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Local “dive detective” tracks down America’s best dives.
All great investigations begin with a gimmick—but for Ruben Nelson, the theatrics are part of the charm. From cheap brews to questionable bathrooms, Insta’s self-proclaimed Diner and Dive Detective (@diner.dive.detective) has made it his mission to unmask every dive bar in the nation, having already made stops at local joints like Stella’s, The Cardinal and Slim’s.
Launching his page in February, the Boone-born creator started simply by sharing videos with friends—but after posting a review of The Cave in Chapel Hill, his account quickly gained traction. Weekly deep-dive reels, thousands of views and plenty of 9.5 ratings later, Nelson is leaving no dive bar unearthed.
“I wasn’t expecting it to get above 10 followers,” Nelson told RM, “but people actually started to enjoy what I was putting out.” He now boasts a 5.6K+ following, with invites from bars across the country—and beyond—flooding his inbox.
Here’s what he has to say on Raleigh recs, what makes a bar worth revisiting and where he’s headed next.
Top Raleigh dive: Johnson Street Yacht Club
What makes a dive worth revisiting? How welcoming it feels once you’re there for a little bit. I’d say that’s more important than how it looks or where it’s located.
Best dive crawl story? The Kraken [in Carrboro] has got to be my favorite story. I went there by myself and this random guy comes up to me, ends up teaching me this new game of pool, and introduces me to every single person in the bar one by one. By the very end of the night, I’m about to get out of there, and it turns out we have the exact same name.
Your rating system in a nutshell: It’s more the atmosphere and the crowd than anything. I had no idea how controversial dive bars were—[in terms of] what people think is a dive bar or not. In my opinion, if you go in there and it feels like a dive bar, it’s a dive bar.
Where to next? I’m planning a trip down to Miami soon. I’ve got a few people in Wisconsin, California and New York who have reached out to me. I also have this one dude in the UK who has this super-sick garage bar at his house, and he was like, ‘Do you ever want to come out here?’ I’ve never been to the UK before.
End goal? It sounds silly to say ‘have it as a full-time job,’ but I genuinely would like to travel the country and go to these different places and review them. My dream would be for places to start reaching out to me and paying for my trip there to go review them. And I would love to start putting on a dive bar crawl for different cities, since I have this following in North Carolina.
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