Diner opens in downtown Durham hotel
The team behind Pizzeria Toro and Littler have opened a restaurant in the ground floor of the Unscripted Hotel in downtown Durham.
Jack Tar and the Colonel’s Daughter, located at 202 Corcoran St., is open 7 a.m. until midnight daily. The diner-style restaurant serves American cuisine. Chef and owner Gray Brooks teamed up with longtime Durham chef David Alworth to craft a menu that puts a modern spin on classic diner fare. Alworth spent the past eight years at Guglhupf.
Breakfast options include shrimp and grits and a turducken sausage sandwich, while lunch and dinner options include hot sandwiches like the fried oyster banh mi, plate lunches and Szechwan peppercorn hot chicken.
“It’s kind of a beast of a menu, running the entire thing all day long,” Brooks said. “That’s sort of the point of a diner, though, being able to have a cheeseburger at 7 in the morning or an omelet at 11 at night. We’re planning on starting nightly dinner specials, as well as weekend brunch specials, in a couple of weeks.”
The restaurant has a small, in-house baking program.
"We’re making our own breads – Hawaiian rolls, benne seed burger buns, English muffins. We love the fact that, when you get toast, you can know that is arrived here as a bag of flour," Brooks said.
