To celebrate its fourth anniversary, Taste Carolina food tour company is branching out from offering tours of the Triangle's foodie hot spots.

Owner Leslie Stracks-Mullem has organized a series of events highlighting how food artisans and chefs partner with local farmers.

The company hopes people will buy tickets to all multiple events. To attend all six, it costs $249. Five events cost $215. Four costs $180 and three costs $138. Remaining tickets for each event will go on sale one week prior to the event. Tickets can be purchased online at tastecarolina.com.

Here is the schedule:

• 6 p.m. April 18, a tour of Chapel Hill Creamery's farm followed by a cheese dinner at Acme Food & Beverage Co. in Carrboro.
• 6:15 p.m. April 23, a cooking demonstration and dinner featuring The Farmer's Daughter and Farmhand Foods with Piedmont Wine Imports at Eastern Carolina Organics.

This is a post by N&O restaurant critic Greg Cox:

Charles Tirada, owner of Asian restaurants ShabaShabu and Sushi Blues, is dipping his toe into a new concept with the opening of The Saucy Crab (4020 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd.; 919-237-1935; thesaucycrab.com) in Durham.

Or, to be precise, a new twist on an old concept. Inspired by the traditional crab boils of the mid-Atlantic and Gulf coasts, the restaurant's house specialty features shellfish steamed with corn and potatoes and tossed in your choice of four sauces.

You can keep it traditional with Louisiana crawfish tossed in a Cajun sauce or Carolina blue crab sprinkled with Old Bay. Or get creative and try, say, shrimp (EZ-Peel or whole, head-on) in a pineapple teriyaki sauce. The menu also offers fried seafood baskets, served with your choice of hand-cut fries or sweet potato fries and slaw. Key lime pie and other desserts are baked in house.

Tirada, who formerly went by the name Charles Meteesatien, has given the building that previously housed Fish House (which he also owned) a complete makeover, replacing neon-accented contemporary Asian with a rustic crab shack style complete with butcher paper on the tables.

Billed as "Durham's only backyard seafood joint," The Saucy Crab is open Monday-Friday from 4-10 p.m., Saturday-Sunday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Send restaurant news to Greg at ggcox@bellsouth.net. Be sure to tune in to Greg's radio show at 11 a.m. Saturdays on WPTF.

Take the best of the Triangle, Fullsteam and Bull City beers and mash them together. What do you get? The first-ever collaboration ale from Durham’s three craft breweries.

The trio came together on the unique project for N.C. Beer Month in April, said Seth Gross, owner of Bull City Burger and Brewery. The concept was simple: Take the signature grain, a specialty malt and the dominant hop from each brewery, at equal proportions, and make a beer. The end result is a hop-forward, copper-colored beer with roughly 6 percent alcohol. “It’s not any particular style,” said Gross, who is brewing the beer at his restaurant. “It’s representative of what the three brewers embody.”

The project also represents a movement gaining steam in the craft beer industry: the collaboration ale. The whole idea of multiple breweries putting their creative minds together to produce a single, often nouveau beer under a joint label sets the craft industry apart. It’s the tangible result of the camaraderie you hear so much about in the industry.

Gross said the Durham collaboration – which will debut April 3 at each brewery’s tasting room – is still a work in progress. Once the initial fermentation is completed, the brewers may add another twist – a dry hop or possibly a specialty ingredient, such as rosemary from the bush on the nearby street corner, Gross said.

In the meantime, the breweries are soliciting a name for the beer. The brewers will considered top five “liked” names submitted by March 31 on Bull City’s Facebook page. Read this week's Pintful column here.

Go HERE to read Greg's review.

UPDATE: This event has sold out.

Best-selling author Michael Pollan is coming to Durham next month to promote his new book, “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.”

Pollan, who previously wrote “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” will be speaking at 7:30 p.m. April 27 at Motorco Music Hall in Durham. The event costs $30 and include a copy of the book and two passes to the book reading. Pollan will sign books after the event and additional copies of the book will be available to purchase at the event. The event is being organized by The Regulator Bookshop in Durham.

Joining Pollan on stage for a conversation will be chefs Billy Cotter of Toast in Durham and James Beard winner Andrea Reusing of Lantern in Chapel Hill. Pollan’s new book is about his “efforts to master a single basic recipe using one of four classical elements: fire, water, air, and earth.” North Carolina barbecue pitmaster Ed Mitchell gives Pollan a lesson on cooking over fire.

The event also will include food trucks outside serving dinner and beer and wine for purchase inside Motorco.

Tickets to the event can be bought online: motorcomusic.com/michael-pollan. Tickets also can be purchased at The Regulator and Motorco during business hours.

Niya Mukherjee of Durham is among the semifinalists for this year’s Pillsbury Bake-Off.

Things are a different in this year’s 46th annual Pillsbury Bake-Off. The public now gets to help choose the finalists by voting for their favorite recipes online. If you would like to vote for Mukherjee’s roasted garlic and mushroom flatbread, go to pillsbury.com/BakeOff.

One hundred finalists will go to Las Vegas in November to compete for the $1 million grand prize. Voting continues until March 28.

Good luck Niya!

This is a post by N&O restaurant critic Greg Cox:

It’s early spring and, right on schedule, Irish pubs are sprouting up all over the place. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve written that a pub opened “just in time for Saint Patrick’s Day.”

You can add the newest location of Hibernian (8021 Falls of Neuse Road; 919-803-0290; hibernianpub.com) to the list. The North Raleigh pub opened its doors with ten days to spare in the building that formerly housed Duffy’s for a decade. Owner Niall Hanley has given the space a complete overhaul to match the menu, a mix of Irish and American pub fare that now counts house-corned beef among its attractions.

Hanley is also fervently working on the restoration of the original Hibernian on Glenwood South, which was closed by a fire in December. He hopes to reopen by May with a few improvements, including a rooftop patio. I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile in Morrisville, the opening of a second location of Trali (3107 Grace Park Drive; traliirishpub.com) will miss its originally targeted St. Paddy’s Day opening by just a couple of weeks. According to chef-partner Eamonn Kelly, they’re now hiring staff and are shooting for an early April opening.

Send restaurant news to Greg at ggcox@bellsouth.net. Be sure to tune in to Greg's radio show at 11 a.m. Saturdays on WPTF.

The concept sounds silly to some: beer tourism. What kind of nerd travels across the state – let alone across the country – to drink a pint of beer? Ahh, hmm, err ... me. On my honeymoon to northern California a couple of years ago, my wife and I visited six breweries. (She’s a goddess.) We hit four Michigan breweries during a recent trip to see relatives. And I’m far from alone.

At North Carolina craft beer events, it’s not unusual to meet enthusiasts from outside the state. Take, for instance, the Florida couple I met who drove all night long for the Foothills Sexual Chocolate release in Winston-Salem or the guy from Atlanta who came to North Carolina three times in less than two months for beer events.

All this is to say it’s not a surprise to see the N.C. Division of Tourism as the driving force behind the inaugural N.C. Beer Month, a celebration of the state’s craft beer culture in April. “The idea came about as we reached this critical mass of breweries,” said Margo Metzger, a spokeswoman for the division, which is part of the N.C. Department of Commerce. “We have been promoting craft beer for several years now, but we saw this great momentum building. ... We definitely thought craft beer was hot.” Read this week's Pintful craft beer column here.

The Fearrington House in Pittsboro is offering a rare dining experience: a chance to meet and dine with renowned chef Thomas Keller.

Keller, whose flagship restaurant is the French Laundry in Yountville, Ca., is participating in McIntyre's Books' cooks and books series. The $250 dinner will be 6 p.m. May 17. It will include wine pairings and five courses based on recipes in Keller's books, including "Bouchon Bakery," which was recently a finalist for a James Beard cookbook award. Dinner guests will receive an autographed copy of the book.

Seats will go quickly for this event so call 919-542-3030.

Information: fearrington.com/event/cooks-books-thomas-keller/

Other upcoming cooks and books' events include:

• 6 p.m. April 11, Chapel Hill cookbook author Nancie McDermott will lead diners through a five-course Thai New Year's dinner based on the recipes in her book, "Real Thai: The Best of Thailand's Regional Cooking." It will cost $100 and diners receive a copy of McDermott's book.
• 6 p.m. April 24, Amy Stewart, author of "The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks," will be the guest of honor at a cocktail party. Diners will enjoy the cocktails and heavy appetizers and receive an autographed copy of the book. The event costs $145.

Information: fearrington.com/village-shops/mcintyres-books/cooks-books/

I had a puzzling phone conversation with a reader today. He and his wife had done some drive-bys to see the exact locations of some well-regarded Raleigh restaurants. What he saw surprised him and during our conversation I was struck by how worlds apart I was from this man in terms of our evaluation of restaurants.

He specifically mentioned Poole's and Bida Manda. Where I see the charm in Poole's modern update of this former diner, he saw a "dump" and wondered why a James Beard finalist didn't pick a better restaurant location. Where I see the sleek Asian design of Bida Manda, he again failed to see any beauty.

As we were talking, he mentioned Bruno, a steakhouse near Wake Forest, as a restaurant aesthetic that he liked. He called it "charming." I've never eaten at Bruno so I don't know what it looks like. But Greg Cox gave it four stars so I know it is a worthy dining destination. (Go HERE to read Greg's review.)

I urged the gentleman to look beyond whether he likes the look of the place and taste the food. But I'm still scratching my head about this phone call.

Is this a generational divide among diners? He seemed older than my 38 years, maybe close to 60. Is it based on a person's prior dining experience? He said he and his wife moved here from Boston. Are big city restaurants really that much different than what's here in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill? Or maybe some folks have very different ideas about what a restaurant experience should be? I'm as happy to eat off a food truck as dine at Lantern in Chapel Hill. Maybe others don't see dining that way. How can two people be so far apart on the beauty of a place?

What do you think?