11 honorable mentions restaurants that just missed The N&O’s Top 50

When I started our Top 50 project, picking 50 top-notch restaurants seemed like plenty.

Then the list got longer and longer, and it became quickly clear that I could make the Top 50 at least twice with entirely different restaurants.

So we wanted to spotlight the places we wish we could have squeezed into the Top 50: a list of 11 honorable mentions that hold very special meaning to our food scene.

Angie’s Restaurant

The parking lot overfloweth at this Garner institution. With a dry-erase board of daily specials (maybe field pea, turnip greens or squash casserole), Angie’s carries on the tradition of the Southern meat ‘n’ three. Opening before sunrise, Angie’s deals in bowls of grits and biscuits and gravy studded with sausage — common sights for Southern breakfast tables, but here always uncommonly good.

1340 W. Garner Road, Garner | angiesrestaurant.com

Angus Barn

A meal at the Angus Barn is a bucket list event, often requiring months of planning. It’s always worth it, where diners are wrapped in the special universe of this large and twinkly restaurant. Steaks are the signature, of course, but it’s the labyrinthine dining rooms and bars that make Angus Barn a destination, especially around the holidays when the property is lit with millions of lights, the walls are festooned with dreamlike decorations and the whole world feels like a snowglobe. At 65 years old, it remains one of the South’s most popular restaurants.

9401 Glenwood Ave. in Raleigh | angusbarn.com

Cuya Cocina

Downstairs from a cocktail bar and dance club, the menu at Cuya Cocina is punchy and lively and carries a beat all its own. Sweet scallop crudo arrives in its own half-shell, dressed with the pucker of passionfruit and the bite of serrano chile. Head-on shrimp are rubbed with spice and served swimming in garlicky butter, octopus is crisped and charred over wood flames, and the sticky-sour tamarind ribs will end with the smack of licked fingers.

413 Glenwood Ave., Raleigh | cuyaraleigh.com

Hawthorne & Wood

After a career in fine dining collecting Michelin stars in California, Chef Brandon Sharp created Hawthorne & Wood as an idealized neighborhood restaurant, artfully elevating the casual. The menu changes often, studded with stunning plating and playful notes, but the cheeky General Tso’s Cauliflower has been on the menu since the beginning, crispy and craveable as ever. New Orleans-style barbecue shrimp gets a sweet jolt of preserved lemon to cut through the butter, and one of the Triangle’s top burgers will never leave the menu.

3140 Environ Way, Chapel Hill | hawthorneandwood.com

Ish Deli

Ish was initially in our Top 50, but recently announced it would close at the end of March. Here’s why it made the Top 50 list:

When you encounter the Reuben at this Person Street deli, stuffed between rye made special by Boulted Bread, you might wince at the $16.50 price tag. Just remember that a better version will cost at least the price of a plane ticket to New York, and imagine getting there and realizing the one at Ish is better anyway, supremely succulent, tangy and funky in every wonderful way. While the Reuben is supernatural, make room in your life for the smoked fish sandwich, which renders the tuna melt obsolete forever.

702 N. Person St., Raleigh | ishdelicatessen.com

Merritt’s Grill

Famous for taking a basic BLT sandwich and making it legendary, Merritt’s is a Chapel Hill institution, attracting students, alumni and all the rest of us, simply for the very best version of a summertime classic. Here, the BLT begins with an astoundingly large amount of bacon and options to make it a double- or even triple-decker sandwich. Sometimes gilding the lily makes sense, and here, you’ll want to gild that BLT with pimento cheese.

1009 S. Columbia St., Chapel Hill | merrittsblt.com

Monuts

This Durham breakfast and lunch spot set something in motion that has been endlessly imitated but has been impossible to match. Monuts is a modern diner, serving up classic plates of eggs and toast, square biscuits stuffed with crispy chicken and honey and giant plates of herby sausage biscuits. The namesake doughnuts come as crumbly cake or airy yeast, often glazed with bright fruit flavors like blackberry in a vibrant purple.

1002 9th St., Durham | monutsdonuts.com

Players Retreat

The Triangle’s most famous, most storied, most passionate sports bar could be enough for the Players Retreat. The food expectations for sports bars are usually spelled out in signs like “Soup of the Day: Beer.” But like it does in every other way, the PR defies expectations and rules. Maybe that’s why it’s a legend. The burgers, among the finest in North Carolina, are made from handground beef. It hosts wine dinners, and if you’re lucky, you might run into specials like whole local fish with tikka masala. They don’t make them like this anymore.

105 Oberlin Road, Raleigh | playersretreat.com

Sister Liu’s Kitchen

When Sister Liu’s debuted nearly a decade ago, it changed the Triangle’s dumpling game. With only a takeout counter and a few picnic tables in Durham’s Straw Valley, this family-owned shop serves up nearly a dozen dumpling combinations, like pork and chive or chicken and cabbage, each wrapped in a springy, chewy dough. In those early years, the dumplings were good enough that Bon Appetit shouted it out as one of the best new restaurants in the country. Now, it’s simply a modern Durham classic.

5504 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd., #103, Durham | sisterliuskitchen.com

Tesoro

A cozy restaurant for pasta lovers, Tesoro is set in downtown Carrboro and has become an intimate destination for handmade noodles and comforting small plates. Dancing across the Adriatic, Tesoro is both Italian and Croatian in its flavors, with pasta at its heart, serving bright and light gnudi with lemon, walnuts and funky taleggio, or rich rigatoni given the carbonara treatment. How lucky to be sitting in one of its two-dozen seats.

100 E. Weaver St., Carrboro | tesorocarrboro.com

Union Special

Among the Triangle’s many exceptional bakeries, Union Special comes the closest to operating as a traditional restaurant. Its brunches are neighborhood destinations, and its egg sandwich seemed to set off a whole trend of AM indulgences in the Triangle, but only Union Special puts a hashbrown between its sweet brioche. And with all that, it’s the blue corn cookie that’s the closest thing we have to perfection.

2409 Crabtree Blvd., #102, Raleigh | unionspecialbread.com

This story was originally published March 19, 2026 at 5:15 AM.

Drew Jackson

The News & Observer

919-829-4707

Drew Jackson writes about restaurants and dining for The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun, covering the food scene in the Triangle and North Carolina.