A pop up started with sweet buns and giant cookies. Now it’s a sleek Durham cafe
Three years and thousands and thousands of sweet buns later, one of the Triangle’s most anticipated bakeshops is ready to open.
This week, the long-awaited Lutra Cafe & Bakery will open the doors to its brick and mortar restaurant in Durham’s American Tobacco Campus. Lutra will hold its grand opening Friday, June 26.
Founded as a pop-up bakery specializing in sweet buns, Lutra has grown an enormous following in the Triangle. Owner Chris McLaurin has worked in fine dining restaurants in Washington, DC and popular spots in the Triangle, most recently at Poole’side Pies in Raleigh.
In 2023 he launched Lutra in Durham, starting as a weekend window pop-up at Queeny’s, later expanding to a full brunch residency at Cheeni.
Now Lutra is in a place of its very own.
“It’s really exciting,” McLaurin said. “It’s definitely taken a little longer than I expected to get to almost opening, but I think it really has worked out in the best way.”
Lutra will debut as a counter-service cafe open seven days a week. There will be an espresso bar and a pastry display up front, showcasing the day’s sweet and savory bites. In the future Lutra will shift to full service weekend brunches.
“We are a very quick service model, trying to get food out within just a few minutes, but at the same time the food feels like it really was thought about and took time to make, because it did,” McLaurin said. “We really tried to be prep heavy and service quick, so that you don’t have to spend all your day waiting, and that lets people kind of come to Lutra for whatever they need, whether it’s running in to grab food on their way to work, or staying with us to work during the day, or having a really big brunch on the weekends with friends. We can be a lot of things to a lot of people.”
Sweet and savory buns
The heart of Lutra’s menu is the huge sweet and savory buns, a pastry rooted in childhood nostalgia, McLaurin said.
“It reminds me of Saturday mornings watching cartoons with my sister, and my mom would make us Pillsbury orange buns, and that was something I always loved and asked for,” McLaurin said. “And so many people I’ve talked to have a memory of some kind of sweet bun or cinnamon roll or pecan roll, or those kind of things, so I think it just identifies with people.”
Beyond the buns, Lutra’s full menu includes biscuits and gravy, with flaky laminated-style biscuits, the butter tucked methodically between layers and layers of dough. There’s the 100 Layer Hashbrown, a potato pave by another name that McLaurin spent six months working out a method to keep up with anticipated demand. There will be a new breakfast sandwich and salads and sweets like the frisbee-sized chocolate chip cookie.
For lunchtime, look for Ice Box Sandwiches like a mortadella or roasted carrot or spicy chickpea, which are made a day before and then pressed and chilled in the fridge, letting the flavors marinate and meld together.
“I’m really looking forward to showing people our lunch menu, because it’s a part of Lutra that we haven’t shown to anybody yet,” McLaurin said.
For drinks, there’s the full espresso bar, plus beer and wine, like brunch-time mimosas.
Lutra parking
Parking can sometimes be challenging on the ATC, but McLaurin noted that the parking garage is free for two hours. There will be some short-term parking spots near The Cage basketball court just for Lutra customers.
Lutra is located at 318 Blackwell St., in Durham. The cafe will be open weekdays from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and weekends from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
