A ‘pitch perfect’ Triangle restaurant will close soon. Here’s when to go
A 36-seat bistro in downtown Durham known for its chef-driven, rotating dinner menu is closing after nine years.
The appropriately named Littler, which opened in the original Monuts location on East Parrish Street in 2016, announced the news Tuesday, May 13.
The restaurant’s last day of service will be Saturday, June 21.
“We have made the difficult decision to close Littler due to the constant challenges that come with making ends meet in a high-end restaurant with such a small footprint,” partner Gray Brooks said in a news release.
Brooks, who’s also behind Pizzeria Toro and the now-closed diner Jack Tar and its sister bar The Colonel’s Daughter, told The News & Observer in a phone interview that it came down to a “numbers game.” To be financially feasible, the restaurant needed to serve around eight to 10 more people each night, and there just wasn’t space to seat them.
Littler’s owners hoped to expand the dining room into the space next door, but the associated costs were too high, Brooks said.
“While we are sad to be closing, we are incredibly proud of this jewel box of a restaurant that we’ve created over the past decade, and the role we’ve played in the Durham community, but it’s time for us to move on,” Brooks said in the news release.
Littler’s story
Known for its changing menu focused on seafood and vegetable dishes, Littler opened as a dinner-only restaurant, and a dinner-only restaurant it remained.
The original chef de cuisine, Amanda Orser, had previously worked at the renowned, now-closed Durham restaurant Magnolia Grill.
Less than a year after it opened, Littler was called by former News & Observer food critic Greg Cox “a worthy destination already.”
“From the start, we aimed to be the sort of place that we’d all fallen in love with on trips to cities like New York and Montreal — neighborhood bistros that felt friendly enough to walk into for a drink and a snack, but also special enough to come for an anniversary,” Brooks said in the news release announcing the closure. “And thanks to a decade’s worth of just really great, wonderful people coming through the doors — both to work and to dine — we feel like we accomplished that.”
Littler closed for nearly two years during the COVID-19 pandemic, opting not to make the transition to takeout or offer outdoor seating, as many other restaurants did.
The downtown Durham bistro reopened in 2022 with two new chefs, including Elizabeth Murray.
“The whole point is to be with people,” Brooks told The N&O at the time. “Anyone can have a great meal at home, whether they make it or pick it up. This is a whole different experience. Littler is only about that, more than our other restaurants, it’s representative of what we lost in the pandemic.”
Saca Monk, who started at Littler as a sous chef alongside Murray, became the restaurant’s head chef when Murray left.
The restaurant needed a full-time sous chef, Brooks said, but Littler struggled to support that salary, due to the space constraints.
Now, just a few years after reopening following the pandemic hiatus, Littler is closing for good.
“It’s been a journey, and it’s been a great story,” Brooks said.
Brooks compared these final days of Littler to the end of a great book. Having reached the last chapter, and not wanting the book to end, you savor every word, reading it closely and deliberately.
Brooks told The N&O he’s planning to focus on pizza for the time being. To make another Littler work, Brooks would need to do it differently, he said. And that’s something he doesn’t want to do.
“It still is a pitch perfect little restaurant,” he said.
This story was originally published May 13, 2025 at 4:11 PM.
