NEWS & REVIEWS
Portraits Of A
Well-loved Restaurant
You enter to find a well-worn bar illuminated by chandeliers with grape clusters. You see 100-year-old French doors that lead to the patio, but you choose a doorway, draped with velvet curtains, that beckons into a back dining room. At a cozy café table, you peruse a menu of French classics—duck confit, steak frites, cheesy potato-and-bacon tartiflette, salad Niçoise. Your server reads the mood of your table and responds with friendly chatter, or unobtrusive formality, as the situation requires.
For a moment, you might be in a bistro in a France, instead of Vin Rouge, just off Ninth Street in Durham. Marking its 10th anniversary this month, Vin Rouge doesn't have the national reputation and of-the-moment buzz some newer places are enjoying. Instead, it has earned a loyal following drawn to its understated bistro style and its characters who combine Southern hospitality with a dollop of eccentricity.
"This place has an energy about it. It's because of the people," says Ken Rosati, who sells wine to the restaurant and dines there with his wife and two children as often as twice a week.
Allow us to introduce them:
Here's the dapper owner, Giorgios Bakastais, a longtime Durham restaurateur who felt compelled to open Vin Rouge after dining at a bistro in Lyon, France.
There's general manager Michael Maller, who is happy to pour you a glass of a wine he discovered on a recent trip to France's Loire Valley.
And here's gregarious executive chef Matt Kelly, who will regale you with stories about his early days in a kitchen when he turned out piping hot crème brûlées.
Some chefs tire of executing the same dishes over and over, like a rock star who is bored by playing hit songs every time he takes the stage. Not Kelly, now nine years into his tenure at Vin Rouge: "I'm really happy cooking what people enjoy eating."
Andrea Weigl, News & Observer Online 2012
As savored on TV: Vin Rouge's Mac 'n' Cheese revealed
Vin Rouge Receives 2010 Wine Spectator
Award Of Excellence
July 2010—For the 2nd year in a row Vin Rouge has received the coveted Wine Spectator Magazine.
Award of Excellence!
Triangle Independent Reader's Poll 2010
Vin Rouge—Best French Restaurant
June, 2010—The readers of the Independent Weekly voted Vin Rouge as the BEST French restaurant and the BEST outdoor dining in the 2010 Reader's Poll.
January, 2010—Noted food critic for the News & Observer, Greg Cox, has published his Top 25 Restaurants for 2010 in The Triangle. Vin Rouge,
once again, has made this prestigious list of
great Triangle restaurants.
Triangle Independent Reader's Poll 2009
Vin Rouge—Best French Restaurant
"Taste This" by Greg Cox
USA Today
Wine Spectator
