One of Chapel Hill’s best new restaurants is launching a summer sandwich pop-up
One of Chapel Hill’s best new restaurants is spending the weekend thinking about sandwiches.
The somewhat Italian restaurant Bombolo will host a sandwich pop-up at noon Saturday and Sunday at its space at 764 MLK Jr. Blvd. in Chapel Hill.
The pop-up is called The Plump Rabbit and plans to serve seven sandwiches, plus scoops of ice cream.
Bombolo is owned by brother and sister chef Garret Fleming and Eleanor Lacy. The nightly dinner menu is built around plates of fresh pasta, but just about anything could find its way into the the lineup of dishes, from New Orleans-style barbecue shrimp, to fried chicken to tagliatelle tossed with crab and chanterelles.
So perhaps it was just a matter of time until sandwiches happened.
“Sandwiches are one of my favorite ways to eat,” Fleming said. “Bombolo had a good first year, we have our team in place. It’s hard to make the voices go away (to do something else).”
The opening menu includes an oyster po boy with fried oysters on top a bed of creamed chard and mascarpone. There’s one with braised beef cheeks and kimchi and a poached tuna with artichokes, fennell and red wine vinaigrette, which Fleming suggests as a top hangover cure.
Fleming said the po boy was inspired by a creamed collard dish he encountered in New Orleans and that beef cheeks and kimchi recalled an eye-opening wine tasting 20 years ago as a student at the Culinary Institute of America.
“There are no happy accidents on the menu,” Fleming said. “All the sandwiches remark upon a certain point in my life.”
The Plump Rabbit plans to exist as a regular weekend pop-up. Next week it will appear at Cheeni in Durham, the acclaimed restaurant of James Beard nominee Preeti Waas. Sundays will continue to be at Bombolo.
The sandwiches will range in price from $16 to $20.
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