Churrasco steak and sweet potato fries at Metro 8.
As part of Courtney’s birthday present, I signed the two of us up for a walking food tour of Durham this past Saturday. It turned out to be a great experience as we discovered some restaurants that we never knew were there, even though I probably should since I’ve lived in Durham for most of the last 20 years (hey, some of these are in parts of Durham that I don’t get out to very often, such as the Duke campus).
The weather was beautiful, and our tour guide, Morgan, did a terrific job in giving us insights about the restaurants and pointing out various points of interest in the neighborhoods we strolled through. The best thing about the food tour was, unsurprisingly, the food. We had considered doing food tours in the past for a couple of the cities we were traveling to, but decided against it because they sounded like there wasn’t going to be a whole lot of actual eating going on. The tour we did on Saturday, however, included enough food that by the time we were done around 5:30, neither Courtney nor I needed dinner.
We visited six restaurants, which included a mix of long-time establishments and more recent additions:
- Fishmongers: I liked the barbecue shrimps and was intrigued by the steamed stingray listed among the daily specials. We also got to sample some of the restaurant’s barbecue pork, which was surprisingly good since you don’t necessarily expect great barbecue meat from a seafood joint. The pork was sweet on the front end, followed by a spicy kick.
- Torero’s: Nothing really spectacular here, just some good, solid Mexican fare. The carne asado was my favorite from the items on the sample platter laid out for the tour group, as the beef strips were tender and juicy from the nice bits of fat in between the meat.
- 604 West Morgan Featuring Cinellis: A two-restaurants-in-one setup tucked into a quiet courtyard, 604 West Morgan serves up high-end Italian dining while the other half of the restaurant, Cinellis, offers casual (and much less expensive) Italian food. We sat in 604 West Morgan but ate samples from Cinellis, which included a nice stuffed clam and an eggplant parmesan that reaffirmed that piles of cheese and tomato sauce can make anything taste good (I’m usually not a big fan of eggplant).
- Mad Hatters: This was a bit of a walk to get to from the previous stop on the tour, but it was well worth it. We each got a big square of heavenly cream cheese brownie that made us thankful this was a walking tour because we knew we would need to do something to work off the deliciousness we just engulfed.
- Metro 8: We got a small piece of churrasco steak, a pile of sweet potato fries, and a nice glass of red wine at this Argentinian steakhouse on Ninth Street. The steak was juicy and tasty, and the fries were good, too. The restaurant serves dinner until as late as midnight on some days of the week.
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Blu: We had heard about this place from a couple friends of ours and had been meaning to try it out, and definitely will go back there now that we’ve gotten a taste. They served us a delicious cobb salad with lumps of crab meat, served with another glass of wine. The menu had a number of things that interested us, and they do a crabs special every Thursday night.
So for $30 a person, we got the equivalent of a meal with dessert and two glasses of wine, not to mention some nice exercise, a greater appreciation for Durham and its food scene, and a number of new entries on our list of restaurants to check out. When we have time, I’d definitely be interested in checking out the other food tours by the same company for other cities in the Triangle.
This post is cross-posted at http://chickenfeet.posterous.com/taking-a-durham-food-tour.