Durham’s reinvention from tobacco manufacturing to research and universities brought a restaurant scene that punches well above the city’s size. The renovated tobacco warehouses downtown now hold much of it.
The cooking is Southern at its base — biscuits, greens, whole hog barbecue in the eastern North Carolina style — but Durham has never been conservative about it, and the kitchens here have a reputation for treating those traditions as a starting point rather than a rule.
The city also has a substantial Mexican and Central American population, and the taquerias and panaderias along the eastern side are excellent. The Durham Farmers’ Market runs year round and the surrounding Piedmont farmland supplies most of it.