An acclaimed Durham sandwich shop just doubled its hours, stretching into supper
A Durham sandwich shop with a national following is doubling its hours to keep up with demand.
Ideal’s Sandwich & Grocery announced this week that it’s expanding its hours starting Thursday, July 9. The new hours stretch into dinner time and will see the beloved sandwich shop open from 12 to 6 p.m. Owners Ian Bracken and Paul Chirico announced the changes this week on the restaurant’s Instagram page.
“It’s been such a pleasure to serve all of you these past 5 years,” the post reads. “It was never our intention, but it’s always bothered s how hard it is for people to get our food. Our goal for the last 2 years working on the bakery and extending our hours has been all about the democratization of our sandwiches, making something simple like ordering food not some big event you have to plan for.”
Ideal’s Sandwich & Grocery
Ideal’s opened in East Durham in summer 2021, owned by two culinary school friends who left fine dining to open the sandwich shop.
Quickly Ideal’s became a phenomenon, drawing lines of fans eager for Philly-style roast pork sandwiches, chopped cheese and fried chicken cutlets.
Since the beginning Ideal’s has only been open for three hours a day, starting at noon, but often closes early when bread sells out.
New bakery
Earlier this year Ideal’s announced a plan to change that, expanding with an off-site bakery that would help keep up with demand.
Now Ideal’s will be open six hours a day, plans to sell take-home bread and can now sell wine and grocery items to customers without waiting in the sandwich line. This summer, Ideal’s plans to add online ordering as another way to cut down on the famous wait times.
In the future, Ideal’s plans to expand into breakfast service as well, but co-owner Chirico said there’s no timeline yet for that.
Ideal’s has been written up frequently in best sandwich roundups, including a national list in Food & Wine, and is posted about incessantly on social media, often with the conclusion that it’s worth the hype.
The restaurant was included in The News & Observer’s Top 50 Triangle restaurants, published earlier this year.
