We haven’t had the opportunity to make it down to Chapel Hill’s Lantern Restaurant for a review yet but it has been on our radar screen for the past few months after reading about it in publications like Newsweek’s The Daily Beast or seeing their recipes featured in The Oprah Magazine or in the Wall Street Journal. It has consistently been listed as one of the best restaurants in North Carolina by multiple publications.
Chef Andrea Reusing, the head chef at Lantern Restaurant, has been pleasing restaurant goers at Lantern since 2002 when she and her brother, Brendan, opened the award winning restaurant. Reusing has been combining Asian flavors into farm-to-table North Carolina ingredients with dishes like the moon-viewing hotpot (homemade Anson Mills soba noodles with black trumpet mushrooms, fresh bamboo, local vegetables and a poached Fickle Creek Farm egg) or a steamed wild striped bass with seared ginger, scallions, fermented black beans, green chiles, steamed baby bok choy and jasmine rice. Reusing also recently published a cookbook, Cooking in the Moment, which focuses on using local, seasonal ingredients and is chock-full of healthy, doable recipes .
Yesterday, Reusing received the James Beard Foundation‘s Best Chef of the Southeast on Monday night. She is only one of three North Carolinians to have received a James Beard Foundation award which is an amazing honor and one of the top awards given out nationally in the food industry. We are lucky to have such a great chef in North Carolina and we hope to have a review up sometime very soon on Eat It, North Carolina.
On a similar note, Crook’s Corner (also in Chapel Hill) was awarded the America’s Classics Award by the James Beard Foundation. This award recognizes restaurants with timeless appeal beloved in their regions for quality food that reflects the character of their community.
View the full list of James Beard Foundation winners here. (PDF)
More From Eat It, North Carolina
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Just as an FYI, her name is Andrea, not Angela. Might wanna check your headline.
Thank you…I was watching some Office re-runs while I finished this one up and must have inadvertently typed Angela instead of Andrea! I appreciate the heads up!
Really enjoyed my meal at Lantern last year. I plan on going back when I make my work visit to NC in a few weeks. I should be in the area some time around June 8-9th.
If you go, let me know because I would love to join you down there. The menu looks outstanding…