Bull Street Gourmet and Market, a gourmet food market and cafe, recently opened in the now always bustling Hope Valley Square. With Only Burger, Tutti Frutti, Rick’s Diner, Pop’s Backdoor and now Bull Street, I’m starting to envy folks who live on this side of town.

Welcoming and warm, Bull Street Gourmet and Market (an off-shoot of a popular market of the same name in Charleston) has a well-curated small selection of wine, …

There’s a new small grocery on Hillsborough Rd. in Durham, Lagos Meat Market. Kind of like a mini version of Compare, Lagos has a small selection of produce, milk, cheese, fresh baked goods and groceries – but their focus seems to be on their butcher counter. A large butcher case full of a wide selection of meat and fresh cut cheese can be found in the back of the store. We just stopped in to check it out after spotting a now open sign on Hillsborough. A friendly family market, …

We have a new cheese shop in Durham and lo, it is a glorious occurrence!  The Reliable Cheese Company was opened to fill a void in Durham’s foodie niche: the local cheese shop, where one can pick up great cheeses, meats, and other specialty goods and receive advice and guidance from a knowledgable cheesemonger.  That cheesemonger is Patrick Coleff, who has been in the cheese industry for five years, learning the trade at the great Murray’s in Manhattan and working at a few other …

I had a chance to check out the newly opened giant (49,000 sq ft. per the Herald Sun) Li Ming’s Global Market today at lunch. Housed in the old Circuit City just off 15-501, Li Ming’s is even larger than the Grand Asia Market in Cary.

The grocery portion of the store is a nice mix of Asian specialties and the everyday items you’d expect to see in a big-box grocery. There are shelves of American cheese slices next to dumpling wrappers, …

The Durham Green Flea Market (1600 E. Pettigrew St.) is the largest indoor/outdoor flea market in Durham.  Every Saturday and Sunday between 7:00am and 4:00pm, a wide variety of vendors set up shop to sell almost anything you can imagine.  Clothing, furniture, produce, bootleg cds/dvds, stereo equipment, and trinkets of all varieties are on offer.  But more importantly, for this taco hound, there is a really good selection of various latin street food also available.  It was pretty crowded when I went on Sunday afternoon so I didn’t have the …

Great news for East Durham residents: TROSA’s grocery store at 2104 Angier Ave. is opening May 13th.   Mayor Bell will cut the ribbon at a ceremony beginning at 11:30am.

While browsing through some of the recent entries here at Carpe Durham, I noticed that we’ve experienced a serious taco drought lately!   So I set out to cure this problem with a trip to Toledo Carniceria & Taqueria (2223 East NC Highway 54 # F)  in the Park Terrace plaza.

The menu at Toledo offers typical taqueria fare – tacos, gorditas, tortas, quesadillas, burritos, etc. A hand written note taped to the bottom of the menu board informed me that the weekend’s special was menudo and pozole. …

So someone else wrote about Halgo over a year ago, but thanks to a recommendation from a friend I finally checked it out for lunch today.

This cute Polish market has a freezer case full of 10 types of pierogies – the blueberry and sweet potato caught my eye – and a sign out front invites visitors in, reading “Polish Perogi – You can’t love’m unless you try ‘em.”

But today we were there for the hot kielbasa and kraut sandwiches. You do have to call ahead for these, …

HV Bottle Shop doesn’t look like much and the name doesn’t really make sense (as in Hope Valley), but further investigation reveals a much needed spot for more casual wine drinking and two very helpful owners.  Thomas and Drew have been around the block for a while (having worked at Nana’s and Foursquare(?) or the like) before opening their welcoming bottleshop in Woodcroft Plaza.

All of the Carpe Durham squad has been there by now and the results are officially tallied: it’s a great place.  They have a handy-dandy wine dispenser for …

As a new dad who’s on baby duty from 4-8am I often find myself hungry before the chickens are up. It’d be easy to write about all the great late-night eats (Honey’s, Waffle House, Cosmic until 4am), but not so when it comes to breakfast before six. Here are my favorites:

-Wimpy’s on Hillsborough: where else can you get a fatback biscuit?
-Biscuitville on Club: my normal routine is to wait for the wall street journal (which arrives around 4:55), then walk two blocks and bug them to let me …