September 22, 2026 — Tuesday Edition

Happy Tuesday, Durham. Yesterday hit 94. Today a front is dragging real rain across the county, and behind it the bottom falls out — mid-60s by tomorrow, which is a thirty-degree swing in about forty-eight hours and the most dramatic thing to happen here since the Classic. CenterFest is swept up, Duke is 3-0, and DPAC goes to Cuba tonight for a week. The spotlight is a bakery that has been pulling pretzels out of the oven since 1998, because this is suddenly soup-and-bread weather. Let's get into it.

A guglhupf is a ring-shaped cake. It is also, for twenty-eight years now, the answer to the question "where should we go when the weather turns?"

Guglhupf sits at 2706 Durham-Chapel Hill Boulevard, and it is three things under one roof: an artisan bakery, a full restaurant, and a biergarten. Claudia Kemmet-Cooper and Hartmut Jahn opened it in 1998 as a bakery, full stop — bread, rolls, pastry — and it grew outward from the ovens, the way the good ones do. A café, then a kitchen, then a patio that fills up the minute the humidity breaks. The pitch has never changed: southern Germany, made with what Triangle farmers are growing.

In the summer of 2023 Kemmet-Cooper sold the business to Sean Scott, who co-founded Subculture Coffee in Florida, and Durham did what it does when an institution changes hands, which is hold its breath. Scott's stated plan was to not fix what wasn't broken, and the staff stayed. Three years on, the bread is the bread. That's the best review a handoff can get.

What to order depends on the hour. Mornings are for the bakery case — croissants, brezels, the dense seeded loaves that make supermarket bread taste like packing material. Lunch and dinner are for the restaurant side: schnitzel, wurst plates with spaetzle, the kind of food that makes no sense in August and perfect sense on a 65-degree Wednesday. Which, as it happens, is tomorrow.

Pro tip: the bakery and the restaurant keep different hours, and both are closed Mondays. The bakery opens at 7:30 Tuesday through Saturday; the restaurant opens at 8 and runs to 8 PM Tuesday through Thursday, 9 on Friday and Saturday. Sunday everything wraps at 3. If you want bread for the week, go early and go to the bakery counter first — then sit down.

📅 2706 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd · Restaurant Tue–Thu 8 AM–8 PM, Fri–Sat 8 AM–9 PM, Sun 9 AM–3 PM · Bakery Tue–Sat 7:30 AM–6 PM, Sun 8:30 AM–3 PM (Menu & hours)

Lula & Sadie's served its last meal Sunday. The Southern kitchen at 2202 Chapel Hill Road in Lakewood — named for the chef's grandmothers, and home to one of the better jazz brunches in town — closed after service on September 20. No hot take here. Just a reminder that the places you mean to get back to are operating on a clock you can't see. (WRAL)

🍺 Oktoberfest takes over Durham Central Park Saturday. The Glass Jug's annual party runs 3 to 10 PM and is free to walk into: German-style beers and brats, a craft market from 3 to 7, a stein-holding competition, a costume contest with winners at 6, and a keg-rolling relay you have to sign up for in advance. It ends with an after-party back at the Glass Jug. With Saturday looking like the first proper fall afternoon of the year, the timing is almost suspicious. (Triangle on the Cheap)

🥕 Four Wednesday markets left. The midweek Durham Farmers' Market — 3 to 6 PM at the pavilion — only runs April 15 through October 15, which means tomorrow, the 30th, October 7 and October 14, and then it's Saturdays only until spring. It's the same farmers with a tenth of the crowd. Use it while it's here. (durhamfarmersmarket.com)

Duke is 3-0. Saturday's 35-7 over Stanford at Wallace Wade was the first one that never felt in doubt, after 17-3 over Tulane and the 31-27 escape at Illinois. William & Mary visits Saturday at 3:30 — the last home game before a long gap, so if you've been meaning to go, this is the one. NCCU is 2-2 after a 44-20 loss at Gardner-Webb that nobody in maroon will want to rewatch, and the schedule does them no favors: at East Carolina, Saturday at 4, in Greenville. The Eagles are back at O'Kelly-Riddick October 3. And Duke women's soccer hosts Notre Dame Thursday at 7 for K9s in Koski, the one night a year the student section is outnumbered by retrievers. (Duke · NCCU)

Tuesday edition, so this is the week-ahead outlook — and it's a hinge week. Monday topped out at 94 at RDU. Today is the turn: rain with the front, a high in the mid-80s, and cooler air pouring in behind it. Wednesday and Thursday are the shock — highs only in the mid-60s, gray, with leftover drizzle; you will want an actual jacket, and you will not remember where it is. Friday starts the recovery, low 70s and clearing, with a night in the low 50s. Saturday and Sunday look like the reward: sunshine and right around 80, crisp at breakfast and warm by kickoff. Plan the outdoor things for the weekend and the bakery things for the middle of the week.

94 — Monday's high, the last gasp · 30 — roughly how many degrees we lose by Wednesday · 1998 — the year Guglhupf fired up the ovens · 3 — early Declaration printings headed to the Nasher · 4 — Wednesday markets left this season · 3-0 — Duke, heading into Saturday · $10 — a student ticket to Mo Amer tonight

INDY Week on Lou Hazel, and the album that a hundred watercolors paid for. Chris Frisina, the Durham songwriter who records as Lou Hazel, needed to pay a studio crew for his next record. So last winter he painted one hundred original watercolors, called the series "Lou's Mystery Oracle," and sold them on Bandcamp on a sliding scale from $50 to $150 — with the catch that you didn't get to pick which one you got. It worked. Nick McGregor's profile is nominally a music piece; it's really about how working artists here keep inventing their own economies because the standard ones don't pencil out. Read it, then go find Riot of the Red. (INDY Week)

A small defense of standing in line. Specifically the lines here: the bakery counter on a Saturday, the tomato guy at the market, the truck with the forty-minute wait that everyone agrees is worth it. In most cities a line is dead time, a thing to be optimized away with an app. In Durham it's where half the conversation in town actually happens.

You know how this goes. Somebody ahead of you recommends the thing you weren't going to order. Somebody behind you turns out to live two streets over, or to have taught your neighbor's kid, or to have strong feelings about which loaf. By the time you reach the register you've been handed a restaurant tip, a plumber's name, and an opinion about Saturday's game.

So when the weather finally turns this week and the lines get long again, don't pull out the phone. Look up. The city is standing right there next to you, and it wants to tell you what to get.

Much love, Durham. 🐂

— Michael & Anne · Written from Trinity Park ☕

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