The 10 Triangle restaurant closings that hurt the most in 2022

In 2022 we said goodbye to some of our favorite restaurants, spots that had become part of our lives for decades or for just a few delicious months.

Three years of pandemic dining proved to be too exhausting for some, while others closed after struggling to find their full potential in a short window of time.

Here are the 10 restaurants and bar closings from 2022 that we’ll miss the most.

Garland

This downtown Raleigh gem closed in August after nine years, perhaps the local restaurant closing with the farthest reaching ripples.

Co-owners Cheetie Kumar and Paul Siler opened Garland on Martin Street in 2013, sandwiched between their basement lounge, Neptune’s, and second-floor music venue, King’s. Garland served a menu with a unique culinary identity, with Kumar as chef creating dishes that blended her Indian heritage with seasonal North Carolina ingredients. With Garland, Kumar earned numerous James Beard glances, including a finalist nomination this year.

Garland was creative and soulful at every turn, using the confines of pandemic dining to build a patio oasis on the Martin Street sidewalk. It’s not all bad news, though. Kumar and Siler said at the time of Garland’s closing that they would be launching a new project with the Raleigh bakery, Anisette.

St. James Seafood

The five-year saga of St. James in Durham is heart-wrenching enough for a tearful sea shanty. In St. James, acclaimed chef Matt Kelly turned the former Fishmonger’s space on Main Street into a two-story seafood palace, where shellfish towers danced across the dining room, tiki drinks were vibrant and strong and the whole restaurant buzzed with the thrill of dining out.

Opening in 2017, St. James was first closed by the tragic gas explosion, then by a global pandemic, and ultimately by the development attention in downtown Durham. The restaurant burst on the scene as an instant classic and lives on as a legend lost too soon.

Quarter Horse

This downtown Durham dive bar was known for its vintage arcade games, which numbered in the dozens, including some rarities and oddities. Early this year, the bar was shut down over unpaid rent, and a bit of funk disappeared from downtown.

Margaret’s Cantina

This beloved Chapel Hill neighborhood restaurant served familiar Mexican dishes using seasonal, local ingredients — revolutionary for its time. Opened 30 years ago by the late Margaret Lundy, the Cantina’s dining room walls were often a gallery for local artists. Recent owner Young Fenton said the restaurant had regulars who had been dining there since the early 1990s, but that the pandemic had forced its closing.

C. Grace/Empress Room

This pair of Raleigh bars seemed a world away from their Glenwood Avenue address. C. Grace and Empress Room were pioneers in Raleigh’s embrace of the cocktail revival sweeping the nation in the 2010s, offering a thoughtful and lively bar program headed up by Matthew Bettinger, one of the Triangle’s top bartenders. Beyond the drinks, the bars were known as among the best small live music venues, especially for jazz fans.

Dos Perros

This downtown Durham Mexican restaurant from chef Charlie Deal closed in August after more than a decade. In a farewell note, Deal said Dos Perros was notable as a witness and participant in the dining revival in Downtown Durham. The space won’t be empty long, as it’s been taken over by Birrieria El Patron, one of the Triangle’s most popular taco trucks.

Locals Oyster Bar

One of the cornerstones of Raleigh’s Transfer Food Hall, Locals closed its first oyster bar in July amid plans to build a new market in East Raleigh. For more than a decade, Locals has been an influential force in Triangle dining, making fresh, high-quality North Carolina seafood more accessible, both on restaurant menus and in home kitchens where diners can order seasonal fish and oysters by the dozen or hundreds.

With its first oyster bar, Locals jumped into the restaurant business itself and brought something new and distinctive to Triangle fish fans. Under chef Eric Montagne, the Oyster Bar offered seafood charcuterie and an array of fried fish, as well as a deep raw bar.

A second Locals Oyster Bar remains open in the Durham Food Hall.

Barrel Culture

One of the Triangle’s most acclaimed breweries will close for good at the end of the year.

Barrel Culture starred in making excellent versions of many of the trendy beers in craft brewing right now, especially fruited sours and hazy double IPAs. And while it made serious beer, Barrel Culture had fun trying new things, including beer soft serve, often pouring a heavily fruited and deeply colorful style.

The Barrel Culture owners Caroline and Ethan Barbee announced in November that the brewery and taproom would close after five years. Barrel Culture clearly had its fans in the Triangle, finishing as the runner-up in The News & Observer’s Brewery Bracket.

Old North Meats & Provisions

When food halls are at their best they can go big on small ideas. In Old North Meats, chef and owner Joel Schroetter took his fine dining background and created an artisan sandwich bar, where the pastrami was luscious and smokey, smashburgers were greasy and decadent and the question of where to find the Triangle’s best chicken sandwich was easily settled.

Old North Meats closed in November as one of the founding members of the Durham Food Hall, ending a brief but influential run, with fans clamoring for a revival in some form or fashion one of these days.

Bendito

In Bendito, longtime Raleigh chef Kevin Ruiz announced himself as a new voice to follow in the local dining scene, creating an electric menu built around his style of modern Puerto Rican dishes. Within just a few months it was named one of the city’s top 25 restaurants by Raleigh Magazine.

But Bendito’s downtown flavors and vibes never felt at home in its strip mall locale and the restaurant closed in the fall. Fans of Ruiz can find him back downtown cooking at ORO Restaurant.