Theme
Sorghum syrup, Brunswick stew, barbecue, and the restaurants and traditions that gave the county its flavor.
In briefSorghum syrup, Brunswick stew, barbecue and the restaurants and traditions that gave the county its flavor. The records here are cookbooks, restaurant histories and local lore.
365 indexed works are connected with this theme. 14 held at OCPL →
Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina, the most widely held first, novels aside. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
Narrow these works. Each link opens the search already limited to this theme. Counts are indexed works, not copies on a shelf; a work can carry more than one period or place.
Edward G. Danziger's memoir of love and cooking, published by J. F. Blair in 1967. Danziger (1893 to 1972) ran Danziger's Old World Restaurant in Chapel Hill, and the book tells his life as a restaurateur in the town.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Durham record: Restaurants -- North Carolina -- Chapel Hill.
Annette Marie Council's book about her family and Mama Dip's Country Kitchen, the Chapel Hill restaurant, published by NP Press in 2005. Subjects include African Americans in Chapel Hill, the restaurant's history and family biography. Fourteen introductory pages and 223 pages of text with illustrations, part local history and part family account.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Restaurants.
A cookbook put out in 1972 by the Colonial Inn of Hillsborough, ninety six pages with illustrations and a portrait. The recipes feature Southern dishes served at the inn, alongside material on its history. The title page verso records a fourth printing in 1979.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Cooking.
Cookbook compiled by the Hillsboro Presbyterian Women and published in Hillsborough in 1952, with 124 illustrated pages of local recipes.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Cooking.
Community cookbook from the Ridge Garden charge, the pairing of Clover Garden United Methodist Church in Chapel Hill and Chestnut Ridge United Methodist Church in Efland, published by Clover Garden in 2025. Topics include both congregations' histories as well as cooking in Chapel Hill and Efland. Seven preliminary pages and 130 pages.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Cooking.
Cookbook from the Chapel Hill Historical Society, published in 2009 and including recipes alongside local history. Topics include cooking and food in Chapel Hill and the history of both, so the collection doubles as a record of what town households put on the table. Of interest to readers of community cookbooks and to anyone tracing local foodways.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Food.
A community cookbook from Efland United Methodist Church in Efland, in western Orange County, published by the church in 2007, that also carries a history of the congregation alongside its recipes. 116 numbered pages with six unnumbered pages at either end, an illustration and a color portrait.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Cooking.
Community cookbook from Cross Roads Baptist Church in Hillsborough, printed by Morris Press Cookbooks in 2005 in a three-ring binder. Recipes are credited to their contributors. The book includes Southern cooking, church history and material on the Family House of Chapel Hill. 124 pages of recipes plus front and back matter, with color illustrations.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Cooking.
Recently indexed: The Chapel Hill Service League's Chapel Hill favorites (1982) · Children tested recipies (1966) · Circular (1840) · A commitment to excellence in management (1979) · Ephesus' around the world cookbook : celebrating Ephesus Elementary School's multicultural community! (1993) · The Franklin Street gourmet (1986)
Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this theme. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled. Books marked Wider context cover the broader subject rather than this theme itself.
A cookbook from the Colonial Inn in Hillsborough, published by the inn in 1972. Beyond its Southern recipes, the full title promises notes on historic Hillsborough and photographs of the town's landmarks. 96 pages with illustrations.
Cookbook drawn from restaurants across the Triangle, with recipes and portraits of the chefs, published by Raleigh Magazine in 1996 as a first edition of 157 pages with color illustrations. Topics include cooking in Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh, so the Orange County share of the book is the Chapel Hill kitchens represented among the contributors.
Ann Prospero profiles Research Triangle cooks and restaurants, including recipes from each kitchen. Combining biography and cookbook, it covers a region that includes Chapel Hill. Published by John F. Blair in 2009, 224 pages with illustrations.
James Donald MacKenzie's history of two Presbyterian congregations: Barbecue Church in Harnett County and Bluff Church in Cumberland County. Barbecue, in a community named for Barbecue Creek, served Gaelic-speaking Scottish settlers, and Flora MacDonald worshipped there in colonial times. Privately printed at Olivia in 1969; xi and 149 pages with portraits. Victor E. Clark's 389-page Colorful Heritage of 1989, for the Harnett County Library, is built on this book and reproduces it.
Restaurants in historic North Carolina buildings, each with a sketch of its history and recipes from its kitchen, gathered by Dawn O'Brien with drawings by Janice Murphy. John F. Blair published the 184 pages, with a map and an index, in 1983.
Amanda Boyd's stories of the Colonial Inn in Hillsborough, gathered as anecdotes of the inn and of the town's social life. The inn on West King Street is one of Hillsborough's landmarks. Published in Durham in 2021, 120 pages with illustrations, facsimiles, maps and portraits, many in color.
Ordinary bonds, which county courts required of tavern and inn keepers, compiled by Stewart E. Dunaway from originals in the State Archives and covering 1755 to 1874. The bonds come from Bute, Carteret, Chatham, Guilford, Hyde, Mecklenburg, Onslow, Orange, Randolph, Rowan and Surry counties, and an introduction explains how English law licensed the sale of drink and regulated the inn side of an ordinary. Issued in 2009; 267 pages with facsimiles and an index.
A guide to North Carolina's craft breweries by Erik Lars Myers, with addresses and telephone numbers, written while he was starting Mystery Brewing Company in Hillsborough, which appears among the breweries listed. John F. Blair of Winston-Salem published the 285 pages in 2012 with illustrations and an index.
Carole Marsh pairs recipes with miscellany and anecdotes from both North and South Carolina in this undated collection from Gallopade of Bath, North Carolina, thought to date from about 1985; 173 pages.
Dated events connected with this theme: sixteen of 138, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 138 dated events in the chronology →
Signers including John Branch complained of too little butter and of beef often unsound and full of vermin. The faculty found the wording defiant and had it rewritten, and suspended John R. Stokes and Elias Foord for refusing to sign the milder version.
Subject: Steward’s Hall
Paviakis opened the Carolina Confectionery in the space the University Athletic Shop had used. George Livas and James Gust later bought it and renamed it the Carolina Coffee Shop.
John Sprunt Hill built the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill.
People: John Sprunt Hill
Subject: The Carolina Inn
Harry Stern moved his Carolina Grill, a restaurant and delicatessen, into a larger new building that T. C. Atwood put up on the lot next to the Model Market. The Weekly counted it among the year's new business buildings.
A Monday afternoon fire destroyed the barbecue pit building and its contents at Dud's Tavern, with damage put at $1,800. The fire had gained too much headway by the time the Hillsborough fire department reached it.
Subject: Dud’s Tavern
The partners Andrews and Riggsbee sold their Carrboro grocery to two men also named Andrews and Riggsbee, who kept the store's name. The sellers kept the tractor business they had bought from Bruce Strowd, which was moving into a new building on Greensboro Street.
Over the objections of University officials, the Chapel Hill aldermen rezoned 6,400 square feet of the Porthole restaurant's lot from residential to business use so that owner M. M. Timmons could enlarge the restaurant. It had been a nonconforming use on land zoned residential near the campus.
After a Duke student sat in the Black section of the Chapel Hill bus station grill in June 1961 and was arrested at Leo Eliadis's request, Eliadis shut the grill. By early September he had opened Leo's Restaurant on West Franklin Street.
Robed Klansmen handed out bills in Hillsborough for a night rally at Interstate 85 and US 70, where scores of hooded members were expected in a field across from the General Sherman Restaurant.
On February 23, 1969 food service workers at UNC's Lenoir Hall left their counters and sat down at the cafeteria tables, and by the next morning nearly 100 dining hall employees had refused to report for work. The strike ended on March 21 when the University agreed to raise the hourly minimum from $1.60 to $1.80, pay roughly $180,000 in back wages, and appoint a Black supervisor.
Part of UNC food workers’ and housekeepers’ struggles, 1969 to 1996 · 13 events
People: Mary Smith · Elizabeth Brooks · J. Carlyle Sitterson · Robert W. Scott · Julius L. Chambers
Subject: Lenoir Hall
About 250 of UNC's 275 cafeteria workers, organized as the UNC Non-Academic Employees Union, struck SAGA Food Services on November 7, 1969 over pay, job reclassification, and the firing of workers for union activity. They voted on November 21 to affiliate with AFSCME, and the strike was settled in December after Ralph Abernathy visited the strikers and Black students from across the state threatened to converge on the campus.
Part of UNC food workers’ and housekeepers’ struggles, 1969 to 1996 · 13 events
People: J. Carlyle Sitterson · Mary Smith · Elizabeth Brooks
The Pyewacket opened in 1977 as a vegetarian café on West Franklin Street, run by David Bacon. By 1980 it had moved across the street into the Courtyard at 431 West Franklin, the former Farmers Dairy building, and added seafood, a bar and live jazz.
Herbert Chu, who had opened the House of Chu in 1970 and was a partner in the Hunam restaurant, opened Four Five Six, a cafeteria-style Chinese restaurant, in the space Blimpie's had left.
The market opened at its new town-center site.
Subject: Carrboro Farmers’ Market
The owners of the Wooden Nickel Pub, LaPlace and Hillsborough BBQ Company opened a sandwich shop at 104 North Churton Street.
During the 2025–26 fiscal year the library built a permanent food pantry in the Main Library lobby in Hillsborough and worked with a local Girl Scout troop to establish one at the Southern Branch in Carrboro. The Main Library also collected 424 pounds of food for the Orange Congregations in Mission pantry.
Subject: Orange County Public Library
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 24 with a known location.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.
Background from selected state and local sources
Newspapers, photographs, and records of the time
Other catalogs, databases, and guides worth searching
Local organizations that preserve the story and can help you go further
Other catalogs to search and local organizations that can help.
Picture: Farm Security Administration photographs, 1939–1940, Library of Congress; public domain. Image credits →
More to discover
The Friends connect people with new library materials, local writers and publishers, and resources documenting Orange County.
