Country, Meet Cosmopolitan: The Word Is Out on Hillsborough, the Small Town with Hifalutin Food
By News & Observer Correspondent Elizabeth Shestak
Note: The following article appeared Feb. 25, 2009, in the Lifestyles section of The News & Observer.
HILLSBOROUGH -- A small piece of France has found its way to Hillsborough, and his name is Eric Valour.
Most mornings, the wrought-iron bistro tables outside Valour's Patisserie begin to fill about 7 a.m. with folks enjoying a pain au chocolat, or perhaps a blueberry turnover with pastry cream.
Valour, 40, a formally trained pastry chef from Lyon, arrives about 4 a.m., making muffins, scones, tarts and macaroons fresh for the day. If you drive through the town before the sun comes up, you might catch his lone figure on King Street taking his first smoke break.
Bill Rasor buses tables in his cowboy hat, and on Saturdays, a woman named Annette Talbert helps serve. She calls everyone honey, or darling and has never been to France. Her husband spends a lot of time next door at Carolina Game & Fish. A sign out front last week read, "Turkey Contest," and it wasn't referring to the best-roasted bird.
A charming dichotomy pervades the food scene in historic Hillsborough, a mixture of down-home and highbrow. Farmers come in and out of Dual Supply Co., an old-fashioned hardware store, as academics and writers sit across the street at Cup-A-Joe nursing fair-trade lattes. Lawyers and day laborers alike pop into Valour's for a morning muffin, and you're as likely to see Mayor Tom Stevens at the Wooden Nickel, Hillsborough's pub, as you are anyone else.
Hillsborough has gone from a country town that people only visited when they had jury duty at the Orange County courthouse to a Triangle destination, and its food offerings have had the most noticeable evolution.
"It really took people who had faith in the community," Stevens says.
People like Colleen and Kevin St. John, who opened the Saratoga Grill in 1995, and Matt Carroll, who opened Tupelo's in 2000. They were willing to take a risk on this once lonely business district.
And it's not just restaurants that have made Hillsborough more palatable – the farmers market and the opening of Weaver Street Market have enabled locals to upgrade the food scene at their own tables.
Like the rest of the Triangle, Hillsborough has seen unprecedented growth. With neighboring Carrboro and Chapel Hill having higher housing costs and with subdivisions and strip malls abounding elsewhere, this walkable village that dates to before the Revolutionary War has become all the more special.
Its historic downtown has not changed all that much, though many storefronts have been restored as business has picked up.
One such restoration took place when Aaron Vandemark, 31, and his wife, Aimee, decided to open their first restaurant, Panciuto, which means "potbellied" in Italian. Born in New York but raised in the Triangle, Vandemark was lucky to have parents willing to invest in his dream and buy the building in which he works.
His menu offers a few surprises -- familiar tastes with Italian flair. A recent entrée was grilled bisteca alla palmermitana with stone milled grits, garlic wilted collards and red-eye gravy.
Vandemark thinks its important to shake hands with the people who grew the food he eats and serves. In Hillsborough, which is more connected to its rural roots than other parts of the Triangle, he has a network of local farmers.
And he loves being able to walk to work. "I sort of subscribe to the idea of working where you live," he says.
Many of the restaurateurs in Hillsborough have a very short commute. Joe Tullos, owner of the Gulf Rim Café, lives along the Eno River, where he also has a recording studio. The café will be open two years this June and serves traditional Cajun and island dishes such as andouille sausage and an authentic ropa vieja, the mother dish of Cuba. Tullos hails from LaPlace, La., the self-proclaimed andouille capital of the world. He abides by a strict, authentic code of conduct when it comes to his menu but occasionally offers a zany dish such as shark carnitas.
He uprooted his family and moved to North Carolina after one too many hurricane evacuations, and he chose Hillsborough after visiting friends from the music industry. He thinks his new hometown is the best-kept secret in the country.
Matthew Shepherd, owner of Matthew's Chocolates next door, came to Hillsborough in 2007 after visiting friends as well. Few residents ever expected a chocolatier in their little town, but no one is complaining. His small shop has had a lot of success selling $2 truffles and chocolate bark for $20 a pound.
Restaurants have come and gone in Hillsborough forever, but people agree that the current food scene appears stronger than before -- despite the economy.
When Tony Sustaita opened his third Bandido's location on South Churton Street 13 years ago, there was only the Saratoga Grill and a café around the corner. He knew the second he saw the location that Hillsborough was a place to invest in -- it reminded him of a village outside Atlanta, one that attracted outsiders. He was also pleased with how much the local government was willing to work with business owners, citing a compromise county officials came to on grease-trap requirements years ago.
Margaret Cannell, executive director of the Hillsborough Chamber of Commerce, has lived there 20 years and can't recall a more vibrant time in her town's culinary history. "It's a very cosmopolitan little town," she says.