Lantern Restaurant

Lantern Lantern is a marriage of Asian flavors and North Carolina ingredients sourced mainly from local farms and fisheries. It has been named one of "America's Top 50 Restaurants" and "best farm-to-table restaurants" by Gourmet Magazine, as one of "America's 50 Most Amazing Wine Experiences" by Food & Wine and as "Restaurant of the Year" in 2009 by The News & Observer.

Chef-owner Andrea Reusing was named one of "15 Green Chefs" on Grist's international list, has written for Saveur, Domino, Fine Cooking, Gourmet.com and the News and Observer. She serves on the boards of the Center of Environmental Farming Systems and Chefs Collaborative. Reusing is the 2011 winner of the James Beard award for Best Chef: Southeast and the author of Cooking in the Moment: A Year of Seasonal Recipes (Clarkson Potter, 2011).

Lantern was opened in January 2002 by brother-sister team Andrea and Brendan Reusing, along with help from many friends including Silvia Pahola, Ric Palao and David Doernberg, who is responsible for our striking design and warm glow.

General Manager - Jason Wall
Chef de cuisine - Miguel Torres
Pastry chef - Monica Segovia Welsh

Many Lantern alum have delicious restaurants and food businesses:

Andrea and Miguel

At Scratch in downtown Durham, Phoebe Lawless bakes empanadas and sugar pie.

At J. Betski's in Raleigh, John Korzekwinski and Jeremy Jennings serve homemade pierogies and kielbasa along with their Pichlers and Prüms.

In Carrboro at Neal's Deli, Sheila and Matt Neal make their own pastrami and farmers market sides.

In NYC, David Doernberg blogs at eatdavelove.

At the Carrboro Farmers market, April McGreger can be found with her Farmers Daughter brand scuppernong preserves and Russian dills.

In downtown Durham at Toast, Billy and Kelli Cotter serve bruschetta, panini, tramezzini and don't forget crostini.

In Cedar Grove, Dave Ramirez and Susan Wiles grow shishito peppers and lots of other things at Geodesic Gardens.

In Chapel Hill at The Pig, Sam Suchoff cooks whole hog pasture-raised BBQ and fries homemade bologna.

What is the Lantern Table?

A dinner series focusing on local farms and food producers. The dinners take place throughout the year, showcasing farmers and products as the seasons progress.

Because these dinners are designed to highlight our local bounty they include a variety of cuisines and non-Asian influences.

Past Lantern Table events:

Foraging Adventure and Dinner with Alan Muskat

We joined for a day of April foraging and eating with Alan Muskat to help celebrate our new community kitchen, Lantern Table.

Alan led a foraging adventure with a small group that morning, gathering ingredients for the dinner in our springtime woods and meadows. That night, Andrea, Miguel and Amanda prepared a spring Kaiseki-style dinner that included fresh bamboo shoots, morels, nettles, chicory leaf, burdock, spring beauties, milkweed shoots and yes, ramps, along with other prime April ingredients from North Carolina farms and fishers.

Dinner with Grace Young

We celebrated the first day of spring when we welcomed award-winning cookbook author Grace Young to Lantern for a 5-couse dinner. She cooked from and shared her latest cookbook, Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge.

Ruhlman's Twenty

Dinner with Michael Ruhlman

We hosted a special dinner and conversation with author Michael Ruhlman to share charcuterie and other food that’s cured, brined, pickled, fermented and salted. We roasted chestnuts from High Rock Farm on the patio and poured wine from the Vallee D'Aoste in where the rugged terrain and high elevation produces some of the most elegant wines in Italy.

Michael's game-changing new book Ruhlman's Twenty distills all of cooking into 20 fundamental techniques, illustrated with 100 recipes, and hundreds of instructive photos. The 16-course family-style meal included 18-month old whey-fed ham, North Carolina sashimi, crispy rillettes with salted "ume" cherries and moulard duck cured with sake kasu. The full menu and wine pairings are available here.

Molly Stevens

All About Roasting Dinner with Molly Stevens

We welcomed award-winning cookbook author Molly Stevens to Lantern and she cooked from and shared her gorgeous and essential new book, All About Roasting: A New Approach to a Classic Art. The fall menu included Nassawadox oysters, acorn-fed pork, heirloom apples and other prime fall produce and was a benefit for Lee Calhoun's Southern Heritage Apple Orchard.

Hominy Grill Dinner

Hominy We welcomed James Beard award-winner Robert Stehling of Hominy Grill to Lantern for a special evening.

Robert began his cooking career in Chapel Hill working with Bill Neal at Crook's Corner before finding his way with his wife Nunally Kersh to Charleston. In 1997, they opened what has become one of the most beloved restaurants in the south. The dinner began with cocktails and snacks and continued with 5 courses of Hominy Grill flavor. The menu featured both North and South Carolina ingredients and was paired with wines from Jon-David Headrick's small, progressive producers of the Loire Valley.

Lunch honoring Frank Bruni

We hosted a special lunch honoring Frank Bruni, author of the New York Times best-seller Born Round: A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite. Currently a writer at large at the New York Times, Mr. Bruni was formerly the newspaper's restaurant critic and Rome bureau chief. The family-style lunch included fall delicacies like chestnuts, Nassawadox oysters, persimmons, acorn-fed pork and sweet white shrimp from the Pamlico Sound.

Momofuku

David Chang at Lantern

We welcomed David Chang to Lantern for a 9-course dinner in honor of his groundbreaking new cookbook Momofuku.

Bacon Dinner

We welcomed Zingerman's founder Ari Weinzweig to Lantern for a special six-course bacon dinner celebrating the publication of Ari's new book Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon.

The meal focused on bacon from masters Allan Benton, Sam Edwards and WIlliam Johnson, homemade lardo, guanciale and acorn-fed Ossabaw pork belly as well as great local winter vegetables and apples from Diane Flynt at Foggy Ridge Cider.

Click to show more past events...

Greek Lantern Table

On July 1st Lantern featured a wine from an endangered grape, the very first local tomatoes, new garlic, local cheeses, grass-fed lamb, local peaches and honey.

Our special guests included James Stock of Haw River Wine Man, who shared some of his amazing wines from the sandy, volcanic soil of Santorini and the Peleponese along with his family's organically produced olives and olive oil, John and Cindy Soehner of Eco Farm and Alex and Betsy Hitt of Peregrine Farm, who treated us to an early preview of their tomato harvest.

The evening benefited Triangle farmers and cooks who are attending Terra Madre in October and the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity's Presidia on the mavrotragono grape.

Into the Vietnamese Kitchen Dinner with Andrea Nguyen

On Tuesday, April 22nd we welcomed award-winning cookbook author and teacher Andrea Nguyen to Lantern for a special six-course spring Vietnamese dinner. Nguyen shared dishes from her James Beard nominated cookbook, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors.

Each dish was paired with a sherry or fresh white wine from Spain by Chapel Hill's own Andre Tamers of de Maison Selections.

Andrea Nguyen's Blog

Castle Rock Gardens at the Lantern

Castle Rock Gardens was featured in a 9-course Japanese kaiseki-style feast, including wine pairings by Jay Murrie

Piedmont Pigs & Cheese/ Piemonte Menu & Wine!

On Tuesday, March 27th our guests were two local American cheese-making pioneers, Flo Hawley and Portia McKnight of Chapel Hill Creamery.

We showcased their farmstead cheeses, along with their whey-fed pigs and prime local produce from many of their fellow Terra Madre delegates in a six-course menu inspired by an October trip to the Italian Piedmont and paired with artisan wines from the same region.

Throughout the evening, Hawley and McKnight discussed their approach to farming, their cheeses and long-term goals.

The evening was a benefit for Slow Food Nation - a festival to promote and reinvigorate America’s diverse food traditions that took place in San Francisco, May 1-4, 2008.

2nd Annual "The Chicken & the Egg" with Fickle Creek Farm

The dinner featured Delaware roosters! and once again Ben & Noah joined us.

Listen to a discussion of the 1st Annual Fickle Creek dinner on WUNC FM's The State of Things.

Classic Peking Duck Dinner

In the bar we featured the English heritage duck breed known as Aylesbury. This delicious variety comes from Frank Reese, godfather of the heritage poultry revival. Each course was paired with wines from Burgundy.

Seasonal Japanese Dinner

A unique evening of food and wine along with 3 Cups. Rosenthal Wine Merchant’s Tony McClung, and Mike Tiano, of Haw River Wine Man, gave a special wine class, followed by a seasonal Japanese dinner featuring local ingredients. The evening began at 3 Cups with the class and tasting of six French wines selected from the Rosenthal portfolio, and concluded at Lantern with a six-course meal paired with the same wines.

A five-course French dinner

featuring Elysian Fields Farm's spring harvest, pasture-raised lamb and wild salmon. Elaine created pairings of small-producer French wines for the meal as well.

Harland's Creek Farm Dinner

Brendan, Elaine, April, Miguel & Andrea cooked an all-local five course dinner at Harland's Creek Farm, in Pittsboro, NC to benefit the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association. Nearly every single ingredient on the menu was local, including whey-fed pork, asparagus, black truffles, oysters, ramps, and strawberries.

1st Annual "The Chicken & the Egg"

featuring Fickle Creek Farm

Piedmont Pigs & Cheese/ Piemonte Menu & Wine

Two local American cheese-making pioneers, Flo Hawley and Portia McKnight of Chapel Hill Creamery showcased their farmstead cheeses, as well as their whey-fed pigs with a six-course menu inspired by the Italian Piedmont and paired with artisan wines from the same region. We also served prime autumn produce from nearby farms and fresh white truffles direct from Alba. Throughout the evening, Hawley and McKnight discussed their approach to farming, their cheeses and long-term goals.

All-Local Pasture-Raised Meat Dinner

The dinner focused on simple preparations of pork, chicken, and beef all raised within 25 miles of Chapel Hill. The menu included:

Chapel Hill Creamery quark with radishes and sea salt

Roasted chicken with spring onions and baby turnips
(Shady Grove Farm & Fickle Creek Farm)

Braised pork shoulder and belly with fennel, olives and Anson Mills grits
(Chapel Hill Creamery)

Grilled beef with fried herbs and crispy potatoes
(Baldwin Family Farm & Braeburn Farm)

Local organic strawberry ice cream

Six-Course all-Ossabaw Pig Dinner with 2004 James Beard Award winner Eric Tanaka and his Dahlia Lounge sous-chef (and Durham native) Gray Brooks.

Originally stranded in the sixteenth century by Spanish explorers on Ossabaw Island off the coast of Georgia, Ossabaw hogs are the descendants of the famous Spanish Iberian or pata negra hogs – free-range pigs who fatten up on foraged acorns & wild grasses before becoming the most sought-after ham in the world – ibérico.

The amazing story of their rescue from the island is the subject of NY Times writer & author Peter Kaminsky’s upcoming book, Pig Perfect. Among the tale’s heroines is Eliza Maclean, one of only two farmers in the world currently raising Ossabaws.

Luckily for us, Eliza’s Cane Creek Farm is in Mebane.

The evening benefited the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, the Pittsboro-based group who has tirelessly worked to save rare farm breeds from extinction since 1977.

Owl’s Nest Trading Co. shared a selection of traditional organic wines from small producers in Germany, whose estates have been in their families for hundreds of years. The quality of these delicious wines is a reflection of their deep roots in the land. They will be a great pairing with pigs who feast on Alamance County alfalfa, peanuts and acorns.