Here’s how their press release describes the food:

Lunch and dinner at South begins with warm bacon-cheddar biscuits and hushpuppies. Starters ($6 – $10) range from Lump Crab Cakes with sweet corn relish to Grilled Quail with a Stone Ground Grit Cake and apple slaw. With a nod to the Jennings’ tenure in the Lowcountry, Sabo offers a Charleston style She Crab Bisque with a crispy crab fritter. Entrees ($14 – $21) include Country Fried Steak, Braised Pork Shoulder & Fresh Bacon, Carolina Shrimp & Grits, Frogmore Stew, and a gracious plenty of sides ($3) that will encourage even the carnivore to build their own vegetable plate of Collards, Pole Beans and Mac & Cheese. No Southern meal would be complete without a sweet; Pastry Chef Eric Akbari tempts us with updated classics in his Blueberry Cobbler and cosmopolitan take on Coconut Cream Pie ($7 – $8), though the Peanut Butter & Banana Montecristo is an original, and not to be missed.

Bar side, guests will wash down complimentary pork rinds with cocktails that tell Southern tales – Mint Juleps served in traditional silver tumblers and an artisan bourbon flight showcasing the best from Kentucky. South’s wine list speaks of the South as well, showcasing wines from North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and Alabama, and throughout the United States. 15 wines will be available by the glass, and 100 by the bottle.

I personally am very happy they are keeping the Southern theme started by Restaurant Savannah and can’t wait to experience Chef Sabo’s interpretations.

Our regular readers know we here at Raleighing are big fans of all of Kevin and Stacy Jennings’ restaurants (New Years at Vivace was fantastic!) so we’re going to be intently focused on this one.

P.S. After their reopening, they will honor Restaurant Savannah gift cards.

A couple of years ago, as the new North Hills (fuschia) was reopening, the property across Six Forks Road caught my eye. I saw an outdated bank building, a tiny motel, a closed Bennigan’s, an outdated office mall, and a non-descript glassy office building. Behind that was a large set of low-rise apartment buildings that had seen better days and a street that meandered without a purpose. I thought,"Wouldn’t it be cool to expand this North Hills idea across the street where more substantial buildings could go in?"

I returned from my only Las Vegas visit thoroughly impressed with the Bellagio hotel and its dancing fountains. It seemed a crescent-shaped building with an italian flair, like the Bellagio, could go in the place of the North Hills office plaza (yellow). On the building’s east side would be an elliptical pool with dancing waters (blue), much like the Bellagio’s but to a far smaller scale. Also like that hotel, the building could gracefully step downward with restaurants perched overlooking the water. To the east of the waters, the newly aligned St. Alban’s Drive (brown line) could cut through at its current elevation. The water plaza would be one story above the street, disconnecting pedestrians from the vehicular thoroughfare.

To the east of St. Albans would be three blocks of shopping village (purple), each with parking decks flanking to the exterior. To the south the project could house a big box retailer like a much-needed Home Depot as well as a large parking garage (orange). Graduating away from the retail mall would be various housing (pink) including a 3-sided condo tower, stand-alone housing, row houses like those on Capitol Hill in Washington, and condominiums. A park also could fit in on the south side of the project.

Cars would access the project from a newly aligned Dartmouth Street segment called "St Alban’s". It would proceed downhill from Six Forks as it currently does, however it would curve to the right and pass through the development as if it were a bypass road. Camelot Drive would intersect the curving St. Alban’s at an intersection after receiving Dartmouth Drive. This intersection could be an interesting residential corner. The project would be connected to the New North Hills via a pedestrian bridge or a tram.

The idea here is to develop Phase II of a master new-urbanist development that begins at North Hills and continues all the way to Atlantic Avenue. Shopping centers and existing office and residential areas could be redeveloped to a confluent, walkable area that would eventually reach a TTA transit station. The village could have its own free transit circulation to tie different phases together, and a pedestrian and/or bus transit-only bridge over I-440  halfway between Six Forks Road and Wake Forest Road could connect the north  and the south portions.

Just after throwing my ideas for this Phase II on paper we got the opportunity to move into a fantastic house down the street. I got buried in moving chores and never bothered to drop my plans off in John Kane’s mailbox (like I did with my original North Hills plan). Nine months later (one year ago from now) Kane announced plans to build North Hills East. His plans look different from mine, but are nonetheless an exciting addition to work well done so far.

map it

The restaurant has locations in Durham (Bull City Market), Cary (Shoppes of Kildaire), Apex (Haddon Hall Commons), and Wakefield (Wakefield Commons). They are not affiliated with the Six Forks Rd. Ristorante Cinelli.

According to their lunch menu, the restuarant serves lunch until 3pm Monday-Friday. The dinner menu mentions that they will have home delivery service soon.

The City Council today approved the master plan for the North Hills East development. The site directly across Six Forks Road from North Hills will contain a retirement community, 1,800 residential units, 850 hotel rooms, over 500,000 square feet of retail space, and 1.3million square feet of office space.

The meeting revealed some interesting notes. The City Council seems overwhelmingly impressed by developer John Kane’s work with North Hills, even though its hotel project is still in limbo (might a bigger, better hotel plan be in the works for NHE instead of one at North Hills?) Both Mayor Charles Meeker and Councilor Thomas Crowder stated how impressed they are with the North Hills redevelopment. The mayor even went so far as to call North Hills, "North Hills West" – (in my humple opinion) implying an assumption that NHE will be built as planned.

What is absolutely shocking is the plan’s request of zoning approval for buildings along Six Forks Road up to…365 feet! That’s the equivalent of 30-stories, and it is absolutely unfathomable that the planning commission and city council of just 3 years ago denied the proposed 10-story buildings that would have lined the Six Forks Road edge of North Hills.

What’s happened in this city? In just a few years we’ve gone from neighborhood groups shredding Neil Coker’s dense infill ideas to possibly approving something drastically bigger and denser. Russ Stephenson was one of the most vocal "Coker Towers" opponents, yet today, sits on the city council and voted for NHE without verbal reservation. Just a few years ago, North Hills’ resident neighbors to the east were counting birds and documenting nature in the plaza buffer in their last ditch effort to squash Kane’s original plan. Today the NHE project, after having been clearly explained to potential neighbors , has been very well received. Mr. Kane even got a standing ovation at a recent CAC meeting. Amazing.

Have we learned that dense infill can work? Are we full of regret after seeing what eventually sprung up on Coker’s old site? Has the momentum of downtown’s revitalization made those in the burbs want a more urban environment in their own backyards? Has the design of Streets of Southpointe opened people’s eyes about outdoor, walkable retail? Just what is going on?

There will be an enormous traffic impact by the project on I-440, Six Forks Road, and Wake Forest Roads. Raleigh’s Planning Director Mitchell Silver carefully explained that worst-case scenarios have been considered and found to not overwhelm the existing street network. There was a small amount of talk about future mass transit integration into the NHE project. Mr. Kane proclaimed his desire for the North Hills to one day have a transit stop (that is if the TTA can ever get its act together).

To be fair, Mr. Kane was present and explained that he and his team are "just asking for maximums" and have not yet determined the exact market. There has been talk of buildings probably being somewhere in the 15-ish story neighborhood, but this is unprecedented leeway given by this city council. The typical pattern in Raleigh has been to ask for more and build smaller, however some recent projects have actually flowed in reverse.

Only Councilor Thomas Crowder voted against the NHE plan citing concerns about the height given a lack of comprehensive planning for transportation, and uncertainty for how dense we want our regional centers. Mayor Meeker immediately retorted that while he is concerned about 365 feet, Meeker feels that given Mr. Kane’s track record, he will
"figure out how to use this flexibility in a good way".

The much-discussed Soleil Center at Crabtree is shooting high, very high. We hear that the developers are beating the doors down trying to get a celebrity chef restaurant. That’s right; if they had it their way, there will be a restaurant by Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay, or the like. Whether or not we rank up there with the cities that have celeb chef restaurants remains to be seen. We can’t fault the developers for trying, though.

Just up the beltline, North Hills sits as the nearly finished product of high aspirations. The original plans for the project included a 240-room Renaissance hotel (by Marriott). The hotel plans were later downsized to 229 rooms as the Gold’s Gym pool was upgraded to satisfy Renaissance’s demands. The 4-star hotel’s groundbreaking has been pushed back numerous times; June being the most recent. With the North Hills project approaching its second birthday, curious minds want to know why a gravel and weed garden sits in the middle of a burgeoning retail district.

One rumor we heard earlier this year was that Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse would be brought in as the hotel’s signature restaurant. Nothing solid has developed yet and Kane Realty will neither confirm nor deny this plan. However we are now hearing from a few sources that the Renaissance deal may not happen at all and that the hotel will have to be operated under another flagship chain name.

I don’t know if this is true or not, but I would hate to see an aspiring project like North Hills having to settle for something like a Hampton Inn, for instance. I distinctly recall my first impression with Charlotte’s Phillips Place,"You mean with all of this they could only reel in a Hampton Inn?"

Several things about be at work here. Perhaps slow rentals in the Alexan have complicated the financial picture for the Renaissance’s development. Perhaps Kane Realty is waiting for the City of Raleigh’s decision regarding Kane’s special funding request for the development of North Hills East. Perhaps Renaissance is waiting for one of the other luxury hotels planned in Raleigh to balk. So far only Cary’s 5-star Umstead is actually being built. Construction on the convention center Marriott has not actually begun. The planned 20 stories of Westin Hotel at the Soleil center remain to actually be built.

Whatever the matter is Kane Realty is being suspiciously mum, but it is our sincere desire to see North Hills completed with its planned Renaissance Hotel. Raleigh is embarrassingly short on quality hotel experiences. While the planned burst in supply might make developers nervous, the demand still exceeds their plans.