Raleigh’s first major restaurant opening of 2025 is here. Say hello to Peregrine
For Peregrine, the first restaurant of his very own, Raleigh chef Saif Rahman mined his earliest food memories.
In sensory glimpses, he plans to guide diners back to Bangladesh, to a table with his mother and grandmother, the air perfumed with simmering fish curry or fried fritters with chutney from his grandfather, passed under the table with a wink.
“Peregrine is an American restaurant with bits from my background in Bangladesh,” Rahman said in a phone interview. “There are South Asian flavors and spices, roses and rosewater. Because it’s my first restaurant, I wanted to give respect to the person who had the most impact on my cooking life — my grandmother.”
Peregrine will open its doors Wednesday, April 9, at 1000 Social St. in the new Exchange development along the Beltline in Raleigh.
For Peregrine, Rahman partnered with filmmaker, designer and beverage director Patrick Shanahan, who helped co-found cocktail bar Watts & Ward in Raleigh. Reservations for Peregrine are now live, as of April 1.
Rahman, who left Bangladesh as a 10-year-old boy, said a restaurant of his own has always been his culinary dream.
With the Peregrine menu, he’s built a dining experience that treats his guests as travelers constantly in motion.
The menu is divided into sections like “Arrivals,” “Journeys,” “Wanderings” and “Departures.”
“Our food is without borders,” Rahman said. “I want our guest to see and feel the way I connect emotionally to our food.”
For “Arrivals,” the snacks and small bites dishes, you’ll find plates like a bright beef tartare with lal chutney and fried leeks, a ground lamb sheesh kabab with an apple and spring onion salad, and the piyaji, the fried lentil fritters Rahman’s grandfather used to order wrapped in newspaper from street vendors.
Larger dishes, the “Journeys,” include the national dish of Bangladesh, macher jhol, a whole fish curry Rhaman has named for his grandmother Amina. Other entrees are a sorghum-glazed duck breast with foie gras, a braised “Bengali wedding chicken” and Carolina Gold rice porridge with scallops, chicken fat and crispy chicken skin.
“When I moved from New York to the South, I fell in love with Carolina Gold rice, it connected me right away to back home,” Rahman said.
On the beverage side, Shanahan has built a new cocktail menu for Peregrine, with highlights like a Dirty Chai Martini and more subtle drinks like the Tigerlily, a combination of gin, rosewater, yuzu and rosé.
In building the dining room and kitchen, Rahman and Shanahan said they did much of the physical touches themselves, like plastering the walls and picking out the lamp fixtures and colors.
“We wanted our touches and stories to convey a message to our guests,” Rahman said. “Every corner of this restaurant, we talked about it. There was always something in the micro details.”
Peregrine will open for dinner Tuesday through Saturday, starting at 5 p.m. Brunch is also on the way, as is a lunch planned as a tea service.
This story was originally published March 31, 2025 at 5:07 PM.
