Bull Durham Bar — Restaurant in Durham

Bull Durham Bar is a good place to stop in for a drink and/or more casual lunch, if you can deal with it being a little stuffy at times. In the warmer months the outside patio is awesome.

I have eaten here many times and most of the food is quite good, although the portions are sometimes hard to gauge. Shrimp and grits, for instance, is delicious and comes in many styles depending on when you happen to come in, but on occasion you will end up with three shrimp and a few spoonfuls of grits and that's it. Other meals (most recently, a delicious mahi-mahi BLT with jalapeno bacon) will fill you up before you get 3/4 of the way through.

Service can also be hit or miss. Most of the time wait staff is polite and helpful. However, as a young (under 30) guest, I at times felt like they were exasperated with my presence when they would rather serve the big-tipping older members. I always tip 20 percent as a baseline, so it's not like they are reacting to my behavior on this. I can recall one time when the waitstaff argued with my friend over what she had ordered. I believe she asked for an irish coffee and instead received some kind of kahlua drink. Kinda weird, maybe a miscommunication, but could have been handled better.

Also, it should be noted that things are a little pricey for the Durham area, but about what you would expect at a country club...

My wife and I both had Shrimp and Grits and we both got stomach pain and severe diarrhea within 2 hours of the meal. For more than a decade, we have enjoyed numerous outings to the Washington Duke Inn, this is an outing that we regret. Pity. I have always enjoyed the shrimp and grits, especially as the recipe varies but has, until now, never disappointed. We tried to contact the restaurant, the bar and the hotel to warn them of the tainted shrimp (perhaps due to toxins from warm water algae blooms) but, as far as I can tell, there is no way to talk to a human using the phone numbers published online (literally no options to transfer to a human - just a long monologue...

From the moment we walked in and were not assisted in finding open seating despite multiple service people standing around. I ordered a cheese board and the steak frites. Three pieces of cheese total.

The steak was under and cold along with my fries. I requested they reheat it and Aracely’s our waitress was quite rude. She remained short for the remainder of my meal and my food came out once again under and lukewarm fries. I sent it back.

The overall experience from entering the hotel to the restaurant was very unimpressive and underwhelming. My suggestion skip this and go elsewhere.

As for the staff hire...