A giant yellow banner draped across a brick building in East Durham has been turning heads and sparking speculation for weeks. “HE’S COMING,” it reads in bold black letters, with a circular cutout under the word “HE’S.”
“Is that a large glory hole?” a Reddit user asked in one of several threads dedicated to decrypting the banner. “Clearly, it’s Christian,” another wrote. Another, surely an OG Durhamite, theorized: “Since they couldn’t get Oprah to come, maybe it’s Stedman?”
The actual answer: Dame’s Chicken & Waffles is relocating from downtown Durham to 455 South Driver Street in East Durham. The “he” in question is co-owner Damion “Dame” Moore. Dame’s will take over the space formerly occupied by Mike D’s BBQ, which closed its brick-and-mortar operation in January after a short run.
John Warasila, whose firm, Alliance Architecture, owns the building, designed the banner to build anticipation. The cutout started out empty, then began to display new text week by week: first “who,” then “where,” and “here.” This latest iteration reads “when,” with a date announcement pending.
Warasila got the idea from a New York Times article about a renovated house with dramatic drapery featuring a circular window overlooking a forest.
“I thought, well, that’s kind of an interesting idea,” Warasila says.
Dame’s opened downtown in 2010, when Moore and his business partner Randy Wadsworth—college friends who reconnected after corporate careers—transformed Moore’s Blue Mountain Catering operation into a full-service restaurant. This will be the second major move for the restaurant’s flagship location; the original stood on Main Street before moving to Foster Street in 2018. Dame’s also has locations in Greensboro and Cary, though the Cary spot is temporarily closed.
Moore says the relocation to East Durham is primarily driven by the opportunity to be “more accessible to a broader customer base,” and to be part of another neighborhood’s growth.
“We were pioneers in Durham,” Moore says. “We were one of the first restaurants to be part of the revitalization of downtown. We’re excited about the potential, once again, from a pioneering perspective.”
When asked whether financial pressures factored into the decision, Moore acknowledges that “downtown can be expensive for small businesses such as ours” and that “overhead costs [are] always something we are mindful of,” though he maintains the decision is proactive, not reactive.
East Durham, a historically Black neighborhood, has become a microcosm of the development and displacement tensions gripping Durham as the city grows. The neighborhood already weathered one wave of disruption when the Durham Freeway tore through historic Hayti in the 1960s.
Now rising rents and property values are pushing out longtime residents once again. At the same time, the neighborhood is drawing more business interest, though that interest hasn’t always translated to stability—Mike D’s, Rofhiwa Book Café, and East Durham Bake Shop all opened with fanfare only to close within a few years. Institutions like Joe’s Diner have weathered the changes, while newer arrivals like Ideal’s Sandwich and Grocery have found their footing. Dame’s represents a new dynamic in this mix: a Black-owned business with an established customer base and more than a decade of history, opting to relocate to the neighborhood.
“A lot of the companies and the restaurants, the small businesses that you see in East Durham are still in the early stages of their development, so they haven’t quite reached the status that they may want to, in terms of the popularity and traction in the market, maybe not quite like we have,” Moore says. “So we’re bringing that to bear, and hopefully it will benefit both sides—us as an established business, as well as the businesses that are already there and still in their early stages, maybe not infancy, but still in the early stages of what they’re trying to achieve. I think everybody’s boat will rise to the top.”
The new Dame’s will have outdoor patio seating and a shared courtyard with neighboring businesses Congress Cocktail Bar and Proximity Brewing. The restaurant’s weekend menu will remain anchored in chicken and waffle combinations named after chicken breeds, styled to match their namesakes—the Frizzled Fowl, for instance, named after the Frizzle breed, features a panko-crusted cutlet, while the Light Brown Leghorn comes with chocolate hazelnut schmear—and the weekday lunch menu, currently a build-your-own format, will expand to include more preset sandwiches and salads for quicker service. The dinner menu will add appetizers like fried pickles and pimento cheese dip, plus desserts like churro waffles and toasted pound cake.
Warasila says he had four viable tenants interested in the space within a week after Mike D’s announced its departure.
“Dame’s was clearly head and shoulders above everyone,” Warasila says. “They know what it takes to build neighborhoods.”
Dame’s is expected to open in late September. If that changes, an update will presumably appear in the hole.
Follow Staff Writer Lena Geller on Bluesky or email [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].