The bar purrs. Ice rattles against a shaker, keeping rough time with the lo-fi blues spilling from the speakers. Around the room, conversations hum like bumblebees, floating over the clink and chime of glasses and silverware.

At Nanas, time hangs suspended between past and present. There’s the decor — a contemporary homage to mid-century glamour and Ralph Lauren’s classic vision of American style. The menu — a mingling of familiar and reinterpreted classics. And the name — a celebration of grandmothers everywhere.

Chefs Nate Garyantes (left) and Matt Kelly. photograph by Anna Routh Barzin

For more than 25 years, under the ownership of Chef Scott Howell, the restaurant stood out as a bright star in Durham’s dining cosmos — until it closed, seemingly for good, in 2020. But one veteran of the Durham dining scene couldn’t bear to see it go. When Chef Matt Kelly resurrected the restaurant in 2023 with partner Chef Nate Garyantes, they zeroed in on what made it so special: “We want Nanas to feel like the neighborhood’s living room,” Kelly says.

And like any good living room, it’s comfortable. Comforting. It feels like home.

• • •

The shady streets of Durham’s Rockwood neighborhood haven’t changed much since Howell landed here in 1992, ready at age 29 to move on from the itinerant chef’s life and settle into his own kitchen. An Asheville native and Appalachian State alumnus, he’d spent years training at the Culinary Institute of America and working for famous chefs in New York, Italy, and Los Angeles before he was called home. Ben Barker, owner of Durham’s legendary Magnolia Grill, was on the line, offering Howell a position as sous chef.

After an 18-month tenure at Magnolia Grill, Howell struck out on his own, the vision of what would become Nana’s clear in his mind: fresh, local food and attentive, knowledgeable service. It wasn’t easy. The concept would make Nana’s an outlier in Durham, where most fine dining was, according to Howell, stuffy: steaks and twice-baked potatoes, an airline chicken breast, prime rib carved thick on Saturday nights. He persisted, couch surfing and purchasing the liquor for Nana’s bar on the maître d’s credit card.

Certain touches at Nanas pay homage to the restaurant’s legacy. The menu combines new dishes, like Garyantes’s scallop Milanese, with classics familiar to longtime Durhamites. photograph by Anna Routh Barzin

Howell’s efforts paid off. Months after Nana’s opened in 1993, Esquire included it in a list of best new restaurants, calling it “a perfect example [of how] regional American Food, sensibly influenced by nontraditional flavors, is unbeatable when it comes to gastronomic satisfaction.” The James Beard Foundation came knocking next, with eight consecutive semifinalist nods for Best Chef: Southeast.

As the years ticked by and the calendar turned to 2018, Howell had his eye on the exit. Decades in the kitchen, the exhausting creative grind, rising expenses, and the aftermath of a near-fatal accident — a 1,200-pound grill fell and shattered his leg — had grown burdensome. He knew it was time to pursue other projects.

Word got out. The community responded. Chefs lauded Howell’s vision and impact on Durham’s culinary culture. Diners lamented the loss of their favorite spot and filled reservation books in a flash. That spring, a 200-person-strong contingent of chefs and former employees feted Howell. He sat for interviews, talking about his past career and future direction.

When Garyantes and Kelly reopened the restaurant, they dropped the apostrophe from the name and gave the 30-year-old restaurant a brand-new look. photograph by Anna Routh Barzin

“I got to live my dream,” he told the Raleigh News & Observer. As he spoke, his voice was heavy and tears gleamed in his eyes.

That wasn’t the final act for Nana’s. Howell reopened the restaurant after nine months away, but less than a year later, facing the growing global pandemic that was already reshaping the restaurant industry, he closed the doors for a final time. But he got to live his dream.

Dreams, especially those as impactful as Nana’s, don’t die easily.

“Nana’s was everything I admired and worshiped,” Kelly says now. “I wouldn’t be cooking in this town if not for Nana’s.”

In 2022, Kelly stepped in with an offer to purchase the restaurant. Howell accepted.

The warm buttermilk dinner rolls are a soft and delicate bite, flavored with cultured butter and flaky sea salt. photograph by Anna Routh Barzin

Few others had the culinary or business chops to revive Nana’s and keep it at the top of the city’s now-robust food scene, but Kelly was ready. Since beginning work at the French restaurant Vin Rouge in 2002, he’d become a driving force in building Durham’s reputation as a dining destination, taking the helm at beloved restaurants like Mateo Bar de Tapas and Saint James Seafood. His work had earned him James Beard Best Chef: Southeast semifinalist honors four times. Kelly was perfectly positioned to carry on Nana’s name, but with a change: no apostrophe. Under his hand, Nanas would honor the legacy and love of all grandmothers.

He and his business partner Garyantes, chef de cuisine at Nanas, take their role as stewards seriously. “This restaurant is a legend, a legacy,” Garyantes says, “and we get to carry that on.”

• • •

Howell described his original vision for Nana’s as “[coming] out of the ’80s, when food became important.” Under Kelly’s guidance, the cuisine and decor have evolved. Step through the door at the reimagined Nanas, and you’ve arrived at some otherwhere, some otherwhen.

Emerald tiles climb the walls, mingling with dark wood trim and brass accents, creating an effect reminiscent of a forest. A plush orange bench, bright as a prized clutch of chanterelles rendered in velvet, invites you to sit. But if you do, you may be late for your reservation, so you make your way to the host station.

At Nanas, the cozy bar area is both comfortable and sophisticated, making it an ideal gathering place for residents of the surrounding Rockwood neighborhood. photograph by Anna Routh Barzin

There, you get your first peek at the dining room and lounge-like bar. Plaid carpet — based on a plaid shirt Kelly often wears — leads to and through the dining room, softening footfalls and absorbing the noise of the restaurant, but also pulling colors from the tobacco-leaf tabletops bound in bright brass, the caramel leather banquettes, and the dark, rattan-backed chairs with plush cushions.

A dozen other details go unnoted but not unnoticed. Instead, they take root in diners, ease them deeper into their seats and camaraderie, and set the stage for a meal as thoughtfully crafted as the space.

“Design and comfort were huge drivers for us,” Kelly says. “We can create a sense of discovery in our guests as they move through the restaurant to their seat.”

Vintage accents, from tiled walls to vintage wood trim around the bar, set the stage for a dining experience at Nanas. photograph by Anna Routh Barzin

No easy feat for Nanas, where any given night sees diners loyal for a generation or more walk through the door. So when Kelly and Garyantes took over in 2022, they spent more than a year on the design, buildout, and concept. The result is a restaurant space and menu that make guests feel they belong, as comfortable for your grandmother as your 20-something cousin. Both would rave about the meal and how cool the place feels.

“We were purposeful with our design, building in unobtrusive sound-dampening elements like the carpet in the dining room — what says ‘Grandma’s house’ more than carpet in the dining room? — and baffles hidden away in the ceiling,” Kelly says.

Why go the extra mile?

“Because,” he says, “conversation and fellowship over delicious food is the cornerstone of our vision.”

• • •

If the design sets the stage, dinner seals the deal. In the same way the space hangs between vintage-chic and modern masterpiece, so, too, does the menu.

“Cooking at Vin Rouge, it crystallized for me that restaurants serve one guest, one plate at a time,” Kelly says. “When Nate and I were creating the menu here, we asked ourselves what plates from that Nana’s belong in this Nanas.”

Several dishes remain, like the decadent chicken liver mousse, the deeply flavored shrimp risotto, the chicken roasted in a cast-iron pan. Following Ben Barker’s recipe from the now-shuttered Magnolia Grill, grits, humble and homey, get an indulgent makeover as a sky-high soufflé laced with chanterelles and foie gras. Desserts like crème brûlée and a banana pudding bombe, recognizable on the plate and the palate, get glow-ups that don’t overshadow the originals.

Other dishes are new. Garyantes, a veteran of bold, experimental kitchens, delivers a delicious bite in the scallop Milanese, a love letter to North Carolina from Italy. Succulent bay scallops surround a pair of fried scallops; an intense beurre fondue brings each bite together. The rye tagliatelle, rich in flavor and texture, comes with an avalanche of duck cracklin’ crumbs and a silky duck ragout. For dessert, the hot chocolate soufflé — a thing of beauty even before the server pours piping hot fudge over the top — draws the envious eyes of everyone around.

Good things take time: The hot chocolate soufflé — served with bourbon-caramel ice cream and hot fudge, naturally — takes about 20 minutes to prepare, but it’s worth the wait. photograph by Anna Routh Barzin

The menu may make you weep tears of joy, but it’s the people who keep you coming back. Hospitality here — as with all of Kelly’s restaurants — is impeccable, as rare in today’s world of fast-casual dining as it was in Howell’s day, when such service existed mostly in the rarified air of the local country clubs.

Servers know the menu front and back, of course, but they also know how to read a table and pace a meal accordingly. When diners linger over cocktails, their server might stretch time, giving them a few more moments of conversation. Unsure what to order? With a few probing questions and careful observations, the waitstaff offers gentle guidance.

“Everyone in this restaurant is intentional with what they do,” Kelly says. “Together, we curate an experience for the diners.”

In a region that’s rapidly changing, Nanas is a touchstone, striking a balance between old and new. Whether it’s paying homage to Durham’s tobacco-stained history, serving beloved dishes from the past, or reinvigorating classics and inspiring the city’s next great chef, Nanas is more than a restaurant. It’s a legacy.

Nanas
2514 University Drive
Durham, NC 27707
(919) 251-8213
nanasrockwood.com