April 28, 2026 — Tuesday Edition

Happy Tuesday, Durham. The bats come home today, the dogwoods are dropping petals like confetti, and on Geer Street, a 1928 car showroom is now serving "Chicken Cooked Under a Brick" in a deep-green dining room. Council's moving a $43M pool, a 72° Friday is on the way, and Ichiko Aoba lands at the Carolina Theatre. Let's get into it.

Delancey Tavern opened February 5 inside the old Weeks Motor Co. building at 408 W. Geer Street — the brick rotunda where, in 1928, downtown Durham went to look at the latest Lincoln and Mercury sedans. Twenty-eight tall windows wrap the curved corner. For decades it was an auto supply shop. Now it's a supper club, and it's the most quietly confident thing to open in Durham this year.

The food is what the team behind Hutchins Garage does well — elevated American without fussy edges. Burgers and fries you can order without apology. Steak frites. A rainbow trout with pomegranate-soy glaze that has no business being that pretty. And — if you've lived here long enough to have feelings about it — the menu brings back the "Chicken Cooked Under a Brick" from Pop's, the Mediterranean spot that used to anchor downtown. That dish on that menu in that building is the kind of small miracle a city earns by sticking around long enough to remember itself.

The room is doing something thoughtful too. Deep green walls, candles on every table, booths in dark wood, and corners rounded off into the same smooth curves as the building's facade — so the inside echoes the outside in a way you only notice on the second drink. Ninety seats downstairs, a 40-seat mezzanine lounge upstairs that's the move for cocktails first. No reservations yet, walk-in only. Go on a Wednesday and thank us later.

📍408 W. Geer St., Durham

Nerra is quietly becoming Durham's most-talked-about new room. Chef Alexis Lawson — Durham native, goes by Chef Lex — is running a southern, seafood-leaning menu just east of downtown that everyone who's been is trying to send their friends to. Get there before the line gets long. (Discover Durham)

Pinheiro is coming to East Durham. Triangle wine vet Sergio Ramos is opening a Portugal-focused wine bar in a corner of the city that's been hungry for exactly this. (NC Triangle Dining)

Jean's "By The Sea" is reimagining a hot-dog stand into a fish shack. Oysters as the headliner, Calabash-style baskets, classic sandwiches. The early-2026 opening window is starting to feel real. (Bites of Bull City)

Primrose Bar & Lounge keeps showing up in everyone's "best of" lists. The flower-papered cocktail lounge at 111 W. Main is somewhere between a Wes Anderson movie and your great-aunt's parlor. Hit it before the patio crowd does. (Indy Week)

🎶Ichiko Aoba— Fri 5/1, 8 p.m., Carolina Theatre (Fletcher Hall). The Japanese folk artist whose voice could quiet a room full of toddlers, in the best room in Durham for that kind of show. Don't show up late. (Carolina Theatre)

😂 Ali Siddiq— Fri 5/1, DPAC. The "Domino Effect" comic, one of the sharpest storytellers working right now, on a downtown stage. (DPAC)

🎤Chelsea Handler — The High and Mighty Tour— Sat 5/2, DPAC. Loud, fast, mean in a fun way, exactly what you came for. (DPAC)

🎸 Searows— Fri 5/1, 8 p.m., Motorco. Bedroom-pop kid with one of the more arresting young voices in indie right now, in our 500-cap living room. (Motorco)

🌹Third Annual Durham Garden Tour— Sat–Sun 5/2 & 5/3, 10 a.m.–3 p.m. A self-guided crawl through Durham's prettiest private gardens, exactly when peonies and roses are doing their best work. The most "I love this city" you can feel for $25. (Durham Garden Tour)

🎥Retro Film Series: The Getaway & Convoy— Fri 5/1, Carolina Theatre, $12 double feature. Two Sam Peckinpah-adjacent action movies on the big screen for less than the price of a cocktail. (Carolina Theatre)

Six straight at the DBAP against the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, Tuesday 4/28 through Sunday 5/3. Today's an 11:05 a.m. matinee — work-from-the-ballpark optional but encouraged. After a 7-12 road trip, the schedule eases up; there are at least two Tampa Bay prospects in this lineup who could get the call by June. Watch the kids before they're not kids anymore.

📍 Durham Bulls Athletic Park, 409 Blackwell St ·Tickets·Schedule

The sky owes us one and is paying up. Friday 5/1: 72° and sunny — patio day. Saturday 5/2: mid-60s, mostly sunny early with a chance of light showers rolling in by mid-afternoon, so plan the garden tour for the morning slot and Searows for the night. Sunday 5/3: cool and bright, low 60s, low 40s overnight — sweater weather for a Bulls Sunday matinee. (National Weather Service)

"From sedans to supper: iconic Weeks Motor Co. building reopens as Delancey Tavern" — 9th Street Journal. The perfect companion to a meal there: the building's hundred-year arc from Lincoln-Mercury showroom to auto supply to supper club, told by a writer who loves Durham architecture. Read it, then go.

There's a sound the DBAP makes on a home opener — half cheer, half exhale — that you don't realize you've been missing until you hear it again. We sit in those green seats and watch a triple-A team that mostly loses at this point in the season, and we mean it. The same way we mean it when a building that used to sell sedans gets a second life as a place where you order trout with people you love. Durham keeps rebuilding around the things that already work. That's what makes this town feel like a town.

See you at the park. Or on Geer. Or both.

Made with ❤ in Durham, NC