Elegance lands on Durham’s Geer Street. Here’s a look inside Delancey Tavern
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- Delancey Tavern opens in renovated 408 W. Geer St., a former car showroom.
- Menu features elevated American dishes, cocktails, wines and draft beers.
- Main dining room serves meals; mezzanine lounge is drinks-only for neighborhood patrons.
All of downtown Durham seems to pour in through the front windows Delancey Tavern, a new upscale restaurant in Durham’s buzzy Geer Street District.
Built in an old car showroom, Delancey Tavern is the third restaurant from the owners of popular downtown staples Bull McCabes and the pizzeria Hutchins Garage.
Owners Malachy Noone and Tracy Hancock took over the former Weeks Motor Company building at 408 W. Geer Street. Most recently it was used by the controversial Pioneers Church, but the new owners have spent more than a year renovating the historic space to its current blend of industrial design and art deco.
Delancey takes its name from the New York City street in the Lower East Side, across the Williamsburg Bridge where Hancock used to live. The area still holds some powerful sentiment, he said, inspiring the vibe at Delancey.
“We’ve all spent a lot of time in New York, so it was nice to pull something from New York and also something that was personal to me, like a real touchstone,” Hancock said.
Delancey Tavern menu
The menu at Delancey is elevated American, Hancock said, with a burger and fries, steak frites, rainbow trout with pomegranate-soy glaze and a throwback to a beloved Durham dish from long ago, the “Chicken Cooked Under a Brick” from the former downtown Mediterranean restaurant Pop’s.
Other bites include a deviled egg dip with fried Ritz crackers, a riff on shrimp cocktail, pork belly with creamed collards and Korean-style chicken wings. There are also classic salads and creative desserts, like popcorn creme brulee. Hancock said cocktails will be a highlight at Delancey, as well as wines and a draft beer list that lives up to the stellar taps at Hutchins and Bull McCabes.
Today, Geer Street is surrounded by new developments, with hundreds of new apartment units and several new restaurants and bars. When Hutchins opened in 2018, Hancock said he and Noone also imagined a restaurant in the 408 W. Geer Street space, the tall windows making the building a distinctively attractive possibility for a meal. When the church and coffee shop came and went, the Delancey owners took their chance.
“It’s a beautiful space, but it’s also a space to see and be seen,” Hancock said. “It’s just got a restaurant vibe already. ... It’s really magical, the way it sparkles at night with the lights and the candles. And it’s just we couldn’t be happier with it. We’re very proud of this.”
The main dining room is boxed in by long green velvet banquettes, with a marble top bar in the center. On one wall is a giant mural-sized print of koi fish, which Hancock said is a bit of a wink at the space.
“This is kind of a fishbowl,” he said about the space. “I also think it’s funny to have something as small as a koi blown up to be the size of a car.”
A secret space
While the dining room is bright and light, a side staircase leads upstairs to a dark mezzanine lounge, with more velvet couches and chairs and a large poster of David Bowie in the cult film “Labyrinth.” Hancock said the upstairs lounge will be for drinks but no food service.
“The lounge upstairs, is a big part of why this became as elegant as it is, because it’s just such a natural, cozy, secret space,” he said. “We are hopeful that we’ve created something that integrates really well in this neighborhood, and sort of continues to fill out the neighborhood, so that people who live in the area, this is just another destination.”
Delancey Tavern is open for dinner Wednesday through Monday starting at 5 p.m. In the coming months look for the addition of a weekend brunch service.
This story was originally published February 9, 2026 at 3:59 PM with the headline "Elegance lands on Durham’s Geer Street. Here’s a look inside Delancey Tavern."
