A bestselling author’s burger joint is the latest NC addition to the JoCo food hall
In a kind of delicious inevitability, if you’re going to call yourself an interstate food hall, there must be a burger joint.
For that, the future Old North State Food Hall in Selma looked to a Rocky Mount favorite.
Barley & Burger will open its second location within the upcoming Johnston County food hall along Interstate 95, planning to come to life this year in the former JR’s Cigars warehouse. The two-year-old burger shop is owned by husband and wife Brandon Clarke and Etaf Rum and partner Travis Ellis.
The Old North State Food Hall is owned by Selma developer AdVenture Development and will open this year with 10 new food vendors. The project will be managed by Double Barley Brewing owner Larry Lane.
“We were approached by Larry about joining the food hall and thought it would be a great representation of North Carolina,” Rum said in a phone interview. “(With our burgers) we bring local flavors, simplicity and passion and thought it would be perfect right on the interstate.”
Movie-themed hamburgers
Barley & Burger lends a movie theme to its burger menu: the Rocky Balboa is a burger classic with American cheese, lettuce, tomato, onions, pickles and a special sauce, the Ghostbuster gets some heat from ghost pepper cheese and fried jalapenos and the Marty McFly, Barley & Burger’s take on the Carolina Burger, has chili, slaw, American cheese and mustard.
For its food hall location, co-owner Rum said the menu will be slightly abbreviated for the space, possibly six burger offerings instead of 10. They also hope to serve wings and hot dogs, as well as sides like waffle fries, onion rings and sweet potato fries.
Rum is an unconventional restaurateur in that burgers are just a side hustle. The Brooklyn-born Palestinian-American has found even more success in her day job as a writer, with her debut novel, “A Woman is No Man,” becoming a New York Times bestseller when published last year. She also runs the popular Instagram account Books & Beans and in October opened a coffeeshop/bookstore of the same name in the Rocky Mount Mill development.
“It was a lifelong dream of my husband’s to have a burger restaurant,” Rum said. “A coffee shop was my dream.”
Now they have both, with a second Barley & Burger location on the way.
Barbecue, coffee and hamburgers
The burger joint joins Old North State’s two previously announced vendors, the Redneck BBQ Lab and Boulevard East, each a Johnston County business. With Rocky Mount’s Barley & Burger, Lane has so far drawn on vendors near the food hall’s site in Selma.
“Etaf, Travis Ellis and Brandon Clarke have created a special burger and equally special customer experience in their restaurant and we are thrilled to have them bring both as our hamburger vendor,” Lane said in a news release. “Their passion for preparing high quality, simple and authentic food and great customer service is perfectly aligned with our vision for the food hall.”
Lane said that interior work on the food hall will begin at the end of the month, with plans to open the food hall in late spring or early summer of 2020.
This story was originally published January 8, 2020 at 1:12 PM with the headline "A bestselling author’s burger joint is the latest NC addition to the JoCo food hall."
