Today after the big duck race (more on that later), we went for brunch with S & D to the recently opened Watts Grocery. They've done a really nice job with the space. It wasn't very crowded but it seemed like there's a good amount of space and that it wouldn't be too noisy, even when crowded. And the food was outstanding. I had the Watts breakfast -- the house-made sausage is outstanding, the eggs are close to my previous gold standard (Early Girl in Asheville), and the hash browns... oh my god... they are definitely my new standard for breakfast potatoes. Closer to potato pancakes maybe than classic hash browns but just crispy wonderfulness. Everyone else gave thumbs up to their choices (grilled chicken sandwich & fries, grits bowl, andouille & chiles benedict) although we all agreed that we wished they had the lunch menu available. And, in fact, they may. If you ask for it. As we were finishing up our meal we saw another table looking at the lunch menu. Since we all live in Durham but work elsewhere around the Triangle, it'll be a long time before any of us get to try the pastrami reuben if they restrict the lunch menu to weekdays only.
UPDATE: I'm taking down my paragraph about some service issues we had and instead linking to Sarah's write-up. We were writing at the same time in different rooms and I don't want to seem like piling on a restaurant that I overall liked. Plus, her post will be updated later this evening with a response from Watts Grocery. For a number of reasons, funnystrange.com has way more internets snazz than my site and her write-up was on page 2 for a google search on Watts Grocery, as of this morning.