November 10, 2026 — Tuesday Edition

Good morning, Durham. If you scraped a windshield before coffee today, you're not imagining it: the first frost advisory of the season ran until 8 AM. It warms right back up to 72 this afternoon, then the bottom drops out Friday. In between: a Broadway comedy about living forever, opera poured alongside a pint, a holiday that shifts your trash day, and a football team that just went to Raleigh and won by 38. And today's spotlight is the little dessert café on University Drive that people keep telling us about. Let's get into it.

Some of the most interesting dessert in Durham doesn't come with a fork. It comes with a spoon, in a strip of shops on University Drive, next to nothing you'd call a destination.

The Bean Flower is a dessert and drink café at 4015 University Dr., near South Square, founded by CC Chu. The name is a translation: dou hua, the silken tofu pudding at the center of the menu, is written with the characters for "bean" and "flower." They make the soymilk and the tofu pudding in-house, and it is the reason to go: a soft, spoonable pudding that Discover Durham lists as the shop's signature.

Around it is a menu that takes Asian desserts seriously without getting precious about it. There's taho, the Filipino cousin of dou hua. There are scratch-made dessert jellies and puddings, red bean, chrysanthemum and hibiscus teas, milk teas, and a rotating run of limeades and fizzes built on local ingredients when they can get them. Something seasonal is always cycling through, so the right order is whatever's new plus one bowl of the namesake.

The shop says it wants to offer "a nostalgic connection to home," and you can feel that from both directions. For some customers that means finding a flavor they grew up with. For the rest of us it means trying something new, which is the other half of the shop's pitch. Either way, ask what's seasonal.

Pro tip: It's closed Monday and Tuesday, so make it a Wednesday plan, and note that last call is 7:30, half an hour before the doors close. You can also order ahead online. With highs in the mid-50s coming this weekend, a tea and a pudding is about the right speed.

📅 4015 University Dr., Suite J · Wed–Sun 11 AM–8 PM (last call 7:30) · closed Mon–Tue · (919) 903-2521 · Instagram @thebeanflower (thebeanflower.com · Discover Durham)

🍣 Thai and sushi for University Hill. East Thai & Sushi is coming soon to 3109 Shannon Road in the University Hill development. Triangle Food Blog reports the team just relocated from Miami, where they ran a similar concept. No opening date yet. (Triangle Food Blog)

🥃 Learn to batch before the relatives arrive. Durham Distillery's cocktail class tonight is Punches & Batching, 6:30 to 8 PM at 711 Washington St. Which is to say: how to make drinks for twelve without spending Thanksgiving behind your own kitchen counter. (Downtown Durham)

🌮 The Latin Effect is putting down roots. The food truck has announced a brick-and-mortar spot near 15-501 in Durham, aiming for early 2027. It had a storefront on West Franklin Street in Chapel Hill until May. No address yet. (Triangle Food Blog)

Forty-one to three. Duke went to Carter-Finley on Saturday and took NC State apart, 41-3. Nate Sheppard ran for 217 yards and three touchdowns on just 18 carries, 168 of those yards before halftime, and Andrew Pellicciotta returned a missed field goal 100 yards for a score, which is not a sentence we get to type often. That's three wins in a row and a 7-2 record (4-2 ACC). The reward: a trip to No. 1 Miami, Saturday at noon on ABC. NCCU made it three straight too, the hard way, 29-28 at Norfolk State. The Eagles are 5-5 and a perfect 3-0 in the MEAC, with South Carolina State on the road Saturday at 1:30 (ESPN+) and Morgan State at home on November 21. And Duke men's basketball, ranked No. 2, is 2-0 after beating Army 84-50 and Coastal Carolina 113-52. Patrick Ngongba II had a career-high 28 points in that second one, and Duke scored the first 16 points of the game. The first real test is tonight at 7 on ESPN: No. 6 Michigan State in the Champions Classic in Chicago. The Blue Devils are back at Cameron on Friday at 8 against SIUE (The CW). (Field Level Media · NCCU · AP)

Two seasons in one week. Today: sunny and 72 after that frosty start, then about 45 tonight. Wednesday, Veterans Day: mostly sunny, near 70. Thursday is the hinge: showers likely, a 50 percent chance of rain, thunderstorms possible after 1 PM, high around 67. Then the front goes through. Friday: mostly sunny and only 55, with a low near 35. Saturday: sunny, 54, down to 33 at night. Sunday: sunny, 56. Find the real coat by Friday, and if you still have plants on the porch, this is the week they come in. (NWS)

39 — this morning's low, with the season's first frost advisory · 217 — Nate Sheppard's rushing yards in Raleigh · 100 — yards Andrew Pellicciotta ran with a missed field goal · 113 — points Duke put on Coastal Carolina · 15 — years of Durham County's Veterans Day Celebration · 50 — years of Spyro Gyra · 1 — point between NCCU and Norfolk State

The 9th Street Journal on a Saturday morning at the farmers' market. Mélia Lemoine went to Fall Fest at Durham Central Park and came back with a portrait of the people who make the market what it is: pumpkin ring toss, babies dressed as pumpkins, a costume contest for vendors. Tie Whittaker, who started Buttermilk Boutique in 2015, brought maple brown butter cookies and cinnamon sugar cruffins. Painter Justin Leitner, a Raleigh native who moved here for the art scene, has been selling at the weekly art market for nine years. Whittaker's summary of this town is hard to beat: "Durham shows up rain or shine." (9th Street Journal)

The first frost is the one morning a year the whole street is outside at the same time.

Nobody planned it. Everybody just walked out to the car at 7:15 and found it white. So there's the guy two doors down scraping with a credit card, and the neighbor who owns an actual scraper and is, for one morning, the most popular person on the block. Somebody's draped a bedsheet over the last of the basil. Somebody's kid is writing their name on a windshield with one finger. People wave with their whole arm because their hands are in their sleeves.

It's gone by 9. By afternoon it's 72 and we're all pretending it didn't happen. But for about an hour this morning, Durham was a city of people standing in driveways, saying the same thing to each other: "Well. Here we go."

Much love, Durham. 🐂

— Michael & Anne · Written from Trinity Park ☕

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