The Waiting Room is one of the newest additions to Durham’s downtown nightlife scene
By Matthew Lardie | Photography by John Michael Simpson
Restaurants are generally meant to be destinations, a place to go, sit and stay awhile. The Waiting Room, a new cocktail lounge at American Tobacco Campus, flips that concept. Waiting rooms aren’t typically places that one lingers – they are stops in between, where you kill some time before your ultimate destination. The staff at The Waiting Room won’t be offended if you just pop in for a quick drink and then make your way to dinner – in fact, they’d encourage it.
The idea behind The Waiting Room was born out of its owners’ experiences with Durham’s fast-growing restaurant scene. Nick Singh, who also had a hand in opening Viceroy, was faced with customers who were wondering what to do as they waited for a table.
“I was trying to send customers to local bars hoping that they would come back and still do dinner with us,” Nick says. Sometimes they would, sometimes they wouldn’t. He and fellow Waiting Room co-owner Buddy Maynard realized there was space in Durham’s restaurant scene for a place folks could go while they waited on reservations or before a show at Durham Performing Arts Center or after getting out of a movie at the Carolina Theatre.
Thus, The Waiting Room was born. Plush couches and chairs surround low tables and window seats inside the narrow space. The bar takes up one side, and it’s here that Buddy and his team mix up cocktails like “Your Buddy,” their signature (and most popular) cocktail. A play on an old fashioned, this was one of the first cocktails Buddy created and served to Nick when the longtime friends started working together.
In keeping with the theme of being a stop along the way, The Waiting Room offers a menu of small bites designed to tide you over. The deviled eggs with chili crisp already have become something of a Bull City legend, and Nick and Buddy enlisted the help of their good friend Anu Patel of Raleigh Bakehouse to create the dessert offerings, where her innovative macarons are the stars.
This theme of working with friends is an important part of the ethos of The Waiting Room. Both Nick and Buddy were adamant when conceptualizing the space that it should feel as though they were inviting customers into their own homes. To that end, they enlisted the help of residential interior designer (and Nick’s sister-in-law) Mosmi Naik-Patel to design the interior.
“Buddy and I feel like The Waiting Room is an extension of our living rooms,” Nick says.
“The friends who would be at a house party at one of our houses are now our business partners,” Buddy adds.
Even residents of the Old Bull apartments above The Waiting Room have become contributors to the bar, with one resident furniture maker offering up cherry wood shavings from his projects that are then smoked as part of the Your Buddy cocktail.
The Waiting Room offers its patrons – whether they are there for a quick drink before dinner elsewhere or cozying up on a date – a chance to feel at home, no matter how long they choose to stay.
SEEING DOUBLE
In a coincidence almost too good to be true, The Waiting Room happens to share a name with an English pub, also called The Waiting Room, in the Bull City’s official sister city of Durham, England. Located in the Durham Railway Station, this traditional English pub might differ in vibe and style from its American counterpart, but Nick, for one, plans to visit the next time he’s back in his home country. “I’m going to take a picture of myself standing outside of that place,” he laughs. We think other Durhamites should, too – at either location! Just make sure to tag The Waiting Room (Durham, NC) and Durham Magazine in your photos on social media!
