Raleigh’s iconic Mitch’s Tavern looks to reopen, but its namesake owner is stepping back
There’s a passing of the torch under way at one of Raleigh’s iconic bars.
Mitch’s Tavern looks to reopen in 2022, but under new management. Longtime owner and namesake Mitch Hazouri said a deal is in the works to hand over Mitch’s Tavern operations to the owners of MoJoe’s Burger Joint.
Both sides say the deal has not been completed.
The management deal was first reported by the Triangle Business Journal.
Full autonomy
Though the deal has not been finalized, Hazouri said Mitch’s would not be sold, but that the MoJoe’s owners will reopen the bar and restaurant and begin running it under the same name.
Christopher Post, a co-owner of MoJoe’s, declined to comment on the deal until it was finalized.
In the new management, Hazouri thinks Mitch’s Tavern will be in good hands.
“I’m stepping back and letting them take over,” Hazouri said. “They have full autonomy; I’m very proud they’re becoming Mitch’s, they’re a great group of guys.”
Hazouri declined to discuss the details still being ironed out in the transfer of power, but said leasing and the liquor license are among the complexities of the new arrangement.
This is a more formal retirement for Hazouri, who said he stepped back from the restaurant about five years ago. Moving forward, he said he’ll be a Mitch’s Tavern consultant on an as-needed basis.
“They’re savvy guys,” Hazouri said. “They want to keep the Mitch’s traditions and make it look like Mitch’s. They’ll do a good job, it’ll be close enough.”
The beginning of Mitch’s
It’ll be 50 years this year since Hazouri took over the Jolly Knave, a beach music bar at 2426 Hillsborough Street, eventually turning it into Mitch’s Tavern by 1974. In those two years of transition, Hazouri said some Jolly Knave regulars continued to come by once a week to get down to beach music standard.
But Hazouri, then a 29-year-old former grad student< began to want something different for his bar.
Eventually Hazouri changed the flooring, removed every beach song from the jukebox and put a foosball table in the middle of the former dance floor. Suddenly Mitch’s Tavern was born.
“I like to be a pioneer,” Hazouri said. “How else are you going to make it here unless you’re different?”
In the early ‘80s, Hazouri added five televisions to the bar and restaurant. He said Mitch’s wasn’t meant to be a sports bar, but it began to become a place to watch the game. Situated near N.C. State University, the congregation of woe or triumph, depending on the year, would seek out Mitch’s as one of the top joints to watch games with friends.
Hazouri said he was shocked when Mitch’s Tavern ended up on Sport Magazine’s list of the top 10 sports bars, and later racked up similar accolades in roundups of the greatest college sports bars in the nation.
The church of baseball
But the moment that really immortalized Mitch’s happened in the 1980s when a movie about minor league baseball needed an All-American bar.
Hazouri said location scouts for the movie “Bull Durham” came in one night, walking around the room and pointing this way and that.
“It was clear they must be from out of town, because they don’t look like they’re from here,” Hazouri said. “They’re pointing and acting like no one else was there.’’
They seemed to find what they were looking for.
Though it featured a fictionalized version of Mitch’s Tavern, “Bull Durham” tapped into the textures and tastes that have made the bar a legend. The movie, which would become a classic, depicted the bar in any town where everyone wanted to be, with dancing, crisp clear beer served in mugs, open spaces and intimate nooks.
The bar on the big screen and in real life existed as an urban saloon, the walls wrapped in wood and the dining room sectioned off like a jigsaw puzzle of railings. It was a place out of time, yet remained of the moment.
“That was the goal,” Hazouri said. “It looks like it’s been there for 100 years.”
Hazouri isn’t sure how many of today’s N.C. State students know the movie’s characters of Nuke, Annie and Crash, but he believes its fame transcends its 15 minutes in the spotlight.
“Those things come and go,” Hazouri said. “I’m sure most of the graduating class has never seen or never heard of (“Bull Durham”). But it remains a place where people can bring guests and say, ‘Let me go and show you something.’”
The impact of COVID
But that something has been absent for more than two years.
Mitch’s Tavern has remained closed since the beginning of the pandemic, Hazouri said, hoping to wait for the ideal moment to bring back take-out or dine-in service.
That moment never came. Hazouri said the restaurant was preparing for a soft-opening in July 2021, but that the delta surge dashed those plans.
“It’s impossible to run a business in this time,” Hazouri said. “You only get one shot at reopening, and we never took it.”
Hillsborough Street
What appears certain, for now, is that Mitch’s Tavern will remain a piece of Raleigh’s restaurant scene and reopen sometime this winter as one of the city’s oldest spots.
Joseph Gary, whose family has owned the building since 1961, according to Wake County property records, called Mitch’s Tavern a Raleigh icon. Gary said his building, like many other properties along Hillsborough Street, has attracted its share of development attention. But he’s pleased Mitch’s Tavern will continue largely in the same way it has for the past five decades.
“We like the history of Mitch’s; it’s a true icon on Hillsborough Street,” Gary said. “The history in it goes way back, and we’d like for it to continue.”
Pointing to other changes along Hillsborough Street in recent years, Gary said he couldn’t rule out redevelopment at some point in the future, but that there are no such plans now.
“I don’t know what the future holds,” Gary said. “But at this point in time, the Gary family is very happy with that property.”
The legacy
Hazouri said the appeal of the deal being struck with the management group from MoJoe’s is that it includes plans for the ground level space below Mitch’s Tavern, a small pocket bar once known as the College Grill. Hazouri paid rent on that unoccupied space for years, holding on to the intact bar for the right idea.
He’s hoping that right idea comes along for someone else.
“The College Grill is a work of art,” Hazouri said.
Hazouri isn’t sentimental over the bar he’s owned for nearly 50 years. He said he’s tried to push it ahead of the curve and stand out on a corridor that’s known constant change over the past few decades. He said he aimed to create a timeless bar and his name will remain on the door for the foreseeable future.
“If people recognize that as my creation, I would feel good about it,” Hazouri said. “Everybody wants to project some quality into the world.”
This story was originally published January 8, 2022 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Raleigh’s iconic Mitch’s Tavern looks to reopen, but its namesake owner is stepping back."
