For more than 20 years, Claire Calvin has been a Texan living abroad, which is how Texans think about living anywhere that’s not Texas.
When she and her family opened their first restaurant, The Porch in Winston-Salem, she built a menu around the food she missed the most— the tacos and queso and flautas of Tex Mex cuisine. It’s been a Winston staple for more than a decade, leading to two other restaurants and a reputation for excellent margaritas.
East of Texas, Calvin’s Texas barbecue restaurant, opened this week in Durham’s American Tobacco Campus, an expansion of the smoky, Texas-style spot that opened in Winston in 2023. That same year, The News & Observer included it in a list of 64 restaurants defining what North Carolina barbecue means right now.
East of Texas menu
First and foremost, East of Texas is unabashedly Texan, from Willie Nelson and Beyoncé murals on the wall, to brisket getting top billing on the barbecue menu…