Durham food truck bar County Fare has new owners and could reopen by the end of summer
County Fare, the food truck bar shaped like a big red barn, has new owners who are planning a new neighborhood restaurant.
After sitting vacant and on the market for more than a year, County Fare, the former food truck hub in Durham’s Lakewood neighborhood, will reopen as a new casual restaurant later this summer.
The new owner is Triangle restaurateur Tom Meyer, who opened the North Hills Q Shack barbecue restaurant and was a partner in Nana’s with Scott Howell, and who currently owns the Honeysuckle Tea House in Chapel Hill and the Southern Harvest Catering Company.
The restaurant is slated to open in late summer or early fall as the building is renovated. But Meyer said the red exterior will remain.
“It will be Big Red for a while,” said Meyer.
Meyer purchased the County Fare property and building for $1.7 million, he said, with the sale closing last Friday, June 19. Initially, the sale was supposed to happen in the middle of March, but was delayed due to the global coronavirus pandemic.
“We were supposed to close two or three days after the shutdown, but then COVID the ugly beast arrived,” Meyer said.
The new restaurant is currently without a name, but Meyer described the concept as neighborhood Americana.
“It will be a classic neighborhood joint, the hometown bar and grill,” Meyer said. “We believe that people in the U.S. are moving back to neighborhood bars. In the last decade that trend has not been as important as it is right now. ... We think people want to have a place where they’re known.”
The menu is still being developed, Meyer said, but that diners should expect a solid burger, a steak sandwich and fried Brussels sprouts. The chef will be Mark Mishalanie.
On the bar side, there will be an emphasis on bourbon and barrel aged cocktails, but also a spirit-free, “mocktail” program.
County Fare opened in 2018 as a bar with a small kitchen and a parking lot for local food trucks to park and serve diners. It was only in business a year, as the owners Steve Frasher, brothers Richard and Peter Savarino and Gil Scharf put it on the market in the spring of 2019. It’s been empty ever since.
As restaurants prepare to navigate the coronavirus age of dining, Meyer said the new restaurant will make heavy use of its outdoor space.
“Outdoor seating is a game changer,” Meyer said. “This space is so outdoor oriented, guests can be socially distant and have air circulating. Guests want to congregate and be with their friends and not feel like they’re at risk.”
Meyer said the inspirations for the new restaurant are the neighborhood spots his parents took him to while growing up in New Jersey. As the coronavirus rattles many of the institutions of daily life, Meyer said that he thinks dining out will always be important to people.
“One of the things I don’t think will change is people’s need to get together,” Meyer said. “There’s a social currency, something that uniquely happens in a restaurant that’s different than what happens at your dinner table at home. I don’t think that’s going away any time soon.”
This story was originally published June 26, 2020 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Durham food truck bar County Fare has new owners and could reopen by the end of summer."
