Greg Cox visited Weinberg's, a Jewish deli in North Raleigh for this week's review.

And his Cheap Eats column offers a "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" tour of the Triangle.

The News & Observer and triangle.com are hosting a Food Truck Friday event for lunch  June 1.

Head over to our downtown Raleigh office at 215 S. McDowell Street from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.; our parking lot will have food trucks Chirba Chirba Dumpling, KoKyuBBQ and Sympathy for the Deli serving food.

While you're here, you can play cornhole with triangle.com or spin the prize wheel to win various goodies, like gift cards, prize packs or other swag.

This will the first of three events on First Fridays this year. We'll keep you posted on details of future Food Truck Friday gatherings.

Just a reminder: More than 80 restaurants across the Triangle will be offering prix fixe lunch and dinner specials from June 4-10.

Participating restaurants may offer a $15 lunch special or a $20 to $30 three-course dinner special. Some of the restaurants include Little Hen in Apex, Blue Mango in Raleigh and Carolina Brewery in Pittsboro and Chapel Hill.

For details, go to blvd.tv/trw/restaurants/

Get your reservations sooner rather than later!
 

Chef Jimmy Crippen, owner of Crippen's Country Inn and Restaurant in Blowing Rock, has brought his Iron Chef-style cooking competition to the Triangle starting June 11.

Crippen is the force behind the annual Fire on the Rock competition, which started seven years ago in Blowing Rock. This year, Crippen teamed up with the N.C. Department of Agriculture's Got to Be N.C. campaign to take the competition statewide. So now there are four contests across the state: Fire on the Rock in Blowing Rock, Fire on the Dock in Wrightsville Beach, Fire in the Triangle in Raleigh and Fire in the Triad in Greensboro.

Sixteen chefs have signed up for the Triangle contest starting June 11 with Four Square's Shane Ingram going up against The Twisted Fork's Adam Jones. The complete list of pairings was announced today at a press conference in North Raleigh.

Here's how it works: Two chefs with the help of two sous chefs each prepare three courses for about 100 people using a secret N.C. ingredient that is only revealed on the day of the competition. The chefs, whose cell phones are confiscated, have about six hours to plan their menus and cook their courses. That evening, the diners and a panel of guest judges will choose the winning dishes, not knowing which chef cooked which course. The winning chef moves onto the next round. The overall winner takes home $2,000, while the runner-up wins $500.

The public can buy tickets to the dinners. The cost is $49 excluding beverage, tax and tip for the preliminary rounds, and $59 for the semifinal and final rounds. Go HERE to purchase tickets. All events start at 6:30 p.m. at Rocky Top Hospitality's catering event space, 1705 E. Millbrook Road, Raleigh, which is the original Michael Dean's location.

The preliminary contests are these:

• June 11: Shane Ingram of Four Square in Durham vs. Adam Jones of The Twisted Fork in Raleigh. 
• June 12: Adam Rose of Il Palio in Chapel Hill vs. Josh DeCarolis of Jujube in Chapel Hill.
• June 13: Ryan Payne of Weathervane at Southern Season in Chapel Hill vs. Chris Harris of Fork and Barrel in Raleigh.
• June 18: Scott James of The Midtown Grille in Raleigh vs. Matthew Hannon of Ashten's Restaurant & Pub in Southern Pines.
• June 19: John Childers of Herons at the Umstead Hotel and Spa in Cary vs. Chad McIntyre of Market Restaurant in Raleigh.
• June 20: Reto von Weissenfluh of Mia Francesca Trattoria in Raleigh vs. Serge Falcoz-Vigne of 518 West Italian Café in Raleigh.
• June 25: Michael Lee of Sono in Raleigh vs. Dean Wendel of Flights at the Renaissance Raleigh North Hills Hotel.
• June 26: Christopher Hill of The Oxford in Raleigh vs. Jimmy Reale of Chapel Hill Country Club in Chapel Hill.

The quarterfinals will be July 9-10 and July 16-17. The semifinals will be July 23-24. The final competition will be July 31.

A portion of  ticket sales will be donated to N.C.'s Office of the State Fire Marshal to support local fire fighters because cooking is the number one cause of house fires.

We announced the winner of our Great Carolina Sauce Contest: Nathan Kalons of Charlotte. Richard Perry of Carrboro and Rebecca Dorminey of Raleigh were the runners-up. Congrats to the winners!

(Photo above from staff photographer Juli Leonard.)

We also announced the winner of our N&O reader recipe mac-n-cheese contest: Sarah and Liz Greene, two sisters from Raleigh.

Kathleen Purvis and her editor Roland Wilkerson offer a round-up of the latest grilling cookbooks.

Suzanne Havala Hobbs' On the Table column discusses the UK's food revolution.

Kathleen Purvis' Cook Q&A is about basmati rice. If you have a cooking question, please send those to kpurvis@charlotteobserver.com.

We share a store from Slate.com about roasted brussels sprouts.

We share a Washington Post story about the booming craft beer market.

We share a Los Angeles Times story about scones.

The James Beard Foundation's book awards committee released a list of 14 Great Reads for Food Lovers for the 14 weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Full disclosure: I'm on the book awards committee and this list was a lot of fun to produce. What is great is that there are books on here that I've never read and now can dig into this summer. Happy reading!

1. "The Art of Eating" by M. F. K. Fisher (John Wiley & Sons)
2. "Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris" by A.J. Liebling (North Point Press)
3. "Blood, Bones & Butter" by Gabrielle Hamilton (Random House)
4. "Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War" by Annia Ciezadlo (Free Press)
5. "A Debt to Pleasure" by John Lanchester (Picador)
6. "An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace" by Tamar Adler (Scribner)
7. "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food" by Jennifer 8. Lee (Twelve)
8. "Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany" by Bill Buford (Vintage)
9. "Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen" by Laurie Colwin (Vintage)
10. "The Man Who Ate Everything" by Jeffrey Steingarten (Vintage)
11. "Oranges" by John McPhee (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
12. "The Oysters of Locmariaquer" by Eleanor Clark (Ecco Press)
13. "Simple Cooking" by John Thorne (North Point Press)
14. "The Tummy Trilogy" by Calvin Trillin (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux)

Chapel Hill's Southern Season has opened a coffee bar and changed its hours to open at 8 a.m. instead of 10 a.m. six days a week.

The store's new hours are 8 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 8 a.m.-9 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday.

The new hours allow customers to take advantage of the store's new coffee bar, which is located just past the coffee and tea sales counters. The coffee bar has 20 different coffees, many from local coffee roasters: Durham-based Counter Culture Coffee, Carrboro Coffee Co. in Carrboro and Raleigh-based Stockton Graham & Co. Plus, they have more than 20 different teas available for brewing.

Coffee bar supervisor Reiko Tanaka explains that they offer drip coffee as well as individual cups of coffee brewed using fresh ground coffee and a coffee filter cone. For the latter, a customer can request any of the dozens of coffee sold in the store. The price difference is $1.65 for 12 ounces of drip coffee versus $2.25-$2.95.

Southern Season became the gourmet food, housewares and mail order behemoth that it is today by starting out as a small store selling gourmet coffee. This may indicate a return to its roots but it also may be responding to a nearby coffee competitor. 3CUPS has been offering coffee brewed to order since it opened several years ago on South Elliot Road.

Southern Season was sold last year to an investment firm, which has plans to expand the business to other markets. Go HERE to read a story I wrote about that last year.

Chef Tom Ferguson of Durham Catering Co. is looking for a space in Durham for his latest business venture, Rise, a doughnut and biscuit restaurant.

Ferguson was inspired to start this new business venture by several eateries across the country: Pine State Biscuits and Voodoo Doughnut, both in Portland, and Doughnut Plant in New York City. He wants to do something similiar: using good quality, local ingredients to make doughnuts and biscuits.

Ferguson says he's looked at two spaces: Magnolia Grill's location on Ninth Street and a space on Foster Street near Geer Street Garden. But he hasn't settled on a location yet.

He has settled on his staff: Brian Wiles, a former sous chef at Nana's in Durham, and Jim Johnson, an alumni of Magnolia Grill's kitchen.

Here's where it gets fun for you: Ferguson has purchased $30,000 in doughnut making equipment. And so, he's turned part of Durham Catering into a "doughnut laboratory." While they do their research into what makes a great doughnut, they'll be occasionally giving away free doughnuts. Check out their Facebook page for details as that gets going.

I'm giving away a copy of America's Test Kitchen's "Simple Weeknight Meals: More than 200 No-Fuss, Foolproof Meals." This recipe helped inspire my recent Mother's Day article about getting dinner on the table more easily during the week.

Leave a comment below this post before noon Friday, June 8.

Good luck!

A reader sent in a question last week about which local farmers markets have bakers selling gluten-free goods. I know about Abilicious Bakery, which sells at the Chatham Mills, Saxapahaw and Pittsboro markets.

If you know of any markets with such goods or bakers who sell gluten-free baked goods at local markets, please leave a comment below and share your knowledge. Thanks.

UPDATE: Here are a few responses from readers:

TJ Martin writes:  I recently discovered Sarah Cecilia Good Food Company (www.sarahcecilia.com) at the Western Wake Farmers Market.  She does not provide baked goods, but does make delicious food from local ingredients and has gluten free options.  I emailed her just yesterday to order a dozen gluten free steamed dumplings that I will pick up Saturday morning at the market.

Another reader writes: The Cary Downtown Farmers Market has a gluten free baker. Glutey Tooty is at the market most Saturdays, 8-12:30. We are now located at the corner of Academy and E Park Streets in downtown Cary, across from the library. Thanks.

And a third reader called to say: Imagine That Gluten Free is selling at the Carrboro Farmers Market.