Raleigh’s oldest restaurant returns for the first time in 2 years with comfort food
The Mecca, the downtown Raleigh diner and the city’s oldest restaurant, is back.
For the first time since the start of the pandemic, The Mecca has reopened its doors for breakfast and lunch service starting Tuesday.
The Mecca is now in its 92nd year.
“We’re excited to have it back open,” said owner Greg Hatem. “And we’re glad to do it in May, that’s the birthday.”
Hatem said the prolonged hiatus began as a pandemic precaution and extended as the restaurant struggled to build a full staff of workers.
“We waited and took our time and now have the capacity to be able to open,” Hatem said. “It’s just so hard to find people right now.”
A downtown institution
The Mecca opened in 1930 and was owned and operated by the Dombalis family for decades. The restaurant, with dark-stained wooden booths and a classic bar, became an institution in Raleigh, serving staples of Southern food to the city’s power brokers, politicians, lawyers and downtown workers.
Hatem, a long-time Mecca fan whose other restaurants include The Pit and Raleigh Times, bought The Mecca in 2018.
“It’s just simple and true,” Hatem said. “There’s nothing tricky about it. I think it’s OK to have simple comfort food; it’s nice to go some place that feels comfortable to eat. We all need some of that right now.”
A plate of fried chicken or maybe a breakfast platter with two runny eggs are part of that comfort, but Hatem said a familiar barstool or booth can mean a lot more.
“We all need some of that (comfort),” Hatem said. “It’s been a hard couple years for people so it means a lot to see the joy on people’s faces. It’s not that we’re declaring the pandemic over, we’re starting to turn the other cheek and move forward.”
As he pledged when he bought, very little will be different about The Mecca as diners returns from the long hiatus, Hatem said. The menu will be the same, with only weekend brunch specials as potential flourishes of creativity. Look for pancake and waffle features and omelets on the weekends.
Eagle Scout fundraiser
Over the past year, the restaurant has opened for a few one-day services, what Hatem called “pump fakes,” including an Eagle Scout fundraiser for his son. Those services were useful, Hatem said.
“We learned a lot,” Hatem said. “We learned we could still cook the food. We rediscovered people had this connection to The Mecca. That it’s still relevant, it’s really a part of the community.”
That downtown Raleigh community continues to recover from the worst moments of the pandemic, where most office workers were sent home and restaurants converted to takeout. The downtown blocks have still not returned to what they were, but Hatem remains hopeful.
“It feels like it hasn’t had its morning coffee,” Hatem said of downtown Raleigh. “It’s there, it’s moving. It just needs a little push. ... It’s not dead, it’s just a little sleepy.”
