Owen's Broad St. Diner and George's Gourmet Garage are the newest restaurants in the Ninth Street neighborhood-and both feel the pressure of Ninth Street style. One deals with this influence by distancing itself from its culinary roots as a road-side fixture. The other has staked its name and identiy on an automotive theme in the hope that its clients will find this fasionable. But is either place worth the parking fee?
Once a Philips 66 gas station, the newest tenant in the revitalized Wellspring Grocery strip at the corner of Broad and Main Streets now services appetites instead of alternators. Remodeling efforts have successfully stream-lined the former mechanic's bays into Owen's Broad St. Diner, where the only sign of grease at the former service station is on the onion rings and high-octane fumes come from wine. The restaurant is now the closest one to campus, but whether it will threaten Pie Works' niche remains to be seen. One thing's sure, though: Diner food can satisfy a craving for down-home American grub in ways that mahi-mahi pizza just can't.
Owen's is open from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Breakfast ranges from the standard biscuits and gravy to a smoked salmon omelette. The lunch and dinner menus each present a standard array of appetizers and soups, salads, hot plates and burgers. Dinner starts at 5 p.m. and offers slightly more expensive house specialities to replace the extensive sandwich choices of the mid-day meal, which also offers a blue plate special.
At Owen's, dining is divided between two rooms. This separation can be disconcerting to a patron asked to wait for a seat in the purgatorial limbo between the inner and outer dining areas, because the outer one isn't really outside-just farther from the kitchen and the wait-staff passes back and forth. My uneasiness evaporated, however, when the quoted waiting-time miraculously proved accurate-a contrast to other restaurants on the Brightleaf/South Square/Chapel Hill circuit, where 20 minutes too often stretches into a three-quarter hour yawn session behind the Independent.
The inner room features a brisk red and white checked color scheme-even the malted milk cans lining a shelf over the kitchen are red and white. The outer room is a more subdued blue-grey, giving it a relaxed atmosphere. The decorative constant between the two is the logo's five-point star topping the menus, centered on every table-top and slapped on the back of each server's black t-shirt. Both dining areas are arranged in semi-circle fashion; the outside curves around a somewhat sparsely stocked bar while the inside room's centerpiece is a traditional diner's counter complete with swivel-stools. Seated in one room, the diner is apt to forget the other room's existence.
Owen's enjoys a more intimate atmosphere than the prototypical cafeteria-style diner. For one thing, the food-warming area does not edge up to the counter. The muted quality of the outside room's lighting and color scheme seeps into the inner circle and dampens its noise level, try as the linoleum floors might to magnify the civilized drone. The severity of this restaurant's split personality becomes clear when you flip the dinner menu over to discover a wine list on the back. "Wine at a diner?" (Perhaps Owens figures that if fast-food joints serve Dom Perignon...) The list, with offerings by the glass and bottle, should not be underestimated-though it raises the question of whether Mel's ever had a corkscrew on the premises. (If it did, Alice probably wouldn't have known how to use it.) Like the outside dining room, which smacks of a year-end, bonus financed addition, the wine list seems like an afterthought tacked on in the restaurant's attempt to survive in Wellspring's parking lot.
The real question, however, is whether the food is better than standard road-fare, or if a trip through the aisles of the BP just down the road would serve just as well. A look at the side dishes immediately makes me wonder what can they came from-the fries are the crinkled frozen kind mom bakes when the Little League team comes over and Uncle Ben must be boiling the rice. But the taste, in the fashion of all good American institutions, proves hardier than first looks suggest. And it would be hard to beat Owen's for portion size.
Decor and ambiance aside, the real challenge of a restaurant with an identity problem is deciding what to order. In addition to the slaw and turkey with gravy, Owen's offers brie on fettucini and Caesar salad with fried oysters. After one look at the whole set-up, I just didn't feel like I was in Kansas anymore. I was sure that I was at the corner of Main and Broad, but I wasn't sure where Owen's thought that was supposed to be. The whole experience can best be described as Wellspring meets Honey's, late-night family feasts and red onion marmalade on the side to taste.
The dilemma over ordering dishes that spotlight current culinary fads turned out to be more important than we originally thought. I willingly confess that having tasted polenta only once before, the description that I offered my fellow diner-"think of the consistency of cold cous-cous"-didn't quite capture the experience of Owen's Broad St. Diner polenta. So it might have been my fault that the appetizer we ordered was unexpectedly fluffy. But I had already ordered the grilled eggplant, the olive marinara with sundried tomatoes having caught my eye.
The secret to a delicious meal at Owen's seems to lie in choosing with your gut-the one that was craving meat loaf and mashed potatoes followed by apple pie a la mode or a root beer float. But the cooks at Owen's do know their specials-trendy or not; the pan-seared sea bass topped with a black bean and white wine sauce was excellent.
One look at the hamburgers-which legend says the maverick cooks dare to serve "rare" in defiance of North Carolina state legislators-immediately resolves questions about this diner's authenticity, however. We decided that when we come back-and we will-we'll order the 501 Burger straight up. Or maybe the Blue Cheeseburger if we're seated in the outer room. And double the onion rings.
Printed on the inside cover of George's Gourmet Garage's matchbooks is a blank line for the "1st impression." I wasn't sure whether this line was intended for a description of my date or an assessment of the restaurant itself; but my impressions of the restaurant would fill quite a few matchbooks.
Wellspring Grocery left behind a palpable aura of culinary trend-setting when it vacated its 15,000 square foot outpost on the Ninth Street border, giving Giorgios Bakatsias, owner of near-by Parizade, the opportunity to seize this space for his latest restaurant endeavor. The resulting George's Gourmet Garage is a sleek market, bar and grill combination that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. daily.
Stepping through the door of this "concept" restaurant is an instantaneous departure from Durham-once you figure out which entrance to use, that is. There is a market entrance for breakfast, lunch and to-go diners and the bar and grill entrance for whatever other business brings you there. Inside, George's Garage does not try to disguise its size. In fact, the open kitchen that runs the length of the back wall, as well as the bar which is highlighted by a 20-foot mirror backdrop, seems designed to emphasize the space. Above, the ceiling is a grid of the steel girders common in any warehouse. Yellow walls, crowded with glossy black and white photographs, colorful pop art reproductions, mahoghany-colored tables and a bar illuminated by precise track lighting, give the room the feel of a big-city loft. There is nothing soft in the room to absorb sound; as a result a noise level disproportional to the number of guests in the room hits you as soon as you walk in.
Breakfast and lunch are drive-through, self-service affairs negotiated in the market. Morning and mid-day patrons graze over a rotisserie and hot bar, a cold salad and vegetable bar and a bakery counter like crows gleaning the fields. At the second window the food is weighed according to which bar it was selected from. There are the usual choice of juices and gourmet coffees to drink and a watering station provides ice-cold water from pristine antique imitation-silver pitchers.
On any given day the mixed salads, from German potato to wheatberry, are colorful and seasoned with fresh herbs. The hot bar offers mouth-watering stews of artichoke or seafood, Mediterranean delicacies such as spanikopita and moussaka and roasted meats such as lamb, turkey and chicken. Pasta dishes include meat and vegetarian choices. The bakery sells fresh-baked bread by the loaf as well as desserts and pastries.
George's Gourmet also offers an eclectic assortment of market items such as apples, sweet potatoes, red and sweet onions and squash. Specialty teas, coffee beans and olives are sold by the pound here as well. One wonders, though, if the market is designed specifically so Bakatsias can market his own line of Giorgios brand sauces.
To diners arriving before 4 p.m., George's Garage offers seating in the regular dining area and the bar where the corner window provides an impressive view of Ninth Street. But it wouldn't have mattered where I chose to sit-eating with utensils that seemed designed for Duke's basketball team made the entire dining experience feel like a scene out of Alice in Wonderland.
The unadorned dinner menu is arranged around seafood, meat and vegetarian selections, in addition to soups and salads. Besides the higher-priced entrees, the menu offers guests a choice of tapas-style "small plates." These lower-priced small plates are intended to double as appetizers or small-portion dishes that can be mixed-and-matched for a self-designed main course. The possible exception to this rule is the sizable bowl of calamari, which I found to be fresh and perfectly garnished with a spicy tomato sauce. For the hungry diner who can't settle on just one thing, or the student worried that a gourmet restaurant might be too pricey, these small plates are a welcome option.
Seafood proves to be a solid choice at George's Gourmet. Both the entree and small plate seafood sections offer more numerous selections than the meat and vegetarian, and there is also a limited raw bar selection of oysters and shrimp, available on the half-shell or steamed.
Be aware when ordering that a dish may be similar, if not identical, to one of the prepared selections sold in the market all day long, however. Only after finishing did my fellow diner notice the giant sign over the market area that advertised the same tasty herb-crusted salmon that he had thought so hot as to seem reheated. For the price of the entree, the lack of sides was unexpected. My small plate of mashed sweet potatoes looked lonely lumped on its white saucer and the large dinner plate dwarfed the slab of fish where it lay on its rice pilaf without any other sides.
George's Gourmet proclaims that cocktails are back-and proceeds to list a number of martinis complete with title and description. The wine selection is comparable to the one Bakastias has cultivated at Parizade: solid. Yet the bar was out of the first two wines I ordered, and I was not offered suggestions for comparable substitutions. But the bar, which has quickly become a fashionable late-night destination for Duke undergraduate and graduate students alike, offers a refreshing alternative to a local pub scene that is saturated with sports bars.
The principle guiding this restaurant seems to be a fascination with the glamour of pop culture, but plain-dealing rules when it comes to food. And the hints at culinary fusion, which had been so promising in the black and white grid of the menu, broke down in application. Although our meal was filling and tasty, the flashy decor and atmosphere of the building overshadowed the food: The restaurant's logo and web address were stenciled in red on the side of a steel pail that the waitress placed on our table. Within lay thick slices of bread.
If you are looking for a good meal at a new restaurant, go to George's Garage. If you miss the culinary scene of your larger-than-Durham home town, step on it. Just don't be surprised if you feel like you are in the hands of an innovative advertising team rather than a kitchen of cutting-edge chefs.
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