Clyde Cooper's BBQ ~ 109 East Davie Street Raleigh, NC
I snapped this picture of Clyde Cooper’s BBQ yesterday afternoon while walking along Davie Street in downtown Raleigh. Clyde’s is a Raleigh institution famous for their Carolina-style barbecue. They have been serving area residents with their slow cooked top lean pork shoulders and hams since 1938. While there are many great BBQ places in the Triangle, no BBQ tour is complete without a visit to Clyde’s. To view their full menu visit their website: http://clydecoopersbbq.com/
(Every week I feature a photo of a local business or event taken during the past seven days. If you would like to submit a photo for consideration please email met at triangleexplorer@gmail.com. If your photo is selected proper credit will be given along with a link back to your website. Thanks!)
Wake Forest just got a whole lot more flavorful. Lumpy’s Ice Cream has been serving up some of the best locally made ice cream at events around the Triangle since 2001, but this weekend they make the leap to opening up their first brick and mortar location in downtown Wake Forest. Their grand opening celebration is scheduled for this Saturday, March 24, 2012 with an official ribbon cutting ceremony at 11am.
Lumpy's Ice Cream ~ 306 Wait Avenue, Wake Forest, NC
Earlier this week I was lucky enough to be invited to attend a food blogger preview of Lumpy’s to sample some of their flavors and meet with the owner Buck Buchanan. Buck is a great guy who clearly has a passion for what he does and supports the community by using all natural ingredients from local producers to create his ice cream. All of the ice cream at lumpy’s is made using hormone free cream from Maple View Farms in Hillsborough, NC and contain no artificial coloring, flavors, or corn syrup.
Lumpy's Ice Cream
Lumpy’s currently produces over 200 gallons of ice cream a week and makes over 200 different flavors. At any given time they feature 14 different flavors in the case at their shop with 6 or more flavors offered off their mobile cart at events. One of their operation goals is to maintain a proper balance of production vs. demand so their ice cream is always as fresh as possible.
Of the various flavors I tried on my visit two of my favorites were “Baklava” (with cinnamon, honey, and walnuts) and “Drunken Berry”, a celtic flavor inspired by the Highland Games that features vanilla ice cream with rasberries that have been soaked in 12 year old scotch. Lumpy’s also offers more traditional flavors including “Sally’s Silly Strawberry”, “Kickin’ Kenny’s Chocolate” and “Bernie’s Butter Pecan” (made with real butter).
Seating Inside Lumpy's
I found that I really enjoyed the unique texture and consistency of Lumpy’s ice cream. It isn’t soft serve, but it also isn’t hard like the typical ice cream you buy at the grocery store. Buck explained that they strive to serve their ice cream at just below 5 degrees. Once you get over 5 degrees ice cream begins to start melting, but just below that it is the optimum temperature at which the flavors of the ice cream are fully expressed.
In addition to serving ice cream, Lumpy’s future plans include offering hamburgers and hot dogs made from locally sourced beef supplied by Harris Robinette Farms out of Pinetops, NC. This is a family farm that has been managed by the same family for over 100 years and practices sustainable and environmentally friendly practices to raise 100% grass fed cattle free of hormones and pesticides. The hamburger and hot dog samples I had were very juicy and flavorful. The hot dog is not your traditional type of hot dog but more of an Italian sausage made with flavorful spices.
Lump's Ice Cream Pints
In the future Buck hopes to sell Lumpy’s ice cream through grocery stores throughout the Triangle, but in the meantime you can purchase their ice cream by the pint at the store and find it for sale by the scoop at local restaurants, sporting events, and concert venues (full list of location here). To learn more about Lumpy’s check out their website or watch this cool Hartford Insurance commercial below that features Lumpy’s story as one of their small business clients.
This week’s photo was taken at the 2nd Annual “Marry Durham” celebration held this past Saturday on Rigsbee Avenue in downtown Durham. The event is a celebration of the communities’ commitment to the Bull City and featured a parade, live music, and great food from several local food trucks. Pictured above is Tom Merrigan the “Durham Street Piano” player entertaining the crowd gathered in front of Fullsteam Brewery with one of his fun boogie-woogie tunes. Tom was joined by a few of my friends from the Bulltown Strutters Kevin (on snare) and Todd (Sousaphone).
Check out the video below to learn more about Tom and his story behind making the Durham Street Piano Project a reality.
Another great opportunity for Triangle beer lovers to taste the region’s finest home brewed beer while supporting a great cause! BrewDurham is a beer festival celebrating homebrewers from Durham, NC and surrounding areas, and the beer that they make! This event is organized by Keil Jansen and proceeds will benefit The Scrap Exchange, a nonprofit creative reuse center in Durham. BrewDurham will include two sessions on Saturday March 31, 2012. Session 1 runs from 1-4 pm. Session 2 runs from 5-8 pm. The festival will include food trucks, music and of course, beer. The Triangle’s finest homebrewers are bringing 60+ beer types for your tasting and enjoyment.
Tickets are $30 per person with $5 Designated Driver/Non-drinking tickets also available.
Food: Chirba Chirba Dumplings and Pie Pushers will be on location to satisfy your food desires. In addition, LOAF will be baking pretzels to amp up the FestVibe. Durham’s newest food truck, Monut’s Donuts will be onsite making donuts for everyone!
Music: To be announced soon!
Beer:
At last count, there were more than 70 different beers registered to be available at BrewDurham! You can view the list of beers here.
Transportation:
There will be parking available at the event, but we’d love to see people using the Bull City Connector to get downtown to keep the party alive! The BCR runs every 20 minutes on Saturday and will take you downtown past The Pinhook and Motorco and The Cookery, home of many of Durham’s finest food trucks.
To get an idea what the event is like, check out this video from the inaugural Brew Durham event held back in 2011:
As you have probably noticed by now from my recent posts, I have a special place in my heart for locally roasted, fair trade, organic coffee. So you can imagine my excitement when I recently discovered a local micro roaster located right here in the Triangle! Allow me to introduce you to Boogie Bean Coffee Roasters of Holly Springs.
The husband and wife team Kevin and Ali operate Boogie Bean Coffee Roasters, a small batch coffee roasting company in Holly Springs, NC. Their passion for coffee started several years ago when they began purchasing specialty local roasted coffee here in North Carolina and found that their coffee drinking experience was unbelievably better than when they used grocery store brands. As frequent customers of local coffee shops, over the past two years they have have developed a close relationship with owner of Java Jive Coffee shop in Cary on Kildaire Farm Road.
When the owner of Java Jive mentioned to Kevin that some of their customers were roasting their own coffee at home he got the idea to try it himself. Kevin went home and purchased a tiny home roaster on Ebay and started buying green coffee beans from Java Jive. Sharing his home roasted beans with friends soon lead to people asking if they could pay for some his home roasted coffee and with that the Boogie Bean Coffee Roasters business was born!
Since forming the company Boogie Bean has purchased two more drum roasters to meet the demand for their coffee. You can now purchase their coffee in several retail stores, coffee shops, & restaurants in the Triangle area including:
Their coffee is also served at the Little Hen restaurant, a “farm to table” restaurant in Holly Springs that just opened this past week to rave reviews.
You can also order Boogie Bean coffee from their website and have it shipped directly to your door. Shipping is just a flat $5.00 for any order under 5 lbs of coffee with FREE shipping on any order of 5 lbs of coffee or more. Their coffee inventory includes a wide variety of coffees to meet every coffee lovers taste. They always “roast to order” to ensure maximum freshness for their customers.
I am very excited to see the Triangle’s coffee scene continue to grow with quality local roasters and I look forward to trying the many roasts Boogie Beans offers. If you have a favorite let me know!
The Triangle Explorer 
