Luxury furniture store with rooftop restaurant is open at Raleigh’s North Hills. Photos, details
A long-awaited luxury furniture store with an upscale rooftop restaurant and wine bar opens soon in Raleigh.
From the company formerly known as Restoration Hardware, RH Raleigh, The Gallery at North Hills is set to open Friday, Nov. 1, at North Hills, after years of construction.
The 60,000-square-foot gallery, complete with a rooftop restaurant and wine terrace, borders Lassiter Mill Road and sits at the place once home to JCPenney. The department store was the longest-running at North Hills, having operated for more than half a century before closing in 2020.
This will be the second RH gallery in North Carolina, following the Charlotte location. RH also has an outlet store in Cary’s Parkside Town Commons.
What’s inside RH Raleigh
Shoppers can browse two levels of luxury furniture from collections, including RH Interiors, RH Contemporary, RH Modern and RH Outdoor.
Vignettes showcasing items in the RH Interiors line the main floor, with courtyards furnished with RH Outdoor pieces spanning the length of the gallery.
A grand staircase provides access to the second level, where the furnishings, lighting, textiles and decor in the RH Contemporary and RH Modern collections are on display. The second floor also houses the 1,600-square-foot RH Interior Design Studio.
The menu at Raleigh’s newest rooftop restaurant
At Raleigh’s newest rooftop restaurant, you can indulge in a lobster roll topped with caviar and then pop downstairs to buy an Italian modernist sofa.
When you think of stores with restaurants, visions of IKEA, Nordstrom and even Costco may come to mind. The new RH is not like those.
In this new rooftop restaurant, the glass dining room and pebbled wine terrace seem to mirror the luxury chairs, lamps and beds on the floors below.
In the restaurant, every table has a chandelier, the dining room has a flowing fountain centerpiece, and olive trees soak up the sun.
On the menu, you’ll find small plates like cheese and charcuterie boards, caviar with housemade potato chips or blinis and fried artichokes with potatoes and lemon aioli. Sandwiches include a brioche take on the fried chicken sandwich, a signature burger and that lobster roll, which blends the Maine and Connecticut styles with drawn butter and a touch of mayo.
Larger plates include grilled steaks, whole grilled branzino, plus salads and sides like truffle fries (and regular fries) and potato puree.
RH is skipping hard liquor, focusing instead on a large wine list and some beer options.
For those feeling peckish after some weekend morning shopping, the rooftop restaurant seems to be taking brunch very seriously. You’ll find thick Belgian waffles, eggs Benedict with prosciutto, bagels and lox and avocado toast drizzled with balsamic vinegar.
The new RH Rooftop Restaurant takes up the third floor of RH Raleigh.
From Restoration Hardware to RH
While the RH will be the only location for the Triangle, this isn’t the first time the company has had a presence in the area. When the retailer was called Restoration Hardware, it had a location at Raleigh’s Crabtree Valley Mall.
But a shopping experience at RH differs from that of a Restoration Hardware. RH CEO Gary Friedman, who took the reins in 2001 when the company was nearly bankrupt, has often repeated his goal for the company to “climb the luxury mountain.”
In recent years, furniture from RH has made its way into the homes of celebrities, including Kerry Washington and Naomi Watts. The company’s Cloud sofa, which RH advertises as “the world’s most comfortable,” has developed a reputation for itself, and publications like Elle and Cosmopolitan have dedicated articles to finding the best (and the less expensive) copycats of the sofa.
But RH isn’t just a furniture store.
All of its “galleries,” spread across the United States and Europe, feature restaurants and bars where customers can spend hundreds on meals of caviar, steaks and French wine. Several galleries are more like destinations. For example, RH England, housed in a 400-year-old estate in Oxfordshire, sits on a 73-acre property and boasts three dining options along with a wine lounge, tea salon and juicery.
RH has also ventured further into the hospitality industry, opening a “guesthouse” in New York and renting two private planes and a yacht.
This story was originally published November 1, 2024 at 5:30 AM.
