A Durham native who spent years cooking in some of Chicago's most decorated kitchens is coming home to open his own restaurant. Chef Alex Catotti and his wife and business partner, pastry chef Erin Kobler, plan to open Cornelia and The Vintner & The Baker inside a renovated warehouse near downtown Durham next spring, bringing a fine-dining tasting menu and an everyday bakery and wine bar to the same address.
Catotti grew up in Durham and attended UNC-Chapel Hill before building a resume that includes stints at The Loyalist, Next, and Smyth, according to the Raleigh News & Observer. Smyth, the Chicago restaurant where Catotti worked for several years, holds three Michelin stars and was named the top restaurant in North America in 2026 by The World's 50 Best Restaurants, according to Restaurant Cornelia's website. Before he ever left North Carolina, Catotti trained under chef Scott Howell at Nana's, the influential Durham fine-dining restaurant Howell founded in 1992 that operated for more than 25 years, according to INDY Week.
Catotti vowed back in 2016 that he would return to Durham and open a restaurant, per the News & Observer's reporting, and he told the paper that “returning home was always the goal.” He also said Durham “has always been a town of passionate foodies and people,” the outlet reported. Over the past year, he traveled to Durham about once a month while preparing for the move, the same reporting notes.
A Chicago Pastry Star Joins the Project
Kobler, a Chicago native, was executive pastry chef of Michelin-starred Sepia, where she took over the pastry program in November 2021, according to StarChefs. She was named a 2024 StarChefs Chicago Rising Star and received a Jean Banchet Award nomination for Best Pastry Chef in Chicago during her tenure there. Kobler earned a bachelor's degree in Culinary Entrepreneurship and an associate degree in Baking and Pastry from Kendall College in Chicago, having grown up in a hospitality family where her father owned a restaurant, per Sepia Chicago's own profile of her.
Kobler has said her parents supported her career while also warning her that restaurant work is difficult, the News & Observer reported. She and Catotti are married partners in both life and business, and the pair met as members of the opening culinary team at Chicago's Bellemore. The name Cornelia honors the Chicago street where the two shared their first home together after meeting, according to Restaurant Cornelia's website.
Two Concepts, One Roof
Cornelia will operate as a fine-dining New American restaurant serving seasonal tasting menus priced between $115 and $180, drawing on French and Italian techniques alongside produce and meat from local farmers, per the News & Observer. The menu will lean on fermentation and foraging, seasonally specific flavors, and ingredients from the American South, according to the same reporting. Catotti and Kobler describe Cornelia as the heart and soul of their restaurant business.
The Vintner & The Baker will share the same building, offering coffee and baked goods during the day and wine with small plates at night. The couple's business plan uses the wine bar as an everyday counterpart that repurposes surplus ingredients from Cornelia's tasting menu into morning pastries and evening small plates, according to Restaurant Cornelia's website. Tasting menu restaurants often struggle with food waste and high overhead, and the dual concept is meant to build what Catotti and Kobler describe as a restaurant model resilient to economic and consumer trends.
A Warehouse Reborn Near the Belt Line
Both restaurants will occupy 949 Washington Street, a space that once served as a paper warehouse and was renovated with a giant garage-door window and a front porch, per the News & Observer. The 37,492-square-foot building originally housed Durham paper and office supply distributor Brame Specialty Company before real estate firms Akridge and Alcion Ventures broke ground on an adaptive reuse project in 2021, according to Commercial Real Estate Executive. The property was initially converted with life-science companies in mind before finding new life as a dining destination.
The building sits near downtown Durham, adjacent to the future Durham Belt Line bike trail and within walking distance of the Central Park entertainment district, according to Cushman & Wakefield property materials. That corridor already hosts a cluster of popular local food and nightlife spots, positioning Cornelia and The Vintner & The Baker within an evolving stretch of the city's dining scene.
Durham's Rising Profile Draws Fine Dining Talent
The timing lines up with a broader shift in how national critics view North Carolina's food scene. The Michelin Guide officially expanded into the state in 2025 as part of its inaugural Michelin Guide American South edition, which evaluated dining across seven Southern states, according to the MICHELIN Guide. Four Durham establishments, including a reopened iteration of Nana's, Little Bull, Nikos, and Seraphine, were named Michelin Recommended destinations in that inaugural November 2025 release.
Durham has built national food recognition for more than a decade through James Beard nods and national media coverage, according to Discover Durham. Catotti and Kobler are preparing to move to Durham as they finalize plans for the two restaurants, aiming to open next spring in a city whose culinary reputation has only grown since Catotti first left it for Chicago.
