The N.C. Restaurant and Lodging Association has named Raleigh's Greg Hatem as its restaurateur of the year.

Hatem, whose Empire Eats restaurant group owns The Raleigh Times Bar, Gravy, Sitti and The Pit, was lauded for his efforts to revitalize downtown Raleigh.

Hatem's Empire Properties owns more than 40 buildings of office and retail space in downtown Raleigh and Durham.

Roy Durham, head line cook for Raleigh's Rocky Top Hospitality, was also named restaurant employee of the year.

The awards were presented earlier this week at an event held at the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill. The annual awards honor individuals who have accomplished achievements in the restaurant, lodging and hospitality supply industries.

Developer Greg Hatem is opening a second location of The Pit restaurant, Raleigh's popular cloth napkin barbecue restaurant.

The second location will be next door to Durham's Fullsteam Brewery in a former 7Up bottling plant on the corner of Rigsbee and Geer streets. Hatem says he will close today on the purchase of the 30,000-square feet building that also houses Fullsteam, which will become a tenant. 

That area of Durham is a popular night spot between Fullsteam, Motorco Music Hall, Geer Street Garden restaurant and bar and all the food trucks that park there nightly.

Hatem says he will convert 10,000 to 12,000 square feet of the unoccupied part of the building into the second Pit location. Hatem says a second story on part of the building will enable them to create a 2,000-square-foot rooftop patio with a view of the city.

Hatem says he hopes the new Pit restaurant will open in about 10 months. He noted that the purchase came with a 1-acre parking lot about two blocks away and another along Geer Street. Plus, there will be space in the building for another tenant, Hatem says.

"It will be our biggest restaurant," Hatem says.

His company also owns The Raleigh Times, The Morning Times, Sitti and Gravy, all in downtown Raleigh.

Go HERE to read the story from business reporter David Bracken about the Empire Eats owner's latest projects.

Empire Eats owns The Raleigh Times, Sitti, Gravy and The Pit in downtown Raleigh.

A Laotian restaurant called Bida Manda is opening this summer in the former Duck & Dumpling space in downtown Raleigh.

Owner Vansana Nolintha, who is originally from Laos, says they hope to open in late July or early August. Nolintha, 26, is opening the restaurant with his sister, Vanvisa, 24.

The siblings came to the United States in 1998 to learn English and finish school in Greensboro. From there, Vansana attended N.C. State University, studying chemistry, art and design and world religions. He went on to get a master's degree in peace and conflict studies from Trinity College in Ireland. All of that training led him to food and a desire to open a restaurant that reflects his own personal narrative.

His sister seems appropriately trained to join him after studying hotel and hospitality management at UNC-Greensboro.

So what is Laotian food? Nolintha explains it combines aromatic Southeast Asian ingredients with French technique. It is a cross between Thai and Vietnamese food but was elevated and refined when Laos was a French colony, he explains.

Nolintha plans to use recipes that he learned from his mother and hire a chef to execute them. They will offer a small, seasonal menu.

The restaurant's specific location is 222 S. Blount St., Raleigh.

Empire Properties, owned by downtown Raleigh developer Greg Hatem, will receive a $50,000 loan from the city of Raleigh to retrofit a Hargett Street space for its newest tenant-- a digital media company Foursaken Media.

Foursaken Media specializes in building gaming apps as well as projects like websites and software. The company is run by four brothers, Tom, Jamie, Miles and Connor Jackson, who have been working with Hatem for about a month, he said. You may have heard of the first app game they developed: New York Zombies.

The Raleigh City Council approved the loan Tuesday, giving it terms of 3 percent interest for 10 years with a five-year call. The loan is a part of the Downtown Loan Pool program, which was created in 2004 with the goal of extending financing to businesses along Fayetteville Street.

Developer Greg Hatem has closed his newest restaurant, Fai Thai, just three months after it opened in the downtown Raleigh space formerly occupied by Duck & Dumpling.

Hatem said today that he closed the restaurant so that its dining and kitchen space could be used to handle catering requests at his other downtown restaurants.

“We’ve turned down one to two events a week just in our spaces,” he said.

Hatem’s other downtown restaurants include Sitti, Gravy, Raleigh Times and The Pit.

Hatem partnered with William D’Auvray, formerly chef-proprietor of Fins and bu.ku, to open Fai Thai.
 

Go HERE to read the story and see the photo gallery of Mitchell. The story is just a little more polished.

Famous eastern North Carolina barbecue pitmaster Ed Mitchell is leaving The Pit in downtown Raleigh and plans to open another restaurant in the Triangle, according to a press release that went out today.

Meanwhile, Mitchell's former business partner, Greg Hatem, announced that he would be opening a second location of The Pit in downtown Durham later this year or early next year.

Mitchell is a well-regarded barbecue pitmaster who originally transformed his family's Wilson grocery store in 1990 into a barbecue destination. As Mitchell's profile started to rise, he stumbled as a businessman. He ended up in a squabble with the bank that resulted in litigation and that restaurant was closed in 2004. A year later, he was convicted of failure to pay state sales taxes related to the business and served 30 days in jail. 

But in 2007, Mitchell's resurrection on the barbecue scene seemed assured. He partnered with downtown Raleigh developer Greg Hatem to open The Pit. Hatem operates Empire Eats and has stakes in several downtown Raleigh restaurants, including  The Raleigh Times, The Morning Times, Sitti, Gravy and Fai Thai. It seemed at the time like a good pairing: Mitchell with the barbecue expertise and being a known barbecue personality and Hatem with the business sense and an existing centralized system for running the restaurant's payroll, ordering and logistics.

Mitchell's return to the restaurant scene was covered extensively in the national food magazines. Then a 2009 appearance on "Throwdown! with Bobby Flay," the Food Network star, made the Raleigh restaurant even more popular than it already was. The restaurant even began selling its own brand of barbecue sauces at Williams-Sonoma stores.

But now that partnership has come to an end. In a phone interview, Mitchell said: "I thought it was time to move on. There were some other things I wanted to do to take my vision to the next level. I'm very happy that Greg and I did something great. The opportunity was very appreciated."

Mitchell didn't want to discuss his next restaurant project but hopes to within a month's time. The press release directs the public to this website for updates: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Pitmaster-ED-Mitchell/104706286282872

Mitchell did reveal that he plans to partner with Butterball, which is headquartered in Garner, to make turkey barbecue. He will be showing off that dish at the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party next month in New York City. (Mitchell is a founding pitmaster at the block party and this is his ninth year to cook for the event.)

Reached on the phone, Hatem said, "We enjoyed our relationship with Ed Mitchell. Ed wants to pursue the Ed Mitchell brand. We want to continue pursuing great North Carolina whole hog barbecue."

Hatem added that nothing will change at the Pit restaurant. The recipes, sauces and dishes will not be altered due to Mitchell's departure.

Hatem added that they plan to open a catering kitchen to help the restaurant keep up with demand and be able to offering catering services.

Developer Greg Hatem is asking Wake County leaders to give him at least three more years to begin construction on a prominent downtown project. 

In a letter dated Oct. 1, Hatem told Wake County officials that his company, Empire Properties, would not meet a county-imposed deadline that required construction of The L Building to begin by Nov. 16.

The L Building, a mix of offices and shops, was supposed to wrap around the county parking deck at the corner of McDowell and Davie streets. The project has been stalled because of the credit crunch, which has resulted in the parking deck sitting naked with its rough concrete exterior exposed.

The Wake County Commissioners gave Hatem an 18-month extension in May 2009.

Hatem is requesting that his company's agreement with the county be extended until November 2013.

He also wants to add a clause in the agreement that would allow for another three-year extension in November 2013 if the state's unemployment rate and the Triangle office vacancy rate are above where they were in March 2007.

That's the date Empire and the county entered into their public-private agreement.

Hatem did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
 

Sharp-eyed viewers may have spotted Raleigh restaurant The Pit last night on The Food Network.

The barbecue hot spot was named among the top 10 restaurants nationwide for regional classics. The show was part of a series that the Food Network is running this week naming the best of the best in different categories. Celebrity chef Alton Brown visits each restaurant and hands out shiny silver plates engraved with the Food Network logo and the restaurant's award.

Viewers may have also spotted local businessman Greg Hatem, who was interviewed along with pit master Ed Mitchell during the piece about The Pit and its 'cue.

Hatem and his Empire Eats corporation own The Pit and several other downtown Raleigh restaurants.