Early on as a student at NC State, Lee Robinson \u201997 refused to go to the Irregardless Caf\u00e9 because of its name\u2009\u2014\u2009which wasn\u2019t a word in the dictionary and therefore offended the English major in him. But once he started going to Raleigh\u2019s first vegetarian restaurant, he found a lot he liked about the food and overall vibe, enough to eventually buy it in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd lo and behold,\u201d Robinson says, \u201cthe year I got it was the year it became a word in the dictionary. Destiny, bro!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Robinson bought Irregardless from Arthur and Anya Gordon, the original owners who founded it in 1975 on Morgan Street, a spot familiar to many NC State alumni. Robinson was a veteran of the local restaurant scene, having worked his way through NC State \u201cat almost every place up and down Hillsborough Street.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of those restaurants was the Player\u2019s Retreat, where Robinson was manager, followed by a stint managing The Pit barbecue restaurant before acquiring Irregardless right before the pandemic shutdown. Or as he says, he went from restaurants doing whole hogs to burgers to vegetarian\u2009\u2014\u2009\u201cand somehow gained weight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Robinson also co-owns another Raleigh restaurant, Brookside Bodega, but Irregardless remains his primary focus. He changed it \u201cas little as possible\u201d beyond brightening the furnishings and tweaking the menu. Its weekend brunch remains a popular local institution for generations of Robinson\u2019s fellow NC State partisans, and the response has been gratifying. He hopes that helps Irregardless weather a challenging stretch after Goodnight\u2019s Comedy Club next door closed in the fall of 2022 to make way for a large retail\/apartment building. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can\u2019t wait until we have 400 apartment units next door. If we can get one-third of them coming in once a month, I\u2019ll be happy.<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s gonna be a long two years and that was our parking lot,\u201d says Robinson. \u201cBut I have more hope than trepidation. We\u2019ve not seen a dip yet. I can\u2019t wait until we have 400 apartment units next door. If we can get one-third of them coming in once a month, I\u2019ll be happy.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"\n\n\n\n\n
By David Menconi<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Early on as a student at NC State, Lee Robinson \u201997 refused to go to the Irregardless Caf\u00e9 because of its name\u2009\u2014\u2009which wasn\u2019t a word in the dictionary and therefore offended the English major in him. But once he started going to Raleigh\u2019s first vegetarian restaurant, he found a lot he liked about the food and overall vibe, enough to eventually buy it in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd lo and behold,\u201d Robinson says, \u201cthe year I got it was the year it became a word in the dictionary. Destiny, bro!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Robinson bought Irregardless from Arthur and Anya Gordon, the original owners who founded it in 1975 on Morgan Street, a spot familiar to many NC State alumni. Robinson was a veteran of the local restaurant scene, having worked his way through NC State \u201cat almost every place up and down Hillsborough Street.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of those restaurants was the Player\u2019s Retreat, where Robinson was manager, followed by a stint managing The Pit barbecue restaurant before acquiring Irregardless right before the pandemic shutdown. Or as he says, he went from restaurants doing whole hogs to burgers to vegetarian\u2009\u2014\u2009\u201cand somehow gained weight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Robinson also co-owns another Raleigh restaurant, Brookside Bodega, but Irregardless remains his primary focus. He changed it \u201cas little as possible\u201d beyond brightening the furnishings and tweaking the menu. Its weekend brunch remains a popular local institution for generations of Robinson\u2019s fellow NC State partisans, and the response has been gratifying. He hopes that helps Irregardless weather a challenging stretch after Goodnight\u2019s Comedy Club next door closed in the fall of 2022 to make way for a large retail\/apartment building. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can\u2019t wait until we have 400 apartment units next door. If we can get one-third of them coming in once a month, I\u2019ll be happy.<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s gonna be a long two years and that was our parking lot,\u201d says Robinson. \u201cBut I have more hope than trepidation. We\u2019ve not seen a dip yet. I can\u2019t wait until we have 400 apartment units next door. If we can get one-third of them coming in once a month, I\u2019ll be happy.\u201d <\/p>\n"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lee Robinson \u201997 didn\u2019t let initial misgivings stop him from becoming new owner of Raleigh\u2019s Irregardless Caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false,\"subtitle\":\"Lee Robinson \u201997 didn\u2019t let initial misgivings stop him from becoming new owner of Raleigh\u2019s Irregardless Caf\u00e9.\",\"displayCategoryID\":5,\"caption\":\"Photograph by Chris Seward \u201980.\"}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,10],"tags":[178,274,318,549,689],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"displayCategory":{"term_id":5,"name":"Best Bets","slug":"best-bets","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":39,"filter":"raw"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4808"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5000,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4808\/revisions\/5000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4808"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=4808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}