Drayage Brokersin Raleigh, NC

The Common Market, the Charlotte-born institution known for operating as a restaurant, bar, bottle shop, cafe, convenience store and ice cream combined into one, is nearing its Durham debut.

Driving the news: The Common Market will open its doors at 1821 Green St. on Tuesday, Sept. 26, a spokesperson for the company told Axios.

State of play: This will be the first Common Market location outside the Charlotte region.

What they're saying: "We're stocking the shelves, but we have no idea how this neighborhood is gonna utilize us as a business," Worth told Axios.

Details: Already, the Common Market — which Worth calls a community living room — is taking on some very Durham-specific characteristics.

What's we're watching: Worth said it's too early to say if the Durham location will be the first of several in the Triangle.

AlmostAlmost daily, people ask Preeti Waas when she’ll expand to Durham. Her popular Cheeni Indian Food Emporium (1141 Falls River Avenue) in north Raleigh — which won the Eater Carolinas 2022 North Carolina Restaurant of the Year Award and later earned Waas the 2023 Best Chef: Southeast semifinalist nod from the James Beard Awards — draws people from much further away. But it consistently attracts diners from neighboring Durham.

She finally has an answer for them: as soon as possible.

This week, Waas signed a lease to open a second location of Cheeni in the heart of Durham, inside the former Jack Tar space (202 Corcoran Street, Suite 100). She already has the keys and hopes to open on November 1, the four-year anniversary of when she opened the original (and now defunct) Cheeni location at Raleigh’s downtown YMCA.

“We have people coming from Durham all the freaking time,” Waas says, “They’ll no longer have to come to us; we’re coming to them.”

The new location, which will just go by Cheeni, is significantly bigger than the current emporium space, particularly the kitchen. That’s the whole point. “With this location, I feel like I can spread my wings and fly,” Waas says, “It’s a little terrifying, but I kind of thrive on that terror.”

Right now, Cheeni operates out of a former bagel shop in a strip mall, with a kitchen small enough to fit inside the kitchen of some homes in the area. Waas is limited by the space, and it prevents her from offering the full array of regional Indian cuisine she wants to provide. With the Durham location’s twin kitchens, particularly the “giant” prep kitchen in the back, Cheeni will be able to prepare all food for both shops in one space.

“This is a way to make more possible and more available in Raleigh, too,” Waas says, “They’ll be differentiated but connected.”

The new location will offer breakfast, lunch, and dinner most days of the week, but won’t follow the all-day cafe model the Raleigh restaurant currently uses. It will be more “service-oriented,” Waas says, with a host and table service rather than the existing cafe-style, bus-your-own-plate approach. With time, she’ll add a bar with a small bites menu in the adjoining, semi-hidden bar. Named Bar Beej (Hindi for “seed”), customers can expect dishes like an Indian fried chicken brined in full-fat coconut milk, twice-fried, and tossed in their choice of three masalas.

Some menu items will be familiar to regulars; Waas has already started testing some dishes out as specials in Raleigh. “We’re really leaning into the regionality of Indian cuisine,” she says, “It would be great for a country as large as ours, as diverse as ours, to have an appropriate amount of representation here.”

Several regions will be featured on the standing menu, including Waas’ native Tamil Nadu in southern India, Kerala, West Bengal, and North India. Rotating specials will be driven by “whatever I feel like cooking that day,” much like Cheeni runs now. Waas described the forthcoming menu as more of a “guide,” clearly indicating regional origins and differences to customers in an attempt to make it more approachable and spark curiosity.

Like the Raleigh restaurant, there won’t be some of the Americanized Indian food staples that some diners might expect such as butter chicken or chicken tikka masala.

“It’s nothing more complicated than it’s what I like to eat,” Waas says, “I am a home cook; I’m not culinarily trained. I just like to cook, and I like to feed people, so I’m going to feed people what I like to eat. It’s what I like to eat now, and my food memories.”

Some dishes evoke specific family members or her kids’ childhood favorites, while others recall her travels. Waas previously worked as a flight attendant in India, jetting to different states for work and eagerly exploring food on her layovers. She wants you to experience a taste of what she did.

“At this point, people trust what I put on the plate,” Waas says, “I’m hoping to build on that trust. Just come in and enjoy. If you don’t like it, that’s okay, but at least you’ve tried it. I’m not dumbing it down.”

Waas is changing little about the Jack Tar building. The fact that it’s a second-generation restaurant space that’s virtually ready to go is part of the appeal. But she’ll still “Cheeni-fy” it, with visual cues that align with her Raleigh digs —black and white floors, similar fabrics and colors, and more. She’s aiming for upscale but unpretentious, appealing to nearby hotel guests looking for a quick breakfast and locals celebrating a romantic anniversary dinner alike.

The new location will also mean some changes for Cheeni Indian Food Emporium in Raleigh. The hours will shift away from all-day cafe to something more sustainable for staffing, such as an “abbreviated” lunch window. Raleigh will continue offering events, emporium-item shopping, and classes. Waas will still be there too, she stressed, just less often. In anticipation of the changes, her daughter Amy has joined the business to be Waas’ right hand.

After opening and finding their footing, Waas plans for Cheeni in Durham to be open for three meals a day on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday through Saturday. Sunday will offer brunch only, and Wednesday will provide a reprieve for staff. Waas emphasized that she sees the venture as a compliment to Durham’s existing options, distinct from Viceroy a short walk away and other Indian restaurants in the city, too.

“India is so vast and it has so many different things to offer that if somebody walks into Cheeni and we don’t have what they want, we can send them to five other places,” Waas says, “and vice versa.”

TinyTiny cubes of sunset-pink watermelon sit nestled with boiled peanuts and Japanese eggplant on the baba ghanoush dish at Ajja (209 Bickett Boulevard, Raleigh), adding a brightness to the dish, but also serving as a reminder of the final days of summer sun and crisper weather on the horizon. With fall on the way, thousands of university students have returned to the Triangle to attend the new semester, and local families have returned from vacations to also settle into the school year and tuck into their respective communities.

At Ajja, acclaimed chef Cheetie Kumar’s new ode to “the Mediterranean, the Middle East and beyond,” customers from the Five Points neighborhood and avid fans of her previous restaurant Garland gather in the backyard of the Bickett Boulevard restaurant to dine on dayboat shrimp grouped with sweet corn, peach-tamarind pork ribs, and Za’tartinis. The building is nestled among family homes, warehouses, and a few shops. “That block has always been really kind of this secret, little hideaway that we were just really attracted to,” says Kumar.

During the pandemic, Kumar and partner Paul Siler were presented with the opportunity to move into the space behind Anisette Sweet Shop. They thought they would open a new restaurant in addition to their acclaimed Indian-meets-Southern spot Garland, but diners stopped coming downtown when offices shuttered, and they decided to close the space. Now, their new spot overlooks the tall buildings in downtown Raleigh that once nestled their former restaurant.

Ajja is just one of the many Triangle restaurants stepping away from the main streets of downtowns as real estate prices rise and rampant construction hinders customers from venturing to visit, on top of complicated parking situations, traffic, and behaviors altered by the pandemic. “I think, across the globe, people’s eating habits changed and their routes changed — what they do and where they are is just different. There were a lot of factors that added up to us really being excited about being in a neighborhood,” says Kumar.

Over in Durham, chef Oscar Diaz decided to open Little Bull (810 North Mangum Street) his homage Mexican American cuisine, in the historic Old Five Points neighborhood. Customers looking for the restaurant will pass by family homes, a few barber shops, and a commercial garage to reach the address. “We wanted something that was tucked away,” says Diaz, “We really wanted a quaint restaurant without the hustle and bustle of the main street strip. We wanted somewhere where it felt like we were adding to a community.”

The lower cost of rent also allows Diaz to offer his staff a livable wage. “Sometimes opening a small restaurant in this area becomes difficult because the real estate cost per square foot can get absurd,” he says, “So while we need to make a profit, we also want to keep our prices reasonable for our guests and produce quality products.”

Just north of the downtown scene, the space at Little Bull is hip, but not in an intimidating way. It’s a comfortable spot for friends and family to gather over Diaz’s menu of comfort food through his view as a first-generation Mexican American who grew up in Chicago and ended up in the South. Plates include birria dumplings, local catch ceviches, and beef cheek barbacoa on top of bone marrow with fresh tortillas. The plates come out and customers want to keep ordering more to try everything and to keep the party going with the rest of the dining room.

In Chapel Hill, non-Italian restaurant Bombolo (764 M.L.K. Jr. Boulevard) sits off the main drag of Franklin Street behind the homes and apartments off of Martin Luther King Boulevard. The dining room is filled with professor-types and young families. They dine on halibut khoa soi, rabbit pappardelle, and New Orleans-style barbecued shrimp from chef Garret Fleming. As Eater writer Matt Lardie explains, Fleming basically takes the concept of “pasta” and expands it to include noodles and dumplings from around the globe plus whatever else inspires him at the moment. It’s almost like going to a friend's house for dinner and not knowing which cookbook they are working from that evening.

From an outsider’s perspective, the strip mall location of Bombolo may not scream “neighborhood restaurant,” but Chapel Hill tends to feel like one large community with the lines between the University and the medical system blurred with the town. Fleming and co-owner/sister Eleanor Lacy say they originally looked at a Franklin Street location, but ultimately decided against it. “The majority of Chapel Hill doesn’t regard Franklin Street as easily accessible or in their neighborhood,” says Lacy, “One delightful thing that has happened is that we get a lot of people who live around us and remember this place as the previous restaurant Kitchen, and they are excited to have something in the neighborhood again.”

While each of the restaurants, Ajja, Little Bull, and Bombolo, are relatively new to their locations, they all seem to be part of the neighborhoods already, as if they’ve been there for years. With the arrival of fall, each of the owners expects to be a bit busier with friends and families venturing out more with the chiller weather and holidays on the way. One can imagine that their menus will become the flavors of the community, and there might even be a time when diners can’t remember an evening before their favorite neighborhood restaurant showed up next door.

The News & Observer publishes a weekly roundup of restaurant sanitation scores to keep you up-to-date on the health grades at Triangle dining spots.

Sanitation scores and their corresponding letter grades are used in North Carolina to assess restaurants’ adherence to rules and standards intended to mitigate and prevent the spread of food-borne illnesses.

You’ve likely seen sanitation grade cards at restaurants you’ve visited, and The N&O previously explained what those scores mean and how they’re calculated.

Here are sanitation scores in Triangle counties for the week of Sept. 13-19.

The Wake County sanitation grades database shows that 81 restaurant inspections were completed Sept. 13-19.

▪ Most restaurants received an A grade, or a score of at least 90%.

▪ Three restaurants received a B grade, or a score of at least 80% but lower than 90%.

Sushi Blues Cafe (301 Glenwood Ave. Suite 110 in Raleigh) received a score of 86.5% during an inspection on Sept. 18.

Acme Pizza Co (204 Village Walk Dr. in Holly Springs) received a score of 87% during an inspection on Sept. 18.

Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar (3300 Village Market Pl. in Morrisville) received a score of 86% during an inspection on Sept. 13.

▪ No restaurants received a C grade, or a score of at least 70% but less than 80%.

▪ No restaurants received a failing grade, or a score below 70%.

You can search all restaurant inspections in Wake County at wake-nc.healthinspections.us.

The Durham County inspection management system shows six restaurant inspections were completed Sept. 13-19.

▪ All restaurants received an A grade.

You can search all restaurant inspections in Durham County at bit.ly/3pVQfpG.

The Orange County inspection management system shows that 28 restaurant inspections were Sept. 13-19.

▪ All restaurants received an A grade.

You can search all restaurant inspections in Orange County at bit.ly/3eQqpxc.

The Johnston County sanitation inspections database shows that 16 restaurant inspections were completed Sept. 13-19.

▪ All restaurants received an A grade.

You can search all restaurant inspections in Johnston County at johnston-nc.healthinspections.us.

The Chatham County inspections management system shows that that three restaurant inspections were completed Sept. 13-19.

▪ Most restaurants received an A grade.

▪ One restaurant received a B grade, or a score of at least 80% but lower than 90%.

Dry Dock Seafood Restaurant (408 North 2nd Ave. in Siler City) received a score of 88.5% during an inspection on Sept. 14.

▪ No restaurants received a C grade, or a score of at least 70% but lower than 80%.

▪ No restaurants received a failing grade.

You can search all restaurant inspections in Chatham County at bit.ly/3JfiHwq.

Have a question about something in our community? The News & Observer’s Service Journalism team wants your questions for our Triangle Asked & Answered series. Reach out to us by filling out this form or by sending an email to ask@newsobserver.com.

This story was originally published September 19, 2023, 10:43 AM.

VIDEO: NC State OL Dylan McMahon on being named a captain, fall camp

Dylan McMahon is day to day for this week Dave Doeren said at his weekly presser Monday night. McMahon was helped off the field early in the game against VMI with an injury, but it doesn't look like it will keep him off the field for long.

"There's nothing on the test after the game that are worrisome," Doeren said. "No surgeries, nothing like that. Dylan has had things in the past. He's a very quick healer, a very tough guy. So he's gonna do everything he can to play in this game.

”But you know, we're two days from that game. We'll have to see where he's at tomorrow. I know he'll do everything he can to be out there."

McMahon, a team captain and the Pack's starting center, is still listed atop the depth chart at center. Though his injury doesn't seem too serious, a quick turnaround for red and white's ACC opener at Virginia on Friday shortens the timetable to get McMahon back to full health in time for the next game. If McMahon is unable to play on Friday, Wolfpack fans can expect to see Lyndon Cooper shift over from left guard to snap the ball. Cooper took over center duties after McMahon left the game against the Keydets and performed well, keeping the middle of the O-line in good hands. Sean Hill and Rylan Vann are also listed second and third, respectively, on the depth chart at center.

Pack Pride will have more on McMahon's status as it becomes available.

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