Top Ten List

I’m always asked where are my favorite places to eat, so it’s time to finally share my current top ten list.

Dame’s Almost Famous Chicken and Waffles (Durham)

Fluffy and light sweet potato waffles, your choice of a homemade side like macaroni and cheese with fresh herbs, fruit salad, or collard greens, and some of the juiciest fried chicken you dun ever seen.

Blu Seafood (Durham)

Super-fresh seafood on a charming patio.

Mediterranean Deli (Chapel Hill)

A huge assortment of healthy options within the deli case or try a freshly baked pita pizza and some lavender iced tea.

Daylight Donuts (Wake Forest, N. Raleigh)

Don’t think you’ll find a fresher old-fashioned cake doughnut anywhere in the Triangle. But they are not open Mondays.

Davinci’s Pork Store (Wake Forest)

A New York deli – get a sandwich with freshly-shaved meat on a ciabatta roll and then you’ll know what I’m talking about. This is the first food I made a friend bring me after I gave birth. I craved it all 9 months when I wasn’t supposed to have deli meat. Try some of the butchered meats or sausages and grill them up. I hear the pinwheels are excellent.

Helios (Raleigh)

There is one thing the best coffee shops in the Triangle have in common, and that is Counter Culture coffee. Helios is my favorite, not really for their food or atmosphere, but the coffee is always perfect. Scratch (Durham) and Parker & Otis (Durham) also do great coffee.

Any food truck (Durham/Carborro)

Food trucks are not to be missed, because half of the fun is finding them. It’s really like a treasure hunt. If they combined food-truckery with geo-caching somehow I think you’d have some sort of foodie geek goldmine there.

Follow Andrea Weigl’s list of food trucks on Twitter to get the scoop.

Flights (Raleigh)

Flights is the restaurant inside the North Hills Renaissance hotel. They have basically no marketing and what seems like high prices. But I’ve been twice for breakfast and had my socks officially knocked off. Everything is amazing, I hope dinner is just as good.

Kilwin’s (Cary)

This ole-fashioned ice cream chain cannot be beat. The scent of freshly-made waffle cones, fudge-making, or caramel turtles call out to you in the street. The chocolate ice cream is a fudgy yum explosion in your mouth. However, Goodberry’s is also a great choice if you don’t want to trek to Cary.

La Farm Bakery (Cary)

This should need no introduction; it’s only arguably the best bakery in the Triangle. They also have a café and coffee so don’t be shy.