North Carolina winters pair perfectly with fresh, delicious soups. From chicken and rice to hearty French onion soup and every type in between, a steamy bowl of soup warms you up from the inside out. I love making soup at home, but I tend to make the same recipes repeatedly. Visiting local soup and sandwich shops is a great way to bust out of a rut and try something new. Toast on Main Street in downtown Durham, North Carolina, is a neighborhood restaurant with dazzling soups and much more.
Toast has served mouthwatering food made from high-quality ingredients since 2008. The team at Toast takes sourcing very seriously, procuring ingredients from local bakers and farmers. They also make their condiments, which pair well with the Italian meats and cheeses piled high on their sandwiches.
Toast’s homemade soups include spicy lentil soup, chicken and rice soup, cauliflower soup with brown butter, and chicken noodle soup. The types of soups featured continually change and are served in a cup or bowl. The menu also includes several panini, served hot on hearty Italian bread. The spicy tuna panini with olivada, fennel, and lemon sounds incredible, but so does the three-cheese panini with grana padano, asiago fresca, and pecorino cheeses. Toast also serves salads and sweets, like lemon blueberry pound cake and crostini, such as crostini, topped with warm goat cheese, local honey, and black pepper. Yum!
Customers can purchase ready-made food to take home, including dressings, soups, salads, meatballs, pasta sauces, baked lasagnas, and more. Toast also runs Soup Society, an effort to prepare tasty soups from around the world for local soup enthusiasts to purchase chilled or frozen. Having a quart of flavorful, hearty soup in the fridge ready to go sounds like a great idea.
Durham is a lively city with about 280,000 residents and countless things to do and see. The Sarah P. Duke Gardens is a stunning botanical garden on Duke University’s campus that is free to visit. Eno River State Park is a 4,500-acre park that offers opportunities to hike, fish, camp, and picnic. Durham also has an indoor adventure park, OC Aerial, where visitors can climb, work through a ropes course, zipline, and more. And if you’re looking for more things to do in the winter in NC, check out our itinerary planner for recommendations!…