ORANGE SLICES
Guest Columnist
In Carrboro, a California dream became a Carolina institution — and now it’s ready for its next chapter.
There are your run-of-the-mill restaurants that sustain us with their food, and then there are places that quietly become part of who you are. The kind where the staff knows your order before you sit down, where even the salsa has a story, and where showing up on a Tuesday feels like coming home. Carrburritos, the beloved California-Mexican restaurant tucked into Carrboro, North Carolina, is that kind of place.
Its roots reach back to Oakland, California, where, through the 1980s and into the early ’90s, Bill and Gail Fairbanks ran the Mimosa Café — a lively, soulful spot the regulars called a “veggie jazz brunch place.” Bill drove a VW bus. The food was fresh, the ethos was warm, and people came back not just to eat but because it felt like theirs…