It's a Southern Thing has closed its flagship restaurant at 605 W. Main St. in downtown Durham, ending an almost decade-long run in the city's Warehouse District. Owner Pete Susca cited increasing rent and a malfunctioning air conditioning unit as key factors behind the decision, according to the restaurant's announcement.
Susca announced the closing on the restaurant's Facebook page, saying the choice was not made lightly. As reported by the Raleigh News & Observer, Susca said the restaurant had become a gathering place for the community over its run in downtown Durham. The Main Street location had operated in the space since it opened by September 2017, taking over the address after the closure of Motto Fine Dining in summer 2017.
Susca, a New Jersey native, has said he set out to honor the Southern food culture he grew to love after moving to North Carolina, telling the paper he learned about grits, chicken and dumplings, and sweet tea in the years after relocating. The 605 W. Main St. address sits within West Village, a complex of converted early-1900s tobacco warehouses managed by real estate firm Bell Partners. Before It's a Southern Thing and Motto, the space had also been home to longtime Durham fixture Pop's Trattoria, which closed abruptly in late 2014.
A Menu Built on Playful Southern Comfort
The downtown restaurant built its reputation on dishes like shrimp and grits made with homemade andouille sausage, chicken and dumplings, smoked pork chops, and fried green tomatoes topped with local goat cheese and charred tomato-bacon jam, with an emphasis on local produce throughout the menu. Its brunch service leaned into playful comfort food too, featuring items like the “Pete's Fat Kid Breakfast Sandwich” — piled with pulled pork, bacon, sausage, fried egg, and bourbon honey barbecue sauce — alongside a flapjack charcuterie board, according to Discover Durham. The restaurant earned a three-and-a-half-star review from critic Greg Cox in 2018, who praised its quirky take on Southern classics, per the News & Observer's reporting.
The flagship's popularity peaked in its early years downtown. Hoodline's own coverage in a 2020 roundup ranked It's a Southern Thing among the top three most popular establishments in the Warehouse District based on Yelp reviews and local traffic data, following similar mentions in 2019 pieces on the neighborhood's top spots and Durham's best barbecue.
An Out-Of-State Expansion That Didn't Last
Susca's ambitions once stretched well beyond Durham. It's a Southern Thing opened a location in Naperville, Illinois, in 2020 at 1727 Freedom Drive, a project suggested by a business contact of Susca's father that required building out a new kitchen inside a former World of Beer venue during the early pandemic, according to the Daily Herald. That Midwestern outpost closed two years after it opened, in 2022.
The brand's remaining location, opened in 2023 in Durham's Ellis Crossing shopping center near Research Triangle Park, is still serving customers. The suburban spot sits within the Marketplace at Ellis Crossing at 1051 Yunus Road, a retail corridor anchored by a Publix grocery store, per property listing site LoopNet.
Part Of A Bigger Shakeup In Durham Dining
The flagship's exit lands amid a rough stretch for downtown Durham restaurants. Puerto Rican staple Kokí closed its downtown door after seven years in July, as Hoodline reported in its piece on Kokí's Morrisville pivot, while Asian concept M Pocha shut down in June. Other Southern and soul food concepts across the Triangle have faced similar pressure this summer, with veteran-owned Flavor Hills shutting both its Raleigh and Durham locations in August and South Durham's True Flavors Diner serving its last biscuits in June.
Those closures have coincided with sharply rising costs in the neighborhood surrounding the old It's a Southern Thing space. Residential rents in Durham's Brightleaf and Warehouse District area jumped 15.8% year-over-year by August, reaching an average of $1,624 for a one-bedroom apartment, according to Apartments.com data reflecting the broader cost pressures squeezing the commercial district. For a restaurant already grappling with rising rent and a broken air conditioning unit, that kind of market pressure has left fewer downtown Durham dining rooms standing than there were at the start of the summer.
