"Foodie" needs your help

Three guys from Durham (sounds like a great name for a coffee shop) are trying to finish their film "Foodie" by raising money at www.kickerstarter.com. Take a look and see what you think. FYI: It gets better after the first scene, actually. At the least, I'm hoping they span a new catchphrase: "Oh! Bread pudding!"

Durham A Day: Finally, Saxapahaw

In the last of my week of postings about a one-day swing through Durham last week, I'm going to cheat. This one isn't exactly Durham, and it wasn't on that one-day trip. It was where the trip started the night before.

But the Saxapahaw General Store project is so cool, I can't resist. If you know North Carolina history, you know the state is dotted with old mills, mostly near rivers. And mostly, they were massive brick buildings that were the hearts of their little towns.

The town of Saxapahaw in Alamance County on the Haw River was like that, a mill town until 1995, when the mill closed. But the son of the family that owned the big brick building wasn't ready to just abandon the place. Instead, a new vision: Apartments and condominiums overlooking the river. It's 45 minutes from downtown Raleigh and a good drive even from Chapel Hill, but it's attracted a thriving community of commuters who want to live closer to the country with the amenities of a city.

And the big mill building has also become a home for all the local-food producers that dot that part of the state. With the help of visionary chef Jeff Barney, it contains what has to be the most interesting restaurant in the state, the Saxapahaw General Store. It's still the town general store, with BC Powders, motor oil and Vienna sausage cans. But at the front, in a tiny kitchen space where you'd usually get a livermush biscuit or a hot dog, they're turning out plates of amazing, all-local, gourmet-level food. Serious food, like duck fat fries, free-range chicken, Cane Creek farm pork chops and wild-caught striped bass. At reasonable prices, even -- most plates hang in the $15 to $20 range, which isn't out of the ordinary for food on that level.

Tables are tucked in the aisles among the crackers and general merchandise, and you can get a craft beer or whatever you want from the coolers. When I headed to Raleigh, my food-writing colleague Andrea Weigl offered to take me anywhere I wanted to go. Saxahapaw was where I wanted to go.

We got there at the right time, too. The project expanded just a few weeks ago with the opening of The Eddy on one end of the building. The Eddy is a bar with pub food, most of it a trimmed-back version of the plates you get at the store, and a long list of in-state beers and specialty cocktails. It's a beautiful, warm space, all copper and natural woods, with a new deck overlooking the river. We were there on a Thursday night and a whole table of local-food stars, including Eliza MacLean of Cane Creek, came in for their own dinners.

Graham isn't on the way to pretty much anywhere. It's way out in the country, sort of between Graham and Carrboro. You have to make an effort to make the drive. But from what I saw and tasted, it's worth the trip for anyone who is interested in local food, new ideas, vision and what you can do with an old brick building.

Get the details here: Saxapahaw General .

Durham A Day: Fullsteam Ahead

We interrupt this series of posts about a single day in Durham last week with a stop for beer.

Yes, boss, that is sometimes my job. Ever since a guy named Sean Lilly Wilson led the lobbying effort Pop the Cap, to raise the alcohol limit on beer, North Carolina has exploded with craft beer and microbrews. When the campaign was over, Wilson got into the beer business himself with a sort-of crazy idea to make beers from ingredients and inspirations that reflect traditional North Carolina foods. Like sweet potato beer, and hickory-smoked beer.

The beer tastes a lot better than that sounds. And the whole thing is truly going full-steam since Wilson (left) and brewmaster Chris Davis joined up with Brooks Hamaker (right).

Brooks is well-known in the Southern food-writing world for several things: His thoughtful posts, under the name Mayhaw Man, back when eGullet first got started. His dedication and constant presence at the Southern Foodways Symposium meetings in Oxford, Miss. And -- oh yeah -- his career in beer. Ever heard of Louisiana's Abita Beer? That was Brooks. After he sold it, he became a brewery consultant all over the world, including here in Charlotte, when he helped get the old Johnson Brewing up and running.

Today, the three of them brew beer that is showing up all over the Triangle, and they've opened the brewery as a beer palace. That's sort of the best way to describe it: It's in an old auto shop in a warehouse district near downtown Durham. Finding it is tricky unless you know to look for the big backward "F" on the door. Inside, there are ping-pong tables and pinball machines, and when I stopped in after lunch Friday, Brooks and Chris were struggling with putting up a new dart board. The whole thing feels sort of like a frat house for grown men. With much better beer.

I was driving, so I kept my sipping to samples. You have to sample a lot to really get a feel for Fullsteam. For instance, there's the Workingman's Lunch. It's supposed to be inspired by a Moon Pie, but it doesn't taste like marshmallow and chocolate (luckily). It's a nice, dark, rich beer. El Toro is Hamaker's "beer beer." My dad had a gold Toro lawnmower that I remember well, so I get where's he's going with that. I also tried their new persimmon beer, which is just slightly fruity and much better than I expected.

Fullsteam is now open at noon most days (get the details here), and there actually were a handful of people at the bar when I stopped in. Friday nights have become quite a scene, Brooks says. A lot of the food trucks (see my Tuesday post) park on the street outside, and everybody from college professors to off-duty police come in to drink and talk. They offer a few bar foods, such as Dos Perros tamales and leftover goodies from Scratch Bakery (they call them "Scratch and dents.") There's even a local baker who's making "beer cookies," designed to go with the eclectic Fullsteam tastes. (That's a five-spice snickerdoodle on my notebook above.)

Fullsteam's main problem right now is that it's a victim of its own success. Tanks are at capacity, says Hamaker. Until they install more, they can't even consider expanding to markets like Charlotte and Charleston. For the moment, you have to either go to the brewery or look in hipster food places all around the Triangle.

Hamaker splits his time between Washington and Durham. Nice life, he admits. He likes Durham a lot for the spirit of food entrepreneurialism that's sprung up from its large creative class. "A lot of us just got tired of trying to find consistent work," he says. Instead, theyr'e finding fun work. Like making whatever kind of beer they can dream up.

Durham A Day: Shopping and eating

Continuing my report from a day of eating and food-trolling in Durham last week, we turn our sights to that great American sport - shopping. And eating. Maybe we should just make them one word: "shoppingandeating."

Parker and Otis, 112 S. Duke St., http://www.parkerandotis.com/. I first visited here years ago when it was Fowler's, an upscale food market and restaurant. It's still similar, although it's no longer a place to buy meat. Now it's a sprawling bistro (sandwiches/salads/baked goods/brunchy stuff) with the tables tucked in, around and through upscale kitchenware (think stacks of Le Creuset) and goofy food gifts on par with Seattle's Archie McPhee. It's a little chaotic (place your order at a counter, go find a table and your food will eventually come find you). The parking is confusing: It's on the side of the Bright Leaf Square parking lot, but it isn't officially a part of Bright Leaf Square, so good luck getting that parking ticket stamped. But still, for a certain kind of gourmet selection, it's a good place. Personally, I settled on a bottle of Bandol rose and a package of my personal favorite chocolate sin, salted caramels from Fran's in San Francisco. Did I need them? No. But need isn't what stores like P&O are really about.

Foster's Market, 2694 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd., http://www.fostersmarket.com/. Sara Foster has her food credentials firmly in place. She's a bona fide FOM (friend of Martha) with a whole list of comfortable, cozy cookbooks in place. The market is a comfortable, cozy place too. Again, it's part cafe and part store, with counter service and tables parked in, around and through. The shopping is less upscale, though. With Valentine's approaching, there are lots of candies right now, and there are always jams, jellies and other ingredients. My score: A jar of her famous Seven-Pepper Jelly. And just two driveways down busy Durham-Chapel Hill Boulevard, you come to:

The Guglhupf, 2706 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd., http://www.guglhupf.com/ What's Guglhupf? What isn't Guglhupf? It's a bakery. It's very busy, very popular cafe with two floors of packed tables and art dripping from the ceiling. It's an outdoor garden decorated with whimsical sculptures. The food leans toward mittel-Europe, with decorated plates of cake, including the popular fruit tart topped with several kinds of berries over a shortbread-like crust. What really struck me at 3 o'clock on a Friday afternoon: Who are all these people and why do they have the time to linger so long over lunch? Still, when there's a chocolate treble-clef sticking out of a puff of whipped cream on your plate, it feels very European, mittel or otherwise. Long live the Guglhupf.

Durham A Day: Food trucks

Food in Durham is no bull. Asheville and Chapel Hill are hip, Charlotte and Raleigh are all business. But Durham is something else. I spent a day last week trolling Durham, where young food entrepreneurs are skipping the lousy economy and building their own food world.

Exhibit A: Food trucks. They've moved beyond construction sites to become a phenomenon. In New York and L.A., food truck festivals bring out mobs of fans and Twitter posts pop up daily to tell you where to find the latest players. Charlotte has joined in slowly, with just a couple of trucks, including Wingzza and Harvest Moon Grill. But Durham has really grabbed it. The web site Carpe Durham tracks trucks daily on a map, and there are trucks with real personality, such as the Daisy Cakes baker who sells cupcakes on Saturdays from an Airstream trailer.

With only one short day, I set my sights on Only Burger. After starting as a truck, it opened a restaurant, in Hope Valley Square, 3710 Shannon Road. But the truck is the original, and a quick check online showed it would be at Lemond and Gregson streets near downtown at lunch.

When I pulled up, the truck was hard to miss, with the slogan "Only Burger: When Only the Best Will Do." They were having parking issues, though, so I settled in to wait until the truck was safely stowed in a community center parking lot and the generator had fired up with a roar like a lawn mower.

The truck menu is simple: Hand-cut fries and burgers made from hormone-free beef ground daily at Cliff's Meat Market in Carrboro. While I waited, I talked to Nolan Brodalski, 30. He moved to Durham from Atlanta in search of work and got so hooked on Only Burger, he was eating there two or three times a week. Finally, he got sick of his real job and quit to take a job working on the truck.

"When I first moved here, I never thought there'd be so much food," he said. "I love this town! I'm definitely not leaving."

My bacon cheeseburger was definitely the best one I've gotten from the window of a truck. But the fries were the best: Long and thin with crispy edges, they were served in a brown paper sack. Along with the salt, I was even happier to find flecks of black pepper. Even places with great fries forget the pepper to balance the salt.

Special food report: Durham A Day

If Charlotte streets are a ball of yarn, Durham is a tangled skein. You need a GPS to get from 15/501 to Duke Street, and even when the GPS says "you have reached your destination," you may be sitting there, yelling, "Where? Where is my destination?"

That just adds to the fun. Chapel Hill and Asheville may be hip, Charlotte and Raleigh may be all business. Durham is something else entirely. What Durham has is a food entrepreneur class, a lot of young people who came for college or fun and stuck around to do what they love. I spent last Friday trolling Durham, and I heard variations of this over and over: "The economy is lousy, there are no jobs. Might as well do what we love. And what we love is food."

I'll bring blog reports all week on a half-dozen places I tried. Starting with:

Scratch Baking, 111 Orange St. Phoebe Lawless started out selling her pies at farmers markets and opened a bricks-and-mortar bakery last year. Finding it isn't easy: Orange Street isn't actually a street, it's a brick-lined alley tucked behind the City Complex. If you see the bull statue near Mangum Street, you're a block away.

I've interviewed Lawless and was hoping to meet her, but she was out tending to a sick kitten. Her employees were happy to help, though. The menu is a bit quirky. One employee called the style simply "Phoebe's whims." She likes old-fashioned pies, like chocolate chess, and she likes seasonal pies, like fig and pear tarts. The drinks menu includes "Candy Milk" because Lawless' 5-year-old daughter likes to order steamed vanilla latte with a candy stick to stir it. So they put it on the menu so she could order like a big girl.

There's a whole chalkboard just devoted to local producers, and pies come and go so quickly. So check before you get your heart set on anything.

I went with the Shaker Lemon Pie, one of Lawless' favorites in the category of "rescued farmhouse recipes."

You have to really, really love lemon. Luckily, I really, really do: The filling is creamy and yellow with a taste of buttermilk, and it's filled with strips of lemon peel. The crust literally flakes when you press down with a fork. It's bitter and sweet, creamy and crunchy.

Truly fine pie. And a fine place to start off a Durham eating day.

Next up: The Food Truck Revolution.