2022’s Best New Restaurant: Triangle diners embrace comfort food

Sequels are always judged against the original.

But with Bluebird, the follow-up act to Hawthorne & Wood from chef Brandon Sharp, lightning has struck twice.

The Chapel Hill bistro Bluebird has been named the Best New Restaurant of 2022 in a poll of Triangle diners. In the final tally, Bluebird took 62 percent of the 7,400 votes to top North Raleigh’s Lechon Latin BBQ Joint.

2022’s Best new restaurant: Bluebird

Bluebird opened quietly in the middle of the summer, throwing open its doors in early July without a big announcement. Diners found it anyway.

With Hawthorne & Wood, Sharp said there was a gentle breaking-in period of a couple months or so as diners discovered the New American restaurant, which News & Observer dining critic Greg Cox named one of the Triangle’s best to open in 2019.

There was no hiding Bluebird.

“Expectations from the public were sky-high from the get-go,” Sharp said. “After two days of just being packed, the entire crew became veterans overnight.”

In Bluebird, Sharp said he aimed for the heart, for the soulful warmth of classic French bistro dishes. It’s a line he draws directly to Southern food.

“Bluebird was intended to have a broad appeal,” Sharp said. “It’s a short leap from French bistro dishes to Southern food — they’re both about comfort.”

Bluebird is elegance meant to be lived in. Tables are covered with brown paper, which diners use for doodling. Temporary tattoos of the restaurant’s crowned bluebird logo are handed out as charming keepsakes.

It’s a place that’s often a reminder of what we put on hold in the pandemic.

“Hopefully it’s that spot coming out of the pandemic that people know they can come to as they are, that they don’t have to dress up to have a meal in a beautiful, welcoming, lively place,” Sharp said.

Sharp opened Bluebird less than a mile from Hawthorne & Wood, building a dining room with white tiled floors and a copper horseshoe bar.

Sharp grew up in Chapel Hill, his parents living less than a mile from where Hawthorne & Wood sits today. At that time the acres along Highway 54 were farmland.

“I wish they could see how beautiful this restaurant is here now,” Sharp said over the summer, after Bluebird opened.

His cooking career has included stints at The French Laundry (one of the world’s most famous restaurants), New Orleans’ Restaurant August and nearly a decade in the Napa Valley restaurant Solbar, which earned one Michelin star for seven consecutive years.

The response to Bluebird, both in the dining room and as the winner of the Best New Restaurant poll, means the restaurant has tapped into something the dining public is yearning for, Sharp said.

“It’s so affirming for the team,” Sharp said of being named the Triangle’s favorite new restaurant. “We look inwards, we have our own standards, but this is something the crew can really have as a badge of honor.”

Runner up favorite: Lechon Latin BBQ Joint

It takes an inventive eye to see one thing and imagine another. In a dead California Pizza Kitchen space in North Raleigh, Jorge Thorne saw the potential for a fun and funky lechon spot.

Thorne opened Lechon Latin BBQ Joint with Randy Hernandez and Richard Camos, veterans of the Triangle restaurant community, in January of this year. Thorne is now the sole owner.

The name is more of a wink at North Carolina’s current barbecue boom than smoked cue as most know it.

“This is a barbecue town, but we’re not competing with traditional barbecue,” Thorne said. “We’re doing it our own way.”

Instead, Lechon specializes in the slow roasted, spiced pork from which it takes its name — pork marinated for 24 hours, then cooked overnight in a low oven until it melts into meaty succulence. First thing the next morning, the oven is fired back up to crisp the skin to perfection.”

“It’s all about the skin, the skin is the best part,” Thorne said.

The menu features plates of that slow roasted Pernil, sausages, jerk chicken and empanadas, plus rotisserie style chicken cooked in a former pizza oven.

Thorne is originally from Peru and moved to the Triangle from Florida five years ago. He said then that the options for Latin restaurants were slim, but that Lechon aims to offer a different perspective on pork and other dishes.

“The expectation is to serve the community with more options,” Thorne said.

The community has responded, he said, with some diners driving over an hour to the Triangle Town Center restaurant. Thorne said diners challenge him on the restaurant’s lechon, promising to be harsh judges.

“I checked back in after five minutes and they said the lechon was better than their grandmother makes it,” Thorne said. “Now I think that is a big compliment.”

20 Best New Restaurants of 2022: To see our full list of the 20 best new restaurants in the Triangle for 2022, visit: bit.ly/2022Restaurants.