Downtown Durham’s new restaurant Queeny’s is the DIY Applebee’s of your dreams
There is a television in Queeny’s, the brand new diner in downtown Durham, but it’s a secret.
Draped with a handmade quilt, the Queeny’s TV will be unveiled for “Monday Night Football” or ACC basketball or next summer’s World Cup, but not the fourth hour of “SportsCenter” droning on and on.
Queeny’s joins downtown Durham as a place for all seasons, but not a place for all seasons at the same time.
Its owners — Michelle Vanderwalker, Sean Umstead and King Kenney — expect Queeny’s to match the ebbs and flows of the day. Quiet cups of coffee, busy downtown lunches, impromptu afternoon meet-ups and late night hangs.
“We’re not going to tell you what Queeny’s is,” Umstead said. “We’re going to let you be yourself and let this be your place.”
While Queeny’s is the sister spot to the downstairs cocktail bar Kingfisher, it’s also the spiritual cousin to Chili’s or Applebee’s or similar kinds of neighborhood bars and grills, but tailored for downtown tastes and hours.
Built from scratch
But Queeny’s is the homemade version of those restaurants, or perhaps what those restaurants aim to be. It is built from scratch in just about every way that matters. Vanderwalker, a potter, made every plate, bowl and mug from about 400 pounds of clay. The owners poured the concrete bar, built the shelving and painted the walls.
“We really built all of the things in here,” Vanderwalker said. “Everything has a lot of intention.”
The owners looked around downtown Durham and said it was hard to find the kind of place one could visit three or four times a week. They built Queeny’s to be that place.
“It’s a reliable, delicious, everyday place,” Umstead said. “It’s food we’re proud of and is always there for you.”
Queeny’s is first and foremost a restaurant, open from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. Thursday through Monday. Lunch and coffee are expected in the near future, with coffee served from a drive-thru-like walk-up window on Main Street.
The space also features a small bookstore, with titles curated by Vanderwalker and Kenney. And there will be a no-fee podcasting studio built in a former vault.
“There are lots of little details to find,” Vanderwalker said. “We want it to be warm, comfortable and familiar, like going to a friend’s house.”
The menu
There’s only one thing on the Queeny’s menu beyond $10, a birria French dip, combining the famous roast beef sandwich with the taco phenomenon, served here with brisket and braising liquid on the side for dunking.
The chef is Steph Bell, who ran Kingfisher’s Queenburger pop-up last year, which will open soon as its own restaurant in the American Tobacco Campus.
Other standards include a Queeny’s burger, a pork chop sandwich dressed up like a banh mi, and a Sabich sandwich, made of fried eggplant, pickled onions, cukes, tomato, egg and tahini yogurt sauce.
The snacks include fried croquettes of loaded baked potato, spear-style fried pickles, a hoop cheese plate of nachos and salads.
On the drink side, the standout might be the frozen Irish Coffee, plus a list of basic cocktails you’ll find in any bar in America: the Cosmo, the tequila sunrise and the trendy espresso martini.
The beer list is led by a house draft, the Queeny’s Kolsch, brewed by Durham brewery Durty Bull with a touch of grapefruit peel.
“Durham is flush with really great restaurants,” Umstead said. “We thought, if we could make something affordable, with a varied chef-driven menu, it would be really nice fit.”
This story was originally published December 8, 2021 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Downtown Durham’s new restaurant Queeny’s is the DIY Applebee’s of your dreams."
