The City of Raleigh is accepting nominations for the 2010 Sir Walter Raleigh Awards for Community Appearance. The annual awards recognize outstanding new development, building rehabilitation efforts, and natural resource conservation within the Capital City. The awards program was established in 1983 to commemorate exemplary achievement in enhancing the city’s appearance. More than 200 projects, sites, and individuals have been honored.

Awards are offered in 11 different award categories, including new residential, commercial, or institutional construction, plus historic preservation, sustainable design, and tree and landscape conservation. The award for “Maintained Outstanding Appearance” honors appearance contributions by projects 5 years old or older. The “Individual” award is presented to a citizen who has consistently worked to preserve or improve city appearance.

The deadline for entries for the 2010 Sir Walter Raleigh Awards is Friday, July 9. Nominations for the can be made online at or by completing a printed form available at City government offices. In addition to project information, six or more digital photos of each nominated project or individual, submitted on CD or flash drive, are also required.

An independent jury will meet in July to review the nominations. Award winners will be selected based on specific criteria, including exhibition of a new standard of excellence, awareness of land stewardship, innovation, conservation of natural and/ or historic resources, and exceeding applicable ordinances. The Raleigh City Council will confirm the jury’s selections in August. Awards will be presented in October.

It is extremely hard to contain myself with TBJ’s news of North Carolina’s first location for The Container Store Coming to Raleigh. The chain’s 49’th store will take the vacant Circuit City store across from Crabtree. The store will open in mid-October.

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Varsity Mens Wear, one of the only remaining non-anchor tenants in its original space in Crabtree Valley Mall, is closing up shop and moving to North Hills East in the space next to Charlotte’s. (That sure is close to Lile’s) Hopefully they will bring back the tartan carpet!! (not likely)

I am certainly more out of touch with Crabtree than ever, but I can only think of Hudson Belk, Kanki, Merle Norman, and the Hallmark store as being the only remaining original tenants in their original spaces. Is there one I’m missing?

Tucked behind Crabtree Valley Mall is a free-standing restaurant site which almost clicked in two previous incarnations. Owners of the former Tavola Rossa converted the restaurant to the Crabtree Tavern hoping that the third would be the charm. The Crabtree Tavern is a sports-themed restaurant with an upscale tavern menu.

Diners who frequented the belated Cactus Flower and Tavola Rossa restaurants will be surprised at the amount of renovation that went into the Crabtree Tavern. Gone are the numerous level changes throughout the restaurant, as is the carpet (replaced with a black and white tile floor). The bar area now sits in the former dining room, opening the P-shaped restaurant as one large cohesive room. A plethora of TVs hang throughout the restaurant, and offer diners (especially on Sunday) a chance to get a view of all of the televised games. Excellent music from a satellite service creates a nice noise foundation. However all of that is destroyed when an internet jukebox goes to work, overwhelming the experience at stomach-churning volumes.

The Tavern’s dinner menu (.pdf) selection is excellent. There are numerous appetizers that are perfect for community feeding, including the excellent beef brisket nachos. Higher quality tortilla chips would take this dish to the forefront of the Raleigh "nacho scene". To be avoided is the chili, which pales to Wendy’s and Sweet Tomatoes’ average offerings.

A popular item in the bar is the Beer Tower, a 3’ tall test tube holding almost two pitchers of draft beer. To keep the tower cold the bartender drops in a frozen, non-melting ice torpedo. The towers are priced in the $20-$25 range.

There is a fascinating selection of burgers, all offered on homemade buns. We tried the excellent Mountaineer which creatively marries a smoked tomato slice with barbecue sauce and goat cheese on a solid hamburger patty. Also good, but not as interesting as it sounds, is the Down Home Southern Burger. It features fried green tomato, county ham, pimento cheese, and mustard aioli. For some reason, though, the interesting ingredients get dominated by the beef flavor. We had good buns on one night, but on two other occasions the bread was noticeably firm.

The Entrees section of the menu is where the tavern has a real chance to make some noise in West Raleigh. I tried both the Shepherd’s Pie and the Chicken Pot Pie, and both were outstanding. The Shepherd’s Pie has a nice kick of ground lamb flavor, while the pot pie is extremely well blended, and stands as the best item on the menu.

We also tried the BBQ Brisket sandwich which was very good, but probably not better than the Q-Shack’s.

Where the Crabtree Tavern gets a failing grade is with the kitchen’s efficiency. I have dined in the restaurant three times now and it took 30, 40, and 45 minutes for our entrees to reach our table. With dining times climbing to one and a half hours for fairly simple food, I have to wonder how many diners are eager to return.

Crabtree Tavern has a very good chance to finally bring West Raleigh what it misses most: a reasonably priced, fairly quick restaurant that appeals to a broad range of palates. Ever since General Mills began screwing up Darryl’s, there has been a tremendous void. With the tavern’s location near the RBC Center and on Crabtree’s doorstep, a little bit of efficiency can take this restaurant where it wants to go. The question is whether or not they can step up to the plate.

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Golden Corral is currently working out plans to raze and replace their store on Glenwood Avenue (across from Pleasant Valley Promenade). The Raleigh-based chain with around 500 stores nationally will replace the building with a new Golden Corral concept design they call “The Pavilion”. The concept features home-style cooking. Unlike the current open-a-can approach, though, the Pavilion concept puts a heavy emphasis on freshly-cooked, labor-intensive food. There will be “food stations, display cooking, and fresh food preparation” according to franchising.com. The restaurant has rolled out about six of these stores nationally. However if the concept is successful, the sites in Mini City and Garner are penciled in for replacement.

The location will continue to be a training site, with the company headquarters located at the base of the Glenwood Avenue hill, in the shadows of Crabtree Valley Mall.

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I ran across this sign yesterday and it looks like someone wants to build a large, mixed-use project high on the hill between I-440 and Crabtree at Glenwood.

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The owners of Tavola Rossa, the free-standing restaurant across the creek from the back of Hudson Belk, have converted the restaurant to the Crabtree Tavern. The new restaurant features a family-friendly sports bar theme with upscale food.

The chef, Aron Cremeans, comes from Restaurant Bateux in Beaufort, SC, and most recently Vines Bistro in Cary. The dinner menu (.pdf) features standard upscale tavern fare, but has enough range to be potentially a regular favorite. Prices are in the $8-$17 range, which is a price point for which this area, in this economy, is dying.

The restaurant will also host trivia each Tuesday (beginning 1/5) as well as competitions with Playstation and cornhole (I’m afraid to ask).

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Well, it seems that one store in Crabtree hasn’t forgotten about Thanksgiving! LEGO will be holding their Monthly Mini Build on Tuesday at 5pm. This month’s project is a Thanksgiving turkey. This looks like about a 20-piece project that the kids will love assembling.

The former location of Le Garlic Bistro is now home to A/J’s New York Eatery. The food court restaurant’s menu features deli sandwiches made with Boar’s Head meats including ham, turkey, roast beef, pastrami, corned beef, and others. Additionally they serve breakfast sandwiches, hot dogs, cheeseburgers, homemade salads, and cold cuts by the pound. Hopefully it will be a good enough addition (to an already strong food court) to push out Subway.