I’ll use the search function, too, but after some great Outer Banks reccos figured I’d ask where the best shops and wine lists at restos are. Or just great restos period, too.
Angus Barn used to have a nice list (been over a decade since I’ve been there though, so not sure if they still do)
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metro Raleigh is kinda spread out, and probably the best stuff is in Durham. Where are you staying?
I can vouch for Poole’s and Crawford & Son.
Crafty Beer Wine & Spirits
Death & Taxes
Raleigh Wine Shop
I can also vouch for several breweries but that doesn’t seem to be your thing.
If you’re in Clayton:
Crawford Cookshop
Lil Hombre
Manning’s
Revival 1869
A few restaurants I’d suggest are worth visiting - not for particularly extensive lists though. Second Poole’s and Crawford and Son. Would add Mandolin and Brewery Bhavana. Haven’t yet made it to Garland but it has excellent notices and is next on my list of Raleigh visits.
Deepest list and prob the finest dining destination in town is Herons at the Umstead. List is extensive and has some interesting things.
The place with the most surprising and eclectic selection is Oakwood Pizza Box. For my money, high on the list if not the best pizza in the area. Don’t try and find a list (although you can see a few things on their togo list) just ask Anthony what’s hiding in the wine cabinets. Even the lower end stuff is well selected. Nice little neighborhood too (Crawford and Son a couple doors down). Can make an afternoon of it and grab beer/snacks at Standard Beer around the corner and then ice cream at Two Roosters.
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University Park/Oberlin area.
https://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3488092
Eric Stokes and his partner Tom Kobylarz are my go-to wine guys here, Apex Fine Wine.
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Poole’s and Crawford and less than 2 miles from us. 
Add Stanbury to the mix too, northeast a few blocks from Crawford. Wine selection not great but I like the food more.
Very small world. I picked up pizza there last week (it was delicious) and couldn’t believe the amount of Beaujolais, Northern Rhone, California and Washington wines they had available. Definitely need to go back
I think the list on their website for ‘order takeout’ was pretty current last time I was there; '16 Allemand Reynard is below wine searcher low, '14 Mugnier Musigny for visiting ballers. The wine is not, but the pizza at Toro and Mercato is better.
I’ve def found more there than on the takeout list. Agree Toro and Mercato both excellent and they’re more complete restaurants too. I frequent them - Mercato in particular which has really nice range across the menu - but totally different styles of pizza.
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COVID laid waste to the central NC restaurant scene.
I imagine that’s probably true of every mid-sized city in the nation, but it seemed especially bad around here [particularly from a sentimental point of view].
An outfit called “Wester Auction”, from Smithfield, NC, spent more than two years holding bankruptcy auctions for restaurants which had gone belly up, due to COVID [some of them with very old names in central North Carolina, going back four or five decades].
At the depths of the collapse, Wester was doing at least two restaurant bankruptcy auctions per week [which is an insane amount of work, when you’re talking about photographing & cataloging hundreds and hundreds of different lots for each auction].
Another problem I’ve heard about, from several different restaurateurs, is finding warm & able bodies [as opposed to corpses] which want to work.
Apparently folks got so addicted to the COVID-cash that they don’t want to get up off the couch anymore.
In the Triangle area, coming out of the pandemic, being the Forbes.com No. 1 Best Place for Business and Careers the last 4 out of 5 years with historically low unemployment has made it tough to hire and retain workers for all businesses here.
Just last night my wife got a text from the lady who has helped clean our house the last several years that effectively said I’m off on a different venture and I don’t clean houses anymore. Good for her.
I will premise this with the admission that I haven’t been out for fine dining since the pandemic started and haven’t been to many of these places in a long while before that. With a teenager, we do a lot of takeout with menu compatibility for the entire family.
With that said, I’ll add to the chorus of support for Toro. Pompieri is just a few blocks away and is another pretty good option. They do a good job in having a very eclectic, user-friendly wine selection, all priced really fairly.
Angus Barn is probably still the deepest list in the area. Fearrington House hasn’t been mentioned but is a Relais and Chateaux property. I have no idea who is running the food and wine programs out there now, so you may want to check it out a bit before committing to a reservation. Herons upped their game over the past decade. The cuisine went into more of a molecular-gastronomy-inspired style with foams and such. It isn’t my thing but they execute it pretty well and I have enjoyed meals they make. Again, given lapse in time, they may have shifted chef/style but that was my last experience there.
Mateo and Mother and Sons are sister establishments and both have great lists and food.
Chapel Hill Wine Company (and second location Hillsborough Wine Company) get good selections in. I buy a lot of them, however 
.
Cheers,
fred
Those are good suggestions Fred. I would spend more time at CHWC if it wasn’t so darned far from Raleigh, west side of CH. (Used to do a 2-for-1 trip when Southern Season was open.)
I don’t know that area but it seems to be residential without much commerce. You will probably have to go downtown to get the foods.
Clyde Cooper’s is solid downtown barbecue but a weird vibe as it’s now in a new high rise building. Not a drinking establishment.
Yea there’s a big shopping/dining area like a 5 minute walk but it’s only a 5 minute drive to ‘downtown.’
We hit 42nd Street Oyster Bar last night, SO damn good. Got oysters (duh) and a blackened swordfish that was perfectly seasoned. I guess it’s a Raleigh staple, been around for ages. Highly recommend though the wine list is meh, go for cocktails or beer after the Muscadet with oysters.
Doing Mandolin Thursday night.
Thanks again all for the reccos.
Board Member Nathan Vandergrif has a nice spot.
https://www.rueclerdurham.com/
Highly recommend Oakwood Pizza Box. Had two great visits on my last trip. Selosse, Raveneau and pizza! I have not been to the other places Stan mentioned, I am however very serious about Pizza and have eaten at most of the top spots in the U.S. and I thought the pizza was very good.
Angus Barn might have some of the worst food I have ever had in a higher end restaurant. It was so bad we asked for a separate table because the smell was ruining our wine experience. That said we drank some very underpriced DRC.
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Great thread as we are always looking for good places to eat and drink when visiting our son at NC State. Angus Barn is quite an interesting place. I don’t think it was the worst food I have ever had but in my limited experience the meals are very inconsistent (some were actually good) except there is always a lot to eat. The wine list is overpriced in parts and underpriced in others. And the cocktails are poorly made (why do they use crappy vermouth in their Manhattans, for example). You can also get a tour of their wine cellar if you ask.
Or they could have been one of the over 1,000,000 that died from COVID.