Inside the Angus Barn’s red barn walls off U.S. 70 in Raleigh, Van Eure and her team have spent the better part of a month turning dining rooms, lounges and outdoor spaces into a full-blown Christmas wonderland, and by Sunday the work was nearly finished. “We started October 1st, and we’re just almost done,” Eure said, with roughly a day of decorating left to go.
The scale of the undertaking is hard to overstate. According to ABC11, Eure and her team spend weeks transforming all the dining rooms, lounges and comfortable spaces inside and out, and she says the total number of lights and decorations used — counting everything outside the restaurant — reaches into the billions. The displays include themed rooms, moving reindeer, nutcrackers, decorative orbs, wreaths, bows and ribbons, turning the longtime steakhouse into something closer to a holiday attraction than a dinner reservation.
A New Room Honors the Barn’s Founding Generation
What’s different this year is a room dedicated entirely to Eure’s grandfather, Thad Eure. The space includes a large painting, family memorabilia, his law books and a framed letter addressed to him and signed by Winston Churchill, the station reports. It’s a tribute to the man whose signature, quite literally, made the restaurant possible.
Per the same ABC11 account, Thad Eure signed the note that allowed Van Eure’s father to borrow the money needed to get the Angus Barn off the ground. Thad Eure went on to serve as North Carolina’s secretary of state for 52 years, a tenure the station notes stands as the record for the longest-serving elected official in U.S. history. The Angus Barn itself opened on June 28, 1960, when, according to Angus Barn’s own history page, “the double doors of the now-fabled red barn swung wide, receiving the first guests of novice restaurateurs Thad Eure, Jr. and Charles Winston.” The restaurant is now owned and operated by Van Eure, Thad Eure Jr.’s daughter.
Family Touches Fill the Wine Cellar and Beyond
The grandfather’s room isn’t the only corner of the building carrying personal history. Van Eure also uses her late mother’s decorations throughout the restaurant, including in a wine cellar named in her mother’s honor and in the Wild Turkey Lounge, the station’s report notes. That blending of family memorabilia with holiday sparkle has become something of a signature for the Angus Barn’s seasonal transformation…