The Gourmez

Double Black Diamond Martini Firebirds Southpoint, Durham $10 This martini doesn’t have a long list of ingredients, but classic martinis never do, subsisting on quality liquor with a personalized touch of what gets the drinker’s juices flowing whether vermouth, blue-cheese-stuffed olives, or cocktail onions. The Double Black Diamond martini is even simpler than that, just [...]

Alley 26 320 East Chapel Hill St. Downtown Durham Website $9 to $12 per drink 4 pm to 2 am (May I take this moment to say I love a bar that posts a closing time?) To my disappointment, Alley 26, Durham’s newest upscale bar, is not located in an alley. It takes up actual [...]

Eats and Night Sights in New Orleans Why, you might ask, are you focusing on dining at night in New Orleans? Isn’t the food there good anytime? Of course it is! But one must make distinctions between their blog posts somehow, and with the massive amount of eating we did in New Orleans, I figured [...]

Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of attending the media preview event before the grand opening of the Cookery’s new Front Room. The Cookery, as you may recall from when I attended their open house last year, is an incubator for small food producers, providing kitchen use for folks selling all sorts of food products, [...]

It’s a Thursday, and the first one I’ve blogged on in a while. That’s what vacation will do to you. ,)  Speaking of vacation, I had another WRAL review published while I was gone, and it’s this Thursday’s bragging post. This one was cocktail-centric and focused on evaluating whether Bowbarr is a good spot to [...]

Bourbon Tasting The Roxy (Bar Review) Brightleaf, Durham $20 The Roxy hosted a bourbon tasting the night before my birthday, and bourbon is something I’ve definitely grown to love during my time in NC. And let’s be real — I’m down for tasting any sort of alcoholic beverage. This was the first time I went [...]

Doolin’s Irish Pub 3211 Shannon Road South Square, Durham Website Entrees: $8 — $15 Doolin’s Irish Pub is the newest restaurant in the same office building that houses G2B. This building has been notoriously harsh to its restaurants — the location is off the beaten path across the street from the Bank of America on [...]

Straw Valley Café 5420 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd. New Hope Commons, Durham Website You may not have heard about Straw Valley Café from the Independent Weekly, Herald-Sun, or Carpe Durham articles on this coffeehouse, bar, and art gallery, but that shouldn’t stop you from visiting it. What might is its difficult-to-access location. It’s right off of [...]

Graniwinkle Watts Grocery Review/Website Watts Hillandale, Durham $9 This is a seasonal offering at Watts, and it’s the second I’ve had locally featuring Foggy Ridge cider—I must check into that label to see why our bartenders are experimenting with it! Including the cider, the Graniwinkle is made of house-spiced apple cider syrup, brandy, lemon juice, [...]

On occasion, I get the pleasure of an invitation to the swanky, fun, creative parties put on for Yelp Elite members. Last Sunday night was one of those occasions, and the theme was mobsters and molls. That theme happens to fit the venue, a few-month-old club in Durham called the Roxy, to a tee. The [...]