Anyway... getting real. Bull Durham on game day can be a zoo... with many opposing fans (which can be OK). Anyone know what it's like for a late game? Doesn't the Fairview Restaurant have a buffet on game day? Anyway, you should be able to park at WaDu -- very short walk to Cameron. Heck, with a brisk pace,you can make it to the Chapel in ten mins.
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I agree. I started occasionally eating there in 2000 maybe 4-5 times a year in the early years and then tapering off to where I didn’t go at all some years — and I haven’t gone since Tommy Bullock died — but I never thought it was good. It was always only pretty good at best, and sometimes a notch below that. I just happened to live five minutes from Bullock’s and there wasn’t much competition for BBQ in the immediate area.
Maybe I’ll check it out this week out of curiosity. I just have a hard time believing Bullock’s has gotten better without Tommy (who was a great guy, by the way); it’s probably just the opposite. But we’ll see.
I believe it's helpful to regard Bullock's not as a culinary destination, but as a typical small-town North Carolina restaurant with a more expansive menu, that has endured and evolved, by not changing at all, into a nostalgic tradition that beckons with the promise of fond familiarity -- a shared experience that spans generations of Duke students and their families. Like AB Nance's downtown back in the day, part of its charm has always been the relatively uncommon but happy commingling of Duke students with local folks.
I enjoyed eating at Bullock's more than 50 years ago, when I was an undergrad and the restaurant was still at its original location further west on Hillsborough Road. I took my kids there when they were attending the TIP summer program, and they enjoyed it enough that they continued to eat at Bullock's during their undergrad years. Now we, and they, take the grandkids there, and the grandkids enjoy it enough that they ask to go back whenever we're in town. I think it's the hushpuppies that hook us all.
I had the pleasure of hosting a small reunion of some friends from high school and college days before the Army game last month, and at my suggestion we convened for lunch at Bullock's, where none of them had ever dined. Because it was a Friday, I knew that collards and black-eyed peas would be on the sides menu; and I knew that my colleagues, who were all from a small town in Robeson County, would be enticed by the selection of main plates, with bar-b-que, fried chicken, chicken-and-dumplings, and Calabash-style seafood, as well as the long list of country-style veggies, with hushpuppies and sweet tea and banana pudding to bring it all home. Needless to say, Bullock's did not disappoint, but proved to be a much-appreciated choice among that crowd.
By most reckonings, Bullock's doesn't serve the best bar-b-que in Durham, and it doesn't offer a special ambience that would impress anyone. But eating at Bullock's is an experience that people seem to enjoy, and remember, and for some reason want to repeat. I'd say that it's just the nostalgia, except that others who don't have those memories routinely vote to go back as well. Maybe it's just a feeling that reaches out and infects some of us. Then again, I suppose it could just be the hushpuppies.![]()
The 'que is great there. The ambiance is okay. The location is terrible. And it does not have anything to do with 'Duke' (ie no Duke things on the wall, etc).
For a 'first time in Durham' meal, not sure this would be the place.
That said, it's my go-to when I'm back in Derm.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill
President of the "Nolan Smith Should Have His Jersey in The Rafters" Club
This must be a generational thing. I went to Duke in the early 2000s and went to Bullock's quite a few times as a frosh and soph. I don't get it. The food was subpar, the ambiance is pretty terrible, and the experience wasn't memorable. Maybe it's the lack of booze, but I never had an urge to go to Bullock's after my sophomore year.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill
President of the "Nolan Smith Should Have His Jersey in The Rafters" Club
Co-signed. From the very first time I went, the only worthwhile aspect of the place I could come up with was the all-you-can-eat "family style" meal, which was decidedly unfriendly to a student budget and still always left me feeling like all I did was stuff myself with mediocre food, every individual item of which I could readily name somewhere else that was serving a better version thereof.
Genial warning on Devine's, my stomach still hurts and it happened 30 years ago.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill
President of the "Nolan Smith Should Have His Jersey in The Rafters" Club
I don't think we need to use this thread to re-hash one off gastro incidents that may or may not have even been related* to the restaurant in question while trying to offer recommendations.
Devines is a perfectly good and safe place to eat.
*Incubation period for stomach bugs can be longer than many realize, what caused food poisoning is pretty commonly misattributed.
Q-shack
Nuvo Taco (next door to Q shack)
Elmo’s on 9th are all great local spots when with kids