Acclaimed chef has big plans to bring neighborhood French bistro to Chapel Hill
We are living in a post-bread basket era. The once ubiquitous cloth-wrapped basket of warm bread and butter is largely a relic of a different time in dining.
Chef Brandon Sharp, who owns Hawthorne & Wood in Chapel Hill, wants to bring bread back at his new restaurant. But mostly he aims to create a comforting French bistro.
Sharp and his wife, Elizabeth, plan to do both of those things at Bluebird, their second restaurant. They aim to open the modern French bistro in spring 2022 in Meadowmont, off N.C. 54.
“It’s been percolating for a long time, something my wife and I have talked about for years,” Sharp said. “We’ve been actively working on the primordial stages of the restaurant for about a year.”
Sharp, a Chapel Hill native, returned to North Carolina two years ago, leaving a trail of Michelin stars in California to open his first restaurant, Hawthorne & Wood.
For Bluebird, Sharp toured possible locations in the area, including the vacant space on Franklin Street that he knew as Spanky’s (and was most recently Lula’s), as well as the former Tyler’s Taproom in Carrboro.
Eventually the couple picked the former Cafe Carolina space at 601 Meadowmont Village Circle.
The old Cafe Carolina, a fast-casual restaurant, will be gutted, Sharp said, replaced by subway tile floors and a copper top bar.
The menu will be French bistro classics, like Croque Madame, a ham and cheese sandwich topped with broiled bechamel sauce and a fried egg; sole veronique, where sole fillets are served with a white wine cream sauce and grapes; and steak au poivre. Sharp said to also expect raw oysters, chicken fricassee and salade Lyonnaise, made with frisee, lardons and a poached egg.
“Telling someone it’s a French restaurant can be off-putting, thinking it has to be something fancy,” Sharp said. “Bluebird will be approachable. For me it really means comfort food, not caviar, truffles and foie gras, but a Croque Madame.”
The wine list will be exclusively French, joined by dry ciders and cocktails. Sharp expects Bluebird to serve dinner seven nights a week, plus lunch on Fridays and a weekend brunch.
As for the bread basket, Sharp said it will arrive on every table, promising “very good” bread with salted butter nestled inside. Sharp said he aims to make Bluebird into a casual neighborhood restaurant.
“It’s the food I always want to eat, it’s my safe haven,” Sharp said, before name dropping two of the country’s iconic modern French restaurants. “Whenever I’m in New York I make sure I always have a meal at Balthazar, and Monsieur Benjamin if I’m in San Francisco. I rely on them. There are always five things I want to order. I want to create that place for Chapel Hill.”
Streak of Michelin stars
In Napa Valley, Sharp earned one Michelin star for the restaurant Solbar for seven years in a row, and had previously worked at the French Laundry, one of the most famous fine dining restaurants in the world. He came back to Chapel Hill, helmed the kitchen at the Carolina Inn for a couple of years and then struck out on his own.
Hawthorne and Wood opened in April 2019, serving a broad menu built around North Carolina ingredients and California memories. There are dishes like General Tso’s cauliflower and a double cheeseburger that have remained on the menu for the past two years. Former News & Observer dining critic Greg Cox awarded Hawthorne & Wood four-and-a-half out of five stars and named it one of the region’s best new restaurants of 2019.
Like all restaurants, 2020 was hard on Hawthorne & Wood, Sharp said. But the restaurant survived, and sales have rebounded over the last year as diners return.
“If you look at the bank account, we tread water in 2020 and are a little better in 2021,” Sharp said. “The key was never closing completely, we stayed open for takeout, kept the staff together. We were losing money but kept the creativity, changing the menu every single day. It felt like a Gonzo moment, learning to fly while falling.”
Bluebird
The name Bluebird comes from points of comfort for Sharp and his wife, nodding to the now-closed Chicago restaurant Blackbird, which shuttered in the pandemic after years of acclaim. It’s also the name of a closed New Orleans restaurant the Sharps used to love, Bluebird Cafe.
“We had our rehearsal dinner at Blackbird, and Bluebird was one of these great breakfast dives in New Orleans,” Sharp said. “These were great restaurant memories for us.”
Now that Sharp is building a second restaurant two years after the first, could the future hold a third spot in the Triangle?
“Remind me of what this feels like in four years,” Sharp said. “I hope not.”
This story was originally published December 1, 2021 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Acclaimed chef has big plans to bring neighborhood French bistro to Chapel Hill."
