Downtown Raleigh packs three centuries of food history into a three-hour walk, and no two stops taste alike. Start with a steamed Char Siu Bao, a Cantonese barbecue pork bun, inside a downtown brewery that's part bookshop, part flower stall. Move on to a Lebanese family kitchen for hummus, baba ghanouj, fattoush, shawarma, and kibbee mikli, recipes carried across a century. Then it's whole-hog barbecue, chopped fine and sharpened with vinegar the eastern North Carolina way, at a Warehouse District pit room. Somewhere along the route, your guide hands you a Secret Dish, revealed only on the day. Finish with a three-bar chocolate flight at a bean-to-bar factory inside an old railway depot. Your guide lives here and will explain the barbecue rivalry between eastern and western Carolina, what East Hargett Street meant to Black Raleigh in the 1920s, and where they take their own family to eat.. Come hungry, leave with a downtown Raleigh you actually know how to eat your way through.
...More
