October 13, 2026 — Tuesday Edition

Happy Tuesday, Durham. Saturday was a three-point kind of day: Central lost Homecoming to William & Mary by three, and an hour later Duke lost its first game of the year by three in Atlanta. Shake it off, because this is a week with a shape. Broadway's reigning Best Musical moves into DPAC tonight, the Wednesday market takes its last bow tomorrow, it's 89 on Wednesday, and on Saturday the Victory Bell comes home to Wallace Wade in sweater weather. The spotlight is a supper club hiding in a 1948 car showroom. Let's get into it.

For 42 years, the curved glass building on Geer Street sold auto parts. Before that it sold Fords, Lincolns and Mercurys. Now it sells chicken cooked under a brick, and it has never looked better.

Delancey Tavern opened in February in the old Weeks Motor Company showroom, built in 1948 with 28 tall windows that wrap around corners that bend instead of turn. Albert Weeks moved his dealership across the street in 1962, to the building you now know as Motorco. The Hutchins family ran a parts business in the showroom after that, and Mark Hutchins could never bring himself to sell it to someone who might knock it down. His partner here is Malachy Noone, who came down from Brooklyn almost twenty years ago and has had a hand in Bull McCabe's, Viceroy and Hutchins Garage, the pizza place next door. They meant to open in May 2025. Permits, tariffs and a run of snowstorms had other ideas.

It was worth the wait. The room is a supper club with an old-school New York accent: deep green walls, wooden booths, candles on everything, and rounded corners inside that echo the ones outside. It's the rare new restaurant that feels like it's been there for fifty years — because, in a way, the bones have.

The menu is tavern food with ambition, built for a long dinner or a quick one before a show across the street. The chicken under a brick is the headliner. Steak frites is there for the traditionalists, the burger is there for everybody, and the Korean-style wings are the thing to split at the bar while you decide.

Pro tip: it's closed Tuesdays, so today is for planning. Dinner runs Monday and Wednesday 5 to 9, Thursday through Saturday 5 to 10, and Sunday brings brunch from 11 to 3 before dinner at 5. Ask about the bar upstairs — it's the hidden one. And book ahead for Saturday night; after a 3:30 kickoff, half the stadium will have the same idea.

📅 408 W. Geer St · Mon & Wed 5–9 PM · Thu–Sat 5–10 PM · Sun 11 AM–3 PM & 5–9 PM · Closed Tue (INDY Week · Details)

🇰🇷 Seoul, twice in one week. If the robots at DPAC put you in the mood, the Washington Duke Inn is hosting "An Evening in Seoul" on Thursday from 4:30 to 6:45: a one-night Korean fusion menu with live jazz. It's $225 plus tax and service, booked through OpenTable. Splurge territory, but a dinner-and-a-show pairing this tidy doesn't come around often. (Triangle Food Blog)

🍌 Banana pudding now has its own shop. The Pudding Man opened at Boxyard RTP on October 2, built entirely around reworked versions of the dessert your aunt brings to every cookout. We have not tried them all yet. We intend to. (Triangle Food Blog)

🧙 Wear the hat, get the fries. Friday's Third Friday is the annual Witches (and Warlocks) Night Out, and downtown is paying you to dress for it: Bull City Burgers gives costumed guests free dirty fries with an entrée, and Simon Says Dip This takes 10% off. Cheapest costume ROI in town. (Downtown Durham)

Duke is 4-1 after a 28-25 loss at Georgia Tech, a game the Blue Devils outgained 418 to 383 and still couldn't close. Nate Sheppard ran up 190 total yards and two touchdowns; it wasn't enough. NCCU fell 17-14 to William & Mary on Homecoming and is 2-5, four straight losses now; the Eagles have the week off and go to Delaware State on Friday, October 23. Everything points at Saturday: North Carolina at Duke, 3:30 PM, ESPN2, with the Bell on the line and Carolina fresh off a 21-17 win at Pitt. Elsewhere: Duke women's soccer (7-1-4) won 2-1 at Boston College, plays at SMU Friday night and is home at Koskinen on the 24th against NC State. And basketball: Duke beat Belmont 102-62 in Thursday's preseason scrimmage, and Tennessee comes to Cameron for an exhibition next Tuesday at 7. (Duke · NCCU)

The week-ahead version, and it's a wild one. Today: sunny, 86. Wednesday: sunny, 89 — yes, in the middle of October, for the last farmers' market. Thursday and Friday: sunny, 87. Then a cold front moves through Friday night and the bottom drops out. Saturday: sunny, high near 63, which means a crisp, perfect 3:30 kickoff and a cold walk home — Saturday night falls to about 40. Sunday: sunny, 62. No rain anywhere in the forecast, so every outdoor plan this week is on. Dress for Thursday in shorts and Saturday in a jacket, and dig the real blanket out by Friday. (NWS)

113 — Duke-Carolina football games, counting Saturday · 2 — Victory Bells in a row for Duke · 3 — the margin of both Duke's and Central's losses Saturday · 26 — degrees Saturday's high drops from Wednesday's · 1948 — the year Delancey Tavern's building opened, selling Fords · 28 — windows wrapped around it · 102 — points Duke hung on Belmont in Cameron

Durham Magazine on two new downtown rooms built by people who make things. Sharon Kinsella's piece covers a pair of openings due this fall. Durm Studio, at 704 Rigsbee, is a screen-printing shop from Gabriel Eng-Goetz and Michael Brannon, both Runaway veterans, where the press sits in view of the register and 5 percent of annual profits go to the Durham Public Schools Foundation. Skin and Bones Theater, at 118 W. Parrish, is a 70-seat art-house cinema from the pair behind Shadowbox Studio, paid for in part by nearly $58,000 in crowdfunding. The thread between them: both are bets that people still want to stand in a room together. We'd take that bet. (Durham Magazine)

Most rivalries need a highway. Ours needs about eight miles of 15-501.

That's what makes this week strange and good. The other side isn't some distant city you can cheerfully despise. It's your dentist. It's your brother-in-law. It's the guy two desks over who has been insufferable since August, and the neighbor whose flag you have politely ignored for nine years. Half the marriages in this county are mixed.

So the trash talk here has a ceiling, because you have to see these people at the grocery store on Sunday. Be loud Saturday. Be gracious by Monday. And if it goes our way, ring the bell just a little longer than is strictly polite.

Much love, Durham. 🐂

— Michael & Anne · Written from Trinity Park ☕

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