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One More Round

The iconic Hillsborough Street watering hole, once on the verge of closing, gets a second chance. Photography by Bryan Regan.

October 5, 2022 Sylvia Adcock 9-min. read

A beloved bowling alley is now a Target. A sleek hotel rises above the spot where the denizens of Sadlack’s once gathered.

But even on Hillsborough Street, some things don’t change.

The front of Mitch’s and the College Grill in the early 1980s. The building is one of the oldest commercial buildings on Hillsborough Street. Photo courtesy of Simon Griffiths ’85.

Hillsborough Street today. Brick-paved medians make crossing easier for pedestrians. Photo courtesy of Chris Seward ’80.

Mitch’s Tavern, which was on the verge of closing its doors for good in 2021, reopened in May thanks to a couple of longtime patrons who teamed up with owner Mitch Hazouri to breathe new life into the bar, which has been in business for some 50 years.

Patrons of Mitch’s Tavern will sometimes say it’s easier to get up these stairs than to get back down.

It was welcome news to many Mitch’s fans. “There are so few things left on Hillsborough Street from when I was there,” says Greg Perkins ’89, an insurance broker from Mount Airy, N.C. Perkins remembers waiting for a friend outside Dabney Hall before an afternoon class. “My buddy would come by and say, ‘Let’s go to lunch at Mitch’s.’ And I knew we’d never make that class.”

“My buddy would come by and say, ‘Let’s go to lunch at Mitch’s.’ And I knew we’d never make that class.” — Greg Perkins ’89

Mitch’s was shut down for most of the pandemic, and Hazouri, 80, had been considering closing the tavern for good. He’d weathered disruptions from a street revitalization project and watched as areas like Glenwood South became more of a destination spot for students ready for a night out. By last fall, he had decided not to renew his lease.

That’s when Van Alston and Chris Post came in. Alston was having coffee at Cup A Joe with NC State wrestling coach Pat Popolizio — Alston is a huge supporter of the program — when he ran into Hazouri. “When he said he was turning in the notice on his lease, I said, ‘Gosh, I wish you’d gotten in touch with me,’’’ Alston says. “I said, ‘We just can’t have Mitch’s leave.’”

“Gosh, I wish you’d gotten in touch with me. We just can’t have Mitch’s leave.” — Van Alston

The next morning, Hazouri met with Alston and Post (who are co-owners of Slim’s and Mo-Jo’s Burgers in Raleigh) and hatched a plan. The reopening is a collaboration, with Hazouri still involved in the operations. “They both value Mitch’s as a place,” Hazouri says. “They don’t want to see important things disappear.”

This photo was taken in the early 1980s. Photo courtesy of Simon Griffiths ’85.

Becky Bumgardner ’82 tends bar. Photo courtesy of Simon Griffiths ’85.

Important things, to the discerning tavern goer, are things that make Mitch’s, well, Mitch’s. There’s the eclectic collection of art (reproductions and originals) in gilded frames. (One has a tear that Hazouri carefully mended after a fight.) The mounted marlin over the bar. (“I caught it,” Hazouri says, giving a pre-opening tour. “I caught it at an auction in Fuquay-Varina for $25.”) Old church pews, including a small one that came from the chapel of the now-closed Catholic orphanage in Raleigh, provide seating. Along the walls are 1940s-era wooden booths from the Hollywood Café in downtown Raleigh (now Berkeley’s) and the Peter Pan restaurant that was once on Hillsborough Street near St. Mary’s. Over one of the booths is an autographed picture of Susan Sarandon and Kevin Costner from the 1988 movie Bull Durham, part of which was filmed at Mitch’s.

Mitch Hazouri sits at the bar a week before the reopening.

The Mitch’s Tavern sign has been a fixture on Hillsborough Street for years.

Renovations were minimal. Everything got a deep cleaning, a broken window was fixed and massive tangles of wires that connected to bulky TV screens at the bar, the register and security system were removed. Worn-out chairs were replaced with lookalikes. And a pool table was returned to the back room. Alston and Post, both of whom attended NC State but didn’t graduate, spent plenty of time in the back room during college and beyond.

The building, at 2426 Hillsborough St., dates back to 1910 and appears to be one of the first commercial buildings to operate on the street. (The first was likely 1200 Hillsborough St., currently David’s Dumplings and the site of the old Darryl’s at the corner of Oberlin Road.) The space where Mitch’s is now originally was a rooming house called the “St. Moritz Apartments,” according to a filing with the National Register of Historic Places on the West Raleigh neighborhood. The first floor of the building (where Global Village Coffee is now) was originally a grocery store with a small bar next door.

Some of Hazouri’s eclectic art collection — along with curiosities like a mounted marlin — remain.

Old church pews and café booths rescued from long-closed Raleigh restaurants still provide seating.

A pool table that was removed years ago makes a return appearance.

Tour Mitch’s Tavern with Mitch Hazouri and learn the stories behind some of its famous decor.

The journey from second-story rooming house to tavern started in the 1960s. In 1967, The Jolly Knave opened where the apartments once were. The place was known for beach music and a dance floor with lots of shagging. At the time, Hazouri, who had studied for a graduate degree in chemistry at NC State, was teaching chemistry at nearby Broughton High School and picking up odd jobs for extra cash. He made $100 a week working at a pool hall (that was later the site of Two Guys). After work, he’d stop at The Jolly Knave and get a beer. In addition to shag dancing, the place had a lot of sports gamblers, too. “The vice squad was always there,” Hazouri says. One night in 1972, he spoke to the owner, who said he was going to sell the business. “I bought it on time,” Hazouri says — no money upfront, with payments spread over years.

Hazouri at the bar in the early 1980s. Photo courtesy of Simon Griffiths ’85.

“I bought it on time,” Hazouri says — no money upfront, with payments spread over years.

“At the time, it was a juke box and a big dance floor,” he says. Two years later, he got rid of the dance floor and the juke box, put in the old booths and church pews and added foosball tables. And he got a tape player with speakers and started blasting the Rolling Stones and The Who. The place was packed on weekend nights. Becky Bumgardner ’82 worked her way through school tending bar at Mitch’s. “Thursday nights were slammed — That was chemistry test day,” says Bumgardner, who lives in Ocala, Fla., and is the senior philanthropic gift officer for the V Foundation. Back then, the drinking age was 18, and Hazouri would station himself at the top of the stairs to keep out the local high schoolers he recognized.

Next Door, A Time Capsule of a Bar

The front door to the College Grill, a hamburger and beer joint on Hillsborough Street, has remained shut since Mitch Hazouri bought the place in 1978. The neon College Grill sign, with its distinctive football shape, was a fixture on the street for years.

Hazouri never reopened the College Grill, which was also known as Red’s. But he kept the liquor license current and made periodic improvements, replacing the original red formica counter with an oak bar. Now, 35 years later, the College Grill has reopened for special events.

“I’d been trying to get Mitch to show me that space for years,” says Van Alston, one of the new owners of Mitch’s. “When I finally saw it, my jaw hung open. It’s a time capsule.”

The space is narrow, only about 20 feet wide, and a mezzanine provides additional seating. A back stairway connects to Mitch’s. Alston says he has located the sign, which went missing long ago, and hopes to hang it back on Hillsborough Street.

The College Grill dates back at least to the 1940s, but the place has more history than just burgers and beers. Hazouri says nearly a dozen phone lines ran from the College Grill to the apartments upstairs — which is now Mitch’s — and that some of the gambling that brought down the Dixie Classic in 1960 was conducted there. The owner of the College Grill, Charles “Red” Campbell, was indicted in September 1961 for operating a gambling house and betting on basketball games, according to a report in The News & Observer, and later testified before a Wake County grand jury investigating the point-shaving scandal. Today, down a set of narrow steps to the basement of the building, a box of phone line switches is still visible.

Alston says space will be available for rental for private events, and he wants to let the public take a look. “We’re hoping to open it up a few times a year so people can see it and have a beer,” Alston says. “It would be a disservice not to do that.”

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Those stairs, the same dark wood they’ve always been, will spark memories for anyone who spent time in Mitch’s. They’ve been refinished. But they still bear the marks of footsteps dating back some 50 years, ready for a new generation.

Coffee, Beer, or Bubble Tea

Hillsborough Street, long a destination for students, has seen its fortunes ebb and flow.

Hillsborough Street, once a two-lane country road with a streetcar track running down the middle, has always been NC State’s front doorstep, the place where town meets gown.

And like many such college corridors, it’s had its ups and downs as businesses and storefronts reflect changing times and generations.

These days most of the bars, dance spots and pizza joints are gone. But there are plenty of coffee shops — Jubula, Global Village, Cup A Joe and the newest, a Starbucks. High-rise student apartments like the Stanhope are clustered at the western end, and the Aloft Hotel sits across from the Belltower. There are even three places on the street to get bubble tea.

Some alumni lament the loss of their old hangouts. “I try not to be a stick in the mud about it,” says Greg Perkins ’89, an insurance broker who lives in Mount Airy, N.C. “But Two Guys is gone, the bowling alley, Sadlack’s, Baxley’s, the ACC Tavern. These things weren’t viable enterprises, but the sentimental part of you wishes they were still around.”

Jeff Murison, president of the Hillsborough Street Community Services Corp., a nonprofit that works with businesses and neighbors, says he understands the sentiment. “Both things can be true,” he says. “You can be sad that we lost the bowling alley and Sadlack’s, and still recognize that it is powerful and useful to have a Target across the street and the Aloft Hotel, both of which are thriving.”

Dan Howe ’85 MLA was a research assistant in the College of Design in the 1980s when he was asked to work on the corridor. Back then, he says, “people were falling all over themselves for change.” With a strip club (called My Apartment) and an X-rated movie theater, the street didn’t compare well to its counterpart in Chapel Hill, Franklin Street. Howe says a big change came when Bruegger’s Bagels landed on the corner of Horne Street: “I remember talking to the guy who brought the franchise to Raleigh,” Howe says. “He didn’t know if they were going to make it. He said, ‘We don’t know if people are going to buy bagels.’ People bought bagels — lots of them, and it was the first new business in a while that had not been a marginal bar or fast food operation.”

In 2010, after Hillsborough Street topped a list of the state’s most deadly pedestrian crossings, the city — with the support of a well-organized neighborhood group and the university — redesigned the streetscape. Landscaped roundabouts were added to slow traffic along with raised brick medians and buried utility lines.

Howe, who retired as Raleigh’s assistant city manager in 2014, acknowledges that the street has been missing “the longevity of individual places like Baxley’s or Two Guys — places where alumni could come back and the owners would remember them, know their names.” (A notable exception is the Players’ Retreat, in business since 1961.) “But you know what? A lot of legacy businesses have closed on Franklin Street [in Chapel Hill], too,” says Howe.

Murison says he’s thrilled that Mitch’s will continue for another generation. At the same time, he says, “Today’s students will be making memories of walking to Target to outfit their apartments and the see-and-be-seen factor at Jubula Coffee.”

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