Serving more than street food, Viceroy owners open Nomad in Hillsborough next month
Food is inherently nomadic. It can travel the globe, connect and cross cultures.
The ability of time and place to intersect on a plate is the idea behind Nomad, one of the Triangle’s most anticipated openings of 2020 and a new restaurant from the owners of Durham’s Indian gastropub, The Viceroy.
Nomad will open next month in downtown Hillsborough, completing an ambitious transformation of the town’s former Osbunn Theatre at 122 W. King St. The new restaurant is owned by Nick Singh and cousins BJ and Sejal Patel and will join their restaurant group Rasoi Ventures. That includes Viceroy, which opened in Durham in 2016.
With Nomad, BJ Patel said to expect a heavy influence of Indian dishes, but that the menu will span the world.
“Global tapas, that’s what we’re calling it,” Patel said in a phone interview. “Essentially what we’re doing is drawing on international influences of all the people involved.”
Patel is of Indian descent, lived in Canada and England and has lived in North Carolina for years. Nomad’s executive chef is RJ St. John, who Patel said is Irish and Korean, making for a menu aiming to mix multiple cuisines.
“I think all of us are kind of nomads,” Patel said. “We’re not from here, but somehow we ended up here and all bring something different to the table.”
The menu will be mostly small plates, Patel said, with a foundation of Indian dishes, along with ones from South America, Spain and Eastern Europe. The menu isn’t final, but could include kolaches, filled pastries from Eastern Europe that are becoming a trend in Texas, Patel said, along with kimchi samosas, curried korma poutine and a curried take on elote, the Mexican street corn.
“You can see globalization on restaurant menus — it’s not surprising to see quesadillas and tacos at American restaurants,” Patel said. “Chicken Tikka Masala is on every menu in every pub in England. We’re trying to do the same thing here.”
Viceroy has been an established piece of downtown Durham’s restaurant seen for years, born out of the popular Indian food truck Tan-Durm. Instead of opening their next restaurant in Durham, the Nomad owners looked to Hillsborough and its small but vibrant dining community, joining the likes of James Beard-nominated Panciuto, seafood restaurant James Pharmacy and neighborhood bar the Wooden Nickel Pub.
“Hillsborough is a great little market for this,” Patel said, noting he became a HIllsborough resident about a year and a half ago. “It’s a good feeling when people stop by (during construction), knock on the doors and want to not just peek at what you’re doing, but chat about it.”
The former movie theater dates to the 1920s and was most recently used as a bait shop, Patel said. Renovating the space into a restaurant was tricky, he said, but the building’s owner, Jim Parker, supported the plans for Nomad, which include keeping the original facade and using the ticket booth. The theater screened its last movie in the 1960s, and its seats were once segregated by race. Now it will host cuisines from around the world.
“A segregated movie theater, becoming a global fusion restaurant, it’s almost full circle in my eyes,” Patel said.
Nomad will open in early March, Patel said, with seating for around 70. To follow the restaurant, visit its website, thenomadnc.com.
This story was originally published February 13, 2020 at 7:30 AM.
