This third-generation NC State Fair food booth is sticking to the classics.
Scrolling through the food pics under #NCStateFair is like diving into someone’s insane fever dream of edible oddities. Think banana cream pie doughnuts the size of a child’s head. Krispy Kreme burgers a cardiologist probably thinks should be illegal. DoriEsquites (Doritos and Mexican street corn), minipancake s’mores skewers, every type of fried candy imaginable. … Each year it seems the food booths try to outdo one another in a Willy Wonka-esque race to see who can serve up the most viral bite of the year.
Well, almost every food booth. Head over to The Cary Inn and you’ll encounter a menu more in line with the fairs of yore, a refreshing find in a sea of Instagrammable Frankenfoods. The third-generation family-run booth has steadfastly chosen to serve classic fair food rather than get swept up in the craze of whatever is new and hot each year.
Marissa Jessup, whose grandmother Lily Ray was part of the original partnership that started The Cary Inn back in 1980 and whose father, Preston Ray (Lily’s son), is now the owner, has grown up as the ultimate fair insider. She began working at the booth when she was 6 years old—alongside multiple extended family members who have helped work the booth over the years.
“I was so eager to be able to start working at the fair like my older sisters and family, but there’s not much you can do at 6 years old,” Jessup remembers. “So my first job was serving canned drinks to customers and I loved it! I even put it on my résumé for my first ‘real’ job in high school.”
As for The Cary Inn’s nostalgic eats, “they started off only selling footlongs, fries and drinks,” Jessup recalls. The booth still offers those core items, along with red and beef hot dogs, nachos, burgers, corn dogs, and more.
“We know that among all the food craze at the fair you can never go wrong with good ole’ American foods like burgers and hot dogs,” says Jessup. “It’s simple, good-quality food that keeps our customers returning year after year.” Though, she does acknowledge they’ve made one concession to new and trending foods. … A number of years back they added a mac ’n’ cheese hot dog, a huge hit that has remained on the menu. (We’ll take three please.)
For Jessup, returning to the NC State Fair each year offers a chance to catch up with friends and family alike. “The best part of working at the fair would be getting to spend time with my family,” she says. “It has become something that brings us together every year. Even when it’s stressful, we are still able to come together and support one another.”
And for someone who has grown up around the fair, you can bet that Jessup has her favorite foods and rides she absolutely must enjoy each year. On the edible front, her taste trends traditional like the food her family serves, naturally. “My favorite foods to eat at the fair are bacon cheese hot dogs, cheese fries and cotton candy,” she says. As for the rides, when she gets free time to explore she never misses a chance to ride the Orbiter and the Himalaya at least once each fair season.
So this year, if you’re tired of fried Oreos, giant sticks of candied bacon and the latest clog-inducing carbohydrate bomb, make your way to The Cary Inn and say hi to Jessup, her dad, and the rest of the extended Ray family while enjoying some of the same fair food that families have been enjoying for generations. facebook.com/caryinnncstatefair
Raleigh Magazine first broke the news of The Mill in December, and now we’ve got the exclusive first look and an updated opening.
The Mill (a nod to its former name) is slated to open mid-April, a culmination of a yearslong dream of Kevin Jennings to get his hands on the spot. “I tried to buy it multiple times and it never worked out,” he says.
For more than two decades, the bar part of now-defunct and lamented Edwards Mill Bar & Grill served as the neighborhood dive of choice. Regulars will be the first to tell you the real scene wasn’t in the much-neglected dining room—you skipped right past the tables and headed for the dimly lit bar.
One of those regulars was Jennings, co-owner of Urban Food Group (think Vivace, Coquette). “I spent many nights there,” he recalls.
Now, Jennings and his team are back in that very bar as the owners prepare to open a new restaurant that pays homage to the space’s history while charting a new, refreshed course for the future.
Clearly, luck favors the patient, and when the space came up for grabs, Jennings pounced. “We have long wanted to execute another concept that had its roots in Porter’s City Tavern,” he says. The Hillsborough Street restaurant, which closed in 2013, was known for a menu rooted in Americana steakhouse fare—think big shrimp po’boy sandwiches, double-thick pork chops, and hearty salads topped with sliced steak.
“It’s a dive bar-meets-a quality American steakhouse in some senses.”
—Kevin Jennings
“The Mill will be that concept, but dusted off and modernized,” says Jennings. The actual restaurant itself is also being dusted off and modernized. For all its nostalgia, the space just physically didn’t work anymore.
“It [needed] to be totally gutted,” he explains. “The dining room wasn’t active; the carpet was sticky… it was just sort of run down.”
Jennings turned to designer Amy Price of Atlanta’sStarling Studio to work her magic (Price also designed UFG’s Vivace and Bar Marcel in Charlotte), with the charge of not changing the footprint of the restaurant too much.
The result is a dining room filled with booths and banquettes in true steakhouse style, and a garage door that will open onto the revamped patio. The bar area itself—the beloved heart of the restaurant—has been painted black. “Our designer called it dark and sultry,” says Jennings. It’s as though the dive bar went out and bought a little black dress—same attitude, new look.
The food got a refresh too. A nod to Porter’s City Tavern, the new menu will be split between classic bar nibbles (wings, burgers and hyped-up nachos) and elevated classic fare like pastas, local fish, and thick juicy steaks cooked over the new wood-fired grill Jennings had installed. To boot, the opening menu will feature a filet with crab ravioli, grilled asparagus hollandaise sauce and a side of tobacco onions. “It’s a dive bar-meets-a quality American steakhouse in some senses,” Jennings explains.
Whereas before most folks made a beeline for the bar, now diners will have the choice of a relaxed bar experience or the slightly more upscale dining room. A choose-your-own dinner adventure if you will.
“We love what we do, and we are hoping the neighborhood does as well,” says Jennings. As far as how he’s going to feel when he sidles up to that bar again? “I’m gonna feel pretty great.” And so will we. urbanfoodgroup.com
The Triangle’s largest and most diverse ghost kitchen concept is set to open this month.
Let’s set the scene. It’s a Thursday night; the fam is hungry but no one wants to cook—and no one can agree on what to order. A meltdown seems imminent. Enter North Raleigh’s new Flavor District, a multicuisine ghost kitchen concept set to open Nov. 1 that’s sure to satisfy all cravings at once.
First announced late last year, the Flavor District (located in the former Golden Corral on Capital Boulevard) is in its final stages of completion, with tenants starting to move in last month. Once open, those restos will operate out of both a shared commissary space and individual pod kitchens in what Flavor District President David Foye Jr. says is the largest ghost kitchen in the Triangle. Think: one place to order multiple cuisines online to pacify the whole crew’s myriad cravings. And, a game-changer in the ghost kitchen realm—you will have the option for pickup or delivery straight to your door.
Slated to boast 13 restaurants comprising one of the most diverse cuisine collections in the Triangle, the new-age ghost kitchen will house the likes of Jamaican, pizza, Indian, BBQ, Mexican, salad, vegan, Cajun Creole, Venezuelan and Thai, including confirmed vendors Oink n Moo, Raleigh Tamales and Durham’s famed Boricua Soul restaurant.
Many of the vendors are small operations, as Foye is adamant in filling the Flavor District with local businesses rather than chains—and, in fact, a majority of the vendor-owners live within a 10-mile radius of the shop. “It’s a ghost kitchen that operates with a lot of transparency,” he says. “There’s no mystery behind where your food is coming from.”
By operating out of the Flavor District, these concepts are “able to reduce the operating cost of a traditional brick-and-mortar restaurant, allowing them to better compete with larger chains in the ever-competitive restaurant market,” explains Foye.
So the next time you and your fam/crew are ordering in but can’t decide on one thing, well, consider your problem solved. Weeknight dinner meltdown, averted. Hope you’re hungry! flavordistrictnc.com
Vidrio chef Saif Rahman keeps the love of cooking in the family via a handbuilt kitchen in his mom’s backyard.
“A lot of us who migrated to America—who left their kitchens, their villages, their souls and belongings—[did so] for a better life,” says local culinary titan Saif Rahman. “But we moved into apartments, and we’re cooking on an electric stove, which didn’t exist before for us.”
Now he’s extending that modern wonder to his mom by building her an outdoor kitchen to replicate the kitchens she and his grandmother grew up in back home in Bangladesh. And he’s building it himself—by hand!—in his mom’s West Raleigh backyard.
Talk to the Vidrio executive chef and NCRLA 2021 Chef of the Year about almost anything food-related and you’ll quickly be caught up in his exuberance for cooking, food traditions and feeding others. In an interview with Raleigh Magazine this past February, he touched on his grandmother’s cooking, how food helped him grieve the loss of his father, and the joy he gets when he serves guests at Vidrio familiar dishes like roast chicken with new and exciting twists to the preparation.
Talk to him about this new kitchen and that same enthusiasm comes gushing out. After just a few minutes breathlessly describing his plans for the space, he pauses. “Want me to show you?” he asks.
The call cuts out, quickly replaced by the familiar trill of the Apple FaceTime ringtone. Rahman’s smiling face pops up on screen—he’s barely able to get out a quick hello before he’s off and running, almost quite literally, through the backyard of his mother’s house. He points out the banana, peach and pear trees planted by his late father; the olive tree for his daughter; and the garden where the family usually grows a variety of vegetables each year. He arrives at a corner of the yard, near a large shed, where an area has been cleared for the kitchen. There are already two small stoves built of brick, one with a massive copper pot sitting atop it, where Rahman had been cooking just the day before.
As he continues to talk about his plans for the kitchen and what it will mean for his mother and his family, it’s hard not to be swept up in his excitement for the project, and for the style of rustic home cooking he champions.
This kitchen will be a direct link to his family’s past. He will fashion it out of clay; the bamboo that makes the framing will come from a neighbor; and the roof will be thatched. It is the kitchen of his dreams—something he has thought and dreamt about to the point of obsession, especially since becoming a father.
“Have you ever been so deeply in love that even when you’re driving or drinking a glass of water or eating, you’re thinking about that love?” he ponders, adding: “We are so tied up in the busy world that we forget to cook with mom or grandma. This new kitchen will be the place where those taste memories can continue to be passed down from generation to generation.”
When the kitchen is complete, Rahman will invite neighbors, friends and family to his mother’s house for a dedication ceremony. He will light the wood-fired stove while his mother pounds away at a mortar and pestle, preparing any number of dishes for their guests. The kids will run around the yard and perhaps someone will lounge in the shade of the same pear tree where his father used to sit for hours, munching on the sweet pears above him.
All the while, smoke from the cooking fire will waft up through the thatched roof of the kitchen, mingling with the laughter and conversation from those gathered. Food will be shared and new memories will be made in a scene as familiar to a Raleigh yard as it is to a village in Bangladesh.
As Rahman sweeps his cellphone camera across his mother’s backyard, it’s easy to see all of this playing out in his head. He recalls the meals made during visits back home, time spent watching the women of his family cook, and the sounds of a neighbor’s ducks at his grandmother’s house (coincidentally, his mother’s neighbor in Raleigh also has ducks).
“How do you not recreate that memory for your children?” he asks.
Sure he has access to an entire restaurant—the gleaming open kitchen of Vidrio and a staff of cooks at his beck and call. But this kitchen, this gift he will build with his own two hands for his mother, for his daughter, for those who came before him and for those who will come after, will clearly be where he will always love to cook. @chefsaifrahman
Emblazoned on the back of the bottle you’ll find the brand’s inspiring story—the name a nod to York’s childhood address in South Carolina. Connecting back to 712 is part of the story—the good and the bad, he says. “A lot of vodkas don’t have a story, and I wanted something that had a message,” he adds. “It’s about celebrating a journey. None of us can change the past, but what we can do is celebrate our little victories today.” One of those victories is creating a vodka that’s so pure—as sippable as it is mixable—that it could compete with a bourbon or whiskey… and be bartenders’ go-to vodka “as the most versatile vodka on their shelf.”
With plans to launch in Georgia and South Carolina this month before expanding to other markets, the couple is moving full-steam ahead in creating a legacy brand—aka the No. 1 vodka brand in America (!)—that they can pass down to their three children one day. And, wait for it, they eventually want to throw their hats in the bourbon barrel… Wake County ABC stores; seventwelvevodka.com
