popular Durham burger restaurants Bull City Burger and Only Burger as having the "South's Best Burgers."

The New York Times visited Durham's Central Park District in "A Corner of Durham, N.C., Comes to Life." Places featured included The Pit, Geer St. Garden, Fullsteam Brewery, Cocoa Cinnamon and Motorco Music Hall.

Durham's Rose's Meat Market and Sweet Shop was recognized among Bon Appetit's "50 Nominees for America's Best New Restaurants 2014." The publication was particularly impressed with the spring onion sausage wrapped in puff pastry and the hot pastrami with fried potatoes. The top ten will be announced August 19.

The New Yorker profiled a Durham-based photography project, which documented the Durham Bulls' 2013 season in a book, "Bull City Summer." North Carolina writer Sam Stephenson led the project that focused on the world-famous Triple-A team.

See more Durham accolades or visit all of the places in these articles.

Wine of the Times?

Durham is no stranger to great media coverage as it quietly becomes the worst-kept-secret for food and wine lovers in the US.  Thanks to publications like the New York Times, readers around the world continue to have their dietary resolve ruined by articles extolling the culinary virtues, and dining options, to be had in this bucolic juxtaposition of city and country scenery and corresponding lifestyles.

In other words, Durham, NC is a great place to eat and drink - even when compared to places around the world - and everyone is starting to become keenly aware of that fact.

Great food and a great food culture are natural pairings for great wine, and that is exactly what  reporter and noted wine book author Eric Asimov found here as he researched an article for The Pour in yesterday's edition of the New York Times.

The article notes many things that folks on the ground already know about Durham.  It's an easy going place with no pretension, and it is one that grants wide latitude to visitors and residents alike to be themselves and do what they like.  In Durham, all who want to be are welcomed - even those who prefer to drink red wine with *gasp* fish!

Read about other recent New York Times coverage of Durham here, and about all of the great dining and drinking options in Durham online.

The New York Times Spent 36 Hours in Durham

The New York Times regularly runs a piece in their travel section where they write about what a traveler can do with, well, 36 hours in a place.  On Sunday, January 20th, the world will see what they think can happen in Durham in 36 hours.  Heads up, it's a lot!

Like Durham, the article focuses a great deal on great food, music, the arts, and the open and welcoming culture of intellect.  In other words, the article captures Durham right down to the last nuance and lets it shine as the funky, authentic place that it is.

The story is on the paper's website, and will hit the stands on Sunday. There is an accompanying slideshow, as well.

Coverage like this is always appreciated.  Durham is also up for a major accolade from Southern Living Magazine.  Read more about that online and be sure to vote daily for Durham!

Durham Culinary Powerhouse Magnolia Grill to Close 5/31

In a surprise announcement, Magnolia Grill owners Ben and Karen Barker say they are closing after nearly three decades in business.  The news will shock many loyal fans and patrons.

Known for blazing a culinary trail in North Carolina, the couple are both James Beard Award winners.  The honor is considered the Oscar of the food world.

“This is sad news for Durham.  Ben and Karen are two of the reasons Durham has a food scene.  They trained many, many chefs in their restaurants who went on to open their own establishments," said Shelly Green, Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau President and CEO.  "We promote Durham's prowess as a dining destination.  They have given us so much of the opportunity to do that."

Durham is widely known as a place with an intense food scene.  The accolades are numerous, but most recently the New York Times listed Durham as one of the Top 41 Places to Visit in the world and noted the food and dining offerings as a key reason.

Citing a desire to spend more time with friends and family, the couple will close the property on May 31.  Having written two books and being in demand within the national food community, this is likely not the last word from this duo. 

The Barker's were honored at Durham's Annual Tribute Luncheon in 2007, alongside other chefs here who helped shape Durham as a culinary destination and contributed to it's unique sense of place.  "We can't thank them enough for that," Green added.  Dare we say that tens of thousands of diners would say the same.

JIM CROW LOSES; The Secret Game

History and diversity are two of the things that make Durham, NC so interesting - here are amazing things that take place here everyday. Today one of the most interesting occurred; well, 68 years ago today.  Read on for an amazing piece about The Secret Game. It's a truly fascinating story, and one of the things that makes Durham the place that it is today.

Published originally in New York Times Magazine - March 31, 1996

By Scott Ellsworth

Aubrey Stanley double-checked the laces on his sneakers and sneaked a look across the gym floor. The other team's center was a good three or four inches shorter than Big Dog, the center on Stanley's team, the Eagles. A good sign. Stanley and his teammates, dressed in their maroon jerseys, satin shorts, knee pads, striped wool socks and war-issue canvas high-tops, lined up for the tip-off.

It was 1944, a banner year for basketball at the North Carolina College for Negroes, in Durham. The Eagles had lost only one game all season and were making a name for John B. McLendon, their 28-year-old coach. His standouts -- Stanley, Henry (Big Dog) Thomas, Floyd (Cootie) Brown, James (Boogie-Woogie) Hardy -- ran a blistering, high-speed attack. "We could have beaten anyone," says McLendon, now a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. But there was no way to prove it. Neither the National Invitational Tournament nor the N.C.A.A. tournament allowed black colleges to participate.

Across town at Duke University, the Blue Devils had won the Southern Conference championship. But they weren't necessarily the best team on campus. The Army and the Navy had established wartime training programs at Duke, and the intramural teams were stuffed with former college athletes.

The medical school team was perhaps the best. Dick Thistlethwaite, a former star at the University of Richmond, played center. David Hubbell, a forward, had started for the Duke varsity. Homer Sieber had played at Roanoke College, and Dick Symmonds at Central Methodist in Missouri. Jack Burgess, the team's newest member, had played guard at the University of Montana. As much as he liked Duke, Burgess despised the Jim Crow laws. Once, he was chased off a Durham city bus -- at knife point -- when he told the driver what he thought of the seating arrangements.

At a place like Duke, Burgess's opinions were unusual, though not unheard of. In early 1944, the Y.M.C.A. chapters at Duke and North Carolina College had begun to meet, at considerable risk from the police, who vigorously maintained the color line. "It was dangerous," recalls one former Duke student. "We had to lie on the floor of the car going to those meetings."

At one meeting, a North Carolina College student overheard an idle boast about the Duke medical school basketball team. A challenge was issued: let's see who has the best team in town. It was an absurd notion. Convening a secret Y meeting was bad enough, but holding an illegal, racially mixed basketball game was courting disaster. That same year, a black G.I. had been killed by a white bus driver for not moving quickly enough to the rear of a Durham bus.

Coach McLendon, however, endorsed the idea: denied a postseason championship game, he would create his own. The game, he decided, would be held in the North Carolina College gym, a legitimate contest with a referee and a game clock.

At Duke, the proposal fell on stunned ears. Jack Burgess wanted to play, but some of the others were hesitant. In the end, pride won out. "We thought we could whup 'em," David Hubbell says. "So we decided to find out."

Sunday, March 12, dawned blustery. McLendon had scheduled the game when most of Durham, including its police force, would be in church. He hadn't told the school administration about the game; when a reporter for The Carolina Times, Durham's black weekly, found out, he agreed not to write anything. No spectators would be allowed.

Just before 11 A.M., the Duke team piled into a couple of borrowed cars. "To keep from being followed, we took this winding route through town," Hubbell recalls. They pulled their jackets over their heads as they walked into the small brick gym.

Inside, stomachs had been churning all morning. "I had never played basketball against a white person before, and I was a little shaky," Stanley says. "You did not know what might happen if there was a hard foul, or if a fight broke out. I kept looking over at Big Dog and Boogie to see what to do. They were both from up North."

The game began with a sputter. Both teams botched routine plays, and shots caromed off the rims. One of the Duke players made a gorgeous pass -- right into the hands of a North Carolina College player. "On that particular morning, you didn't exactly need to play skins and shirts," Hubbell says with a laugh.

As the nervousness subsided, the Duke team found its game: give-and-gos and three-man weaves, two-handed set shots off screens. Burgess fed Thistlethwaite the ball inside and Hubbell shot from the wings. But the Eagles warmed up, too. Big Dog knocked down four-footers, while George Parks, a towering Kentuckian, swept the boards. Boogie and Cootie ran cutaways and reverse pivots, whipping down-court passes after crisp steals.

Stanley was only 16, the Eagles' youngest player, and had grown up under Jim Crow. "About midway through the first half," Stanley says, "I suddenly realized: 'Hey, we can beat these guys. They aren't supermen. They're just men like us.' "

By the second half, the Eagles were scoring on nearly every possession. Running one fast break after the next, they were skirting a wide-open style of play that wouldn't flourish for another two decades.

The Duke players had never seen anything like it. By the end of the game, the scoreboard told the story: Eagles 88, Visitors 44.

Then came the day's second unlikely event. After a short break, the two teams mixed their squads and played another game, an even more egregious violation of Jim Crow. This time, it was skins and shirts. "Just God's children, horsing around with a basketball," says George Parks.
Word had spread, meanwhile, that something was afoot in the gym. McLendon had bolted the doors, but a few students climbed up to the window ledges. Pressing their faces to the glass, they saw this second game -- a segregationist's nightmare and a scene that college basketball in the South would not know for years to come. Afterward, the two teams adjourned to the men's residence hall for a bull session. A few hours later, the Duke students drove home.

The Durham police never found out what happened. Nor did the city's two daily newspapers, and the black reporter kept his word. No scorecard exists, and as far as official basketball recordkeeping is concerned, the game never took place.

"Oh, I wonder if I told you that we played basketball against a Negro college team," Jack Burgess wrote to his family in Montana a few days later. "Well, we did and we sure had fun and I especially had a good time, for most of the fellows playing with me were Southerners. . . . And when the evening was over, most of them had changed their views quite a lot."

(Published in New York Times Magazine on March 31, 1996 / Written by Scott Ellsworth)

Learn more about Durham, it's past, present and future by visiting online.

NYT selects Durham as one of the top 41 places in the world to visit in 2011

What do Iceland, Milan, London and Durham all have in common? They all made the New York Times list of the top 41 places to go to in 2011.

As one of only six U.S. destinations on the list, Durham was touted for it's revitalized Downtown, entrepreneurship and crop of standout restaurants and cafes.

Read the full article here.