In the spirit of gaining new insights to the best restaurants and bars in Chapel Hill, residents crowded the downtown FRANK Gallery for a book launch party on Monday.
Customers gathered to buy the 2013 Chapel Hill Food Lover’s Guide with Carrboro and Hillsborough, the latest edition for local foodies.
The book differs from the food guide that the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce publishes every year. It includes more than 100 pages showcasing restaurants, bars, farmers markets and recipes from around Orange County.
Author Moreton Neal and illustrator Laura Frankstone gave crowd-pleasing speeches about their experiences and spent the night signing their book.
Neal and Frankstone are longtime friends who collaborated to create the 2013 guide.
They visited local restaurants and breweries, discovering the best food and wine in the area.
“It was a lot of fun. I got to eat my way around the county,” Neal said.
They said their job was made easy by the many locations in the county whose originality helped make restaurants the number one expenditure by visitors.
“It was a labor of love,” Frankstone said.
Frankstone and Neal wrote the first edition of the guide in 2009 after being inspired by the similarly named Food Lover’s Guide to Paris.
Noticeable changes have been made since the last edition. The book now includes three new Indian restaurants and, for the first time, local bars.
The Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau published the book in order to promote food, farms and the sustainable culture of Orange County.
“This guide is unique because it is 100 pages free of advertisements,” said Laurie Paolicelli, executive director of the Vistors Bureau. “The book is a pure overview of our heritage.”
The event, which included sea drumming and jazz performances, lasted two hours.
UNC senior Colleen Rice received the 2009 edition as a gift years ago. She said the book comes in handy when she has friends visiting.
The book can be purchased for $10 at the Visitors Center, and will be sold at select restaurants and locations in the Triangle area.
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