Crook’s Corner, beloved Chapel Hill restaurant, could reopen this year
It may be now or never for Crook’s Corner.
Owner Shannon Healy is in the midst of a final exploration of exactly what it would take to reopen the famed Southern restaurant in Chapel Hill.
The temple of shrimp and grits closed in 2021 after struggling through the new dining realities of the COVID pandemic.
But a glimmer of hope returned the next year as Healy said he was actively looking into the tricky and costly logistics of reopening Crook’s Corner. That yearning was set off by the simple taping of a sign on the door reading “Temporarily Closed.”
Since then, though, things have been quiet, aside from a few seasonal pop-ups, where favorites like honeysuckle sorbet, Atlantic Beach pie and persimmon pudding were sold to-go out of the back door.
Now, Healy said, the Crook’s return will be this year, or not at all.
“I’m figuring out what it would take to open up, trying to put a number on how much it would actually cost to modernize and reopen Crook’s,” Healy said in a phone interview. “If we can do it, we need to do it now. If we can’t, we need to admit we can’t do it.”
The latest effort to reopen Crook’s was first reported by Axios Raleigh.
At the moment, Healy, whose day job is owning and running the James Beard-nominated cocktail bar and restaurant Alley Twenty Six in Durham, is working with an architect and contractors to put together hard numbers on reviving the dining legend. Healy said he expects to know in the next month if Crook’s can reopen, and that it would need to reopen in 2024.
“It’s incredibly expensive to own a restaurant that isn’t open,” Healy said.
Crook’s Corner is one of the most famous kitchens in the South, founded by the late Bill Neal and Gene Hamer. The restaurant is cited as among the very first to exalt dishes from the regional canon, to cook by seasonality and respect Southern food in the way diners were accustomed to revere the cuisines of France and Italy.
Following the death of Bill Neal in 1991, the kitchen was shepherded by the great Southern chef and personality Bill Smith until his own retirement in 2019.
Healy, who was once a bartender at Crook’s, said reopening the restaurant will mean modernizing a 50-year-old institution, expanding its outdoor patio and reworking its bar. Despite being a 50-year-old institution, Healy said Crook’s was a place that always embraced change.
“The menu changed every week, really every day,” Healy said. “The day’s date was on the menu every single night. The idea is to reopen Crook’s. It was never to be cast in amber.”
Crook’s will need updating
Healy said a reopened Crook’s Corner will need a changed bar, spruced-up patio and a few other structural needs. He declined to put a ballpark estimate on the construction costs of opening the doors, but said the goal is to remind diners they’re still in Crook’s, but for it not to feel like 1979.
“The bar is iconic in certain ways. ... It’s good for history, but not actually great for a physically used commercial space,” Healy said. “Any restaurant evolves over time and Crook’s was always evolving. But it’s important not to lose our sense of what the restaurant means.”
Despite being out of the Chapel Hill dining landscape for years now, Healy said he knows Crook’s is still relevant because he hears about it every day.
“It’s heartening that people are still rooting for Crook’s to reopen,” Healy said. “There’s still a community asking about it. I’m happy about the enthusiasm to reopen; it wouldn’t make any sense to do any of this without that desire from the community.”
This story was originally published January 11, 2024 at 1:15 PM.
