Cheap Eats in the Bull City

Durham, North Carolina is commonly known as the “Bull City”, in reference to the Bull Durham Tobacco Company. The tobacco trade contributed to the city’s rapid growth in the late 1800’s. Now that the tobacco plants have closed down and are being converted into residential and business space, the city has moved into another direction. The city is now known as the “City of Medicine” because of Research Triangle Park, largest research park in the world, and Duke University Medical Center and School.

The city hosts two college teams, the NC Central Eagles and Duke University Blue Devils. Durham also has an AAA baseball team, the Durham Bulls, which was the setting for the movie “Bull Durham” starring Kevin Costner.

With everything going on in Durham, it can make you hungry. This is a collection of some of my favorite restaurants in the Bull City. There are some restaurants that are not included in this journal but worth a visit which can be visited in Brightleaf Square. It is located in the heart of downtown and has many restaurants such as Chamas, a Brazilian Steakhouse, excellent but pricey and Fishmongers, which offers a great seafood lunch menu.

Ninth Street, the pub and club district of Durham, also has a lot of good restaurants that are not included in this journal. These include Elmo’s Diner, the Blue Corn Café, and Magnolia Grill (which I haven’t eaten at the present.) It should be noted that Magnolia Grill is one of the top restaurants in the country and is a featured destination in 1000 Places to See Before You Die in the US and Canada.

Durham offers a wide array of different dining options satisfying anyone’s taste buds. I have tried to touch upon some of the best restaurants Durham has to offer, from Q-Shack’s BBQ to Xiloa’s Indian Tacos.

Quick Tips:

The Q-Shack
2510 University Drive
919-402-4BBQ
Monday-Sunday 11am to 9pm
(Two other locations in Raleigh and Charlotte)

Cosmic Cantina
1920 Perry Street
919-286-1875
Monday-Friday 11am-3am
Saturday-Sunday 12pm-4am
(Two other locations in Chapel Hill and New York City)

LocoPops
2600 Hillsborough Road
919-286-3500
Monday-Sunday 12pm-6pm
(Two other locations in Chapel Hill and Durham, closed for the winter)

Xiloa
748 Ninth Street
919-286-1430
Tuesday-Saturday 10am-10pm

Best Way To Get Around:

All of the restaurants are located in or near downtown. A vehicle is sufficient and there is plenty of places to park.

North Carolinians have a love affair with barbeque. While Memphis is BBQ capital for Tennessee natives and the same holds true for Kansas City, it is not that simple in North Carolina. The Tarheel State is literally divided when it comes to their style of Barbeque.

The eastern part of the state from Raleigh to the coast, (where I hail from), prefers their pork slow cooked with just the right amount of spices and doused with a vinegar based sauce with a hint of hot peppers. The BBQ is almost always served chopped. A favorite meal is the BBQ sandwich loaded with pork and a heaping serving of coleslaw. To make it a full meal, add a couple of corn sticks, a side of Brunswick Stew, and boiled potatoes. Don’t forget the sweet tea!

While there is no BBQ capital in the eastern part of the state (could be Wilson or Smithfield, if there is one), Lexington situated in the west prides itself as the “BBQ Capital of the World.” The city hosts the annual “Lexington Barbeque Festival” at the end of October. The western style primarily uses only the pork shoulder as compared to the east which uses the whole pig. The biggest difference is the sauce. While vinegar is one of the ingredients, ketchup makes the sauce. BBQ, instead of being chopped, is served in chunks with the thick red sauce, commonly referred to as “Dip.”

Although North Carolinians may not agree on their preference of BBQ, there is something that we all agree on and that is the Q-Shack. A family owned business in Durham; it satisfies easterners and westerners alike, as well as out-of-state visitors.
There pork is slow cooked overnight using a blend of mesquite and hickory woods. The beef brisket is served with their signature Chile rub. Along with their delicious beef and pork, they also have tender sliced chicken, juicy turkey breast, summer sausage, and fall off the bone St. Louis Ribs.

Easterners can get their pulled pork on a sandwich with coleslaw while westerners can get beef brisket on buttery Texas Toast. A dinner plate includes your choice of meat with two sides. Choosing a side is just as hard as choosing the meat. Sides include Fried Okra, Potato Salad, Collard Greens, Mashed Sweet Potatoes, and the best Macaroni & Cheese I have ever eaten. Along with Baked Beans, Coleslaw, Fries, Onion Rings, it is no wonder that people forgo the meat and just get a three side combo plate. For a little extra and well worth it, try the Jalapeño Deviled Eggs

There is something here for everyone from their delicious Cobb Salad, juicy thick hamburgers to their beef brisket chili and corn chip Frito Pie. Their sauces, which are found on the table, are comically described as My Sauce and His Sauce. My Sauce is tomato based made with Texas love and His Sauce is vinegar based with a Kiss of Tomato. “BBQ Tender as a Mother’s Love”

Cosmic Cantina and Lounge has the best burritos in town. As their name implies, they are literally out of this world. The faded and barely discernible sign reads “The Best Mexican Food on the Planet.”

The restaurant is usually referred to as “Cosmic” by frequent visitors. Cosmic is definitely off the beaten path and is a favorite among locals and especially by the Duke college students. Many visitors fail to eat here not because there is a shortage of advertising, but more because of the appearance of the place. It gets its fair share of advertising from the Convention and Visitors Bureau, The Herald Sun – the local newspaper, and even the Independent, a free newspaper catered to the college crowd.

The restaurant is located right off of Ninth Street, the bustling nightlife of clubs and pubs. The address is easy to find, 1920 Perry Street, but the hard part is locating the restaurant. There is no big sign saying Cosmic Cantina except for their faded out motto on the side of the building. The only other sign that a restaurant may be here is a small “open” lighted sign in the upstairs window. With a dance studio and a trendy New York clothing store in the same building, you wonder if the address is correct.

There is a door between the two shops which leads upstairs. If the restaurant’s lack of outside advertising doesn’t deter you from eating here, it may once you walk up the stairs. The walls are covered in graffiti and it looks more like an 80’s NYC subway station. At the top of the stairs, go through the door in the right and be ready to be blown away. Once again, not by the appearance, but from the food.

The inside is not much better than the outside. The restaurant is small and on crowded nights, you may not be able to get a table. You are not missing out on much, because most of the tables rock back and forth. Usually at night, Latin music is pumped so loud through the speakers you can barely talk to the person taking your order.

So the place may not be the most pleasing from the outside or from the inside, but none of that matters once you bite into their out of the world burritos. These burritos are giant and are loaded with rice, beans, cheese and your choice of meat. One is sufficient for anyone but if you are feeling really hungry, try the “twice as big”. Aside from burritos, they have tacos, quesadillas, and taco salads. Their prices are along the same lines as Taco Bell, but far better than anything you will get there.

Avoid going to Cosmic late at night and on the weekends. Although they stay open until 4am, Duke students migrate here for a late night snack after the bars let out at 2. If you are looking for cheap but good food, look no further.

“Loco” in Spanish means crazy. Locopops, which serves only popsicles, could very well be translated into “crazy pops.” I will admit that one needs to adventurous and open minded to enjoy a Locopop. These are not your average popsicles found in the frozen food aisle which you can get in cherry, grape, lime, and orange. These popsicles have a Mexican flavor and were created as a spin-off to the paletas, a popular frozen treat on a stick famous in Mexico.

There are many similarities to Locopops and paletas such as they are both served in milk based and water based form. Paletas use fresh fruit and juices and popular flavors include Chocolate, cantaloupe, pineapple, coconut, lime, and strawberry. Locopops also use fresh fruit but their choice of flavors is what draws crowds.

Locopops is located a few blocks down on Hillsborough Road from the bustling bar district of Ninth Street. The building is very small, but really, how big of a place do you need to sell popsicles. I walked inside and I was greeted with a large dry-erase board which serves as the menu. Like the paletas, the flavors, numbering over twenty, are divided into water and milk base. Within both categories, the flavors are then subdivided. The Regulars are those flavors which can are always served. The Guest Stars are those flavors which are the unique creations and are constantly changing as they run out and new flavors are invented. The Funky Flavor is reserved for that one flavor that makes you wonder who will eat it and better yet, who came up with it.

The milk base regulars include Chocolate Brownie, Mexican Chocolate (which has cinnamon in it), and Cookies and Crème. The water base has Strawberry, Lime, Mojito and Mango Chile. These are flavors for those who are not that adventurous. The guest stars’ flavors change frequently, so a flavor may be there today and gone tomorrow. This particular time, I had to decide if the Blueberry Basil was better than the Rosemary Apple Cider. The milk base flavors were just as impressive from the Grapefruit Poppy Seed to the Coconut Ginger. None of these flavors compared to the Funky Flavor, where you need to be “loco” to try it. I was immediately sold on the milk based Funky Flavor which was White Chocolate Kalamata Olive. The popsicle tasted mostly of white chocolate but at times I tasted the olives as small pieces.

All of the popsicles come in large ($2.25) and small ($1.75), except for the Funky Flavor which is only served in small and unless otherwise marked.

Locopops, it should be noted, use only fresh fruit in their popsicles. If you find yourself wanting dessert or just something cold on a hot day, Locopops has what you are looking for. Sometimes you will find yourself going there, as I do, not because you want a popsicle but to see the different flavors.

Xiloa, pronounced hee-low-ah, is a small restaurant on Ninth Street, surrounded mostly by bars and small shops. A bright blue awning and painted palm trees beckons visitors to its small restaurant. They specialize in Latin America cuisine with a love for Nicaragua. Xiloa is named after the lagoon located about 15 miles from Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. It is a popular destination for residents and tourists who enjoy swimming in the warm waters or sunbathing on the shore.

The owner of Xiloa, who in my half-dozen trips here, I have only met one time. She speaks perfect English, the only one there that does, and she makes you feel at home while you are there. I was given a lesson at my table in Latin American Cuisine. Gallopinto, a dish of red beans and rice, is the national dish of Nicaragua and is served at the beginning and end of each day. A plantain, which looks like a banana, is always fried and either is served sweet as a dessert or served salted as a side. I was familiar with plantains from years of Spanish class and visiting other Latin American countries. However, I never saw a tamarind or much less heard of one. She started bringing different fruits to our table for us to try. Tamarind looks like a hard-shelled peanut but with a fruity inside.

After I got to taste a tamarind, she described what Nicaraguans are famous for, refrescoes. They are fruit drinks made from only natural ingredients. She brought me a sample of a tamarind refresco. She changes the flavors ever so often but she usually always serves passion fruit, cocoa, and strawberry. This particular time, I went with the Hibiscus. Yes, it is a flower, but I was politely informed that it has a fruit in the form of seeds inside a pod which opens up as the flower reaches maturity. It wasn’t as sweet as the tamarind, so she recommended the next fresco, Moon Berry. It was her secret concoction of different fruits giving the juice a dark purple color.

She began to tell her story of her time in Nicaragua and her love for the cuisine and refrescoes she misses. She went so far as to tell us about her husband and how they could not be more opposites. During the 80’s, she was a Sandinista while her husband was a Contra. While on a tour group, they met and fell in love showing that enemies can become lovers.

Since she is the only one that speaks English, my dialogue with the other employees is limited to pointing at a menu item and sometimes using my little bit of broken Spanish to try to communicate. I find myself always ordering the same thing, Indian Tacos. A popular dish, it is lettuce, tomatoes, cheese and meat served high on top of a flaky tortilla. For dessert, I get the sopaipilla, fried dough sweetened with honey. This is Mexican food with a kick.