Though Chapel Hill’s West End Wine Bar won’t reopen, a town favorite has plans for it

Drew Jackson
·5 min read

At its height, Chapel Hill’s West End Wine Bar poured more than 100 different wines by the glass — a staggering number, owner Jared Resnick said, considering that when it first opened many wine lists simply offered a red or white.

“When I charged $6 for a glass of wine people thought I was crazy,” Resnick said. “At that time you had a choice of a glass of red wine or white zinfandel.”

Chapel Hill’s West End Wine Bar won’t reopen on the other side of the pandemic. Resnick is selling the building to Mediterranean Deli owner Jamil Kadoura, who plans to open an event space.

The site is historic in Chapel Hill as the location of the former Colonial Drug Store, where in 1960 nine Black high schoolers staged a sit-in. Known as the Chapel Hill Nine, the group inspired a series of sit-ins in Chapel Hill. Last year a historic marker was placed on the sidewalk in front of the wine bar.

The Durham West End Wine Bar and West End Billiards will remain in business and reopen in a matter of weeks, Resnick said.

The wine bar wasn’t for sale, Resnick said, but the confluence of timing, of the challenges of the COVID pandemic and an offer from an old friend led to a deal.

“This man is one of the most beautiful humans,” Resnick said of Kadoura. “He’s a man who cares about his community, who cares about people and business and is charitable to the nth degree. He is really the only reason I felt I could do this. I felt like it would be in the right hands.”

Kadoura moved from his native Palestine to the United States in 1982 for school. He opened the Mediterranean Deli a decade later with six tables and 12 seats. It has expanded to include more tables and a market and become one of Chapel Hill’s most beloved restaurants.

The lives and businesses of Kadoura and Resnick have intertwined. On the first night the West End Wine Bar opened, Med Deli served the food. Later, Kadoura celebrated his 40th birthday in the bar. When Resnick’s sister died 10 years ago, Kadoura brought food to the family’s house for a week as they were sitting shiva.

The sale is expected to close by the beginning of May, but Kadoura declined to name the purchase price before then. The name of the new event space has also not been finalized.

Kadoura said Med Deli has catered countless weddings and parties in the space and that it already feels like an extension of the restaurant.

“The influence is I love it and I trusted him,” Kadoura said. “I’m familiar with it. He wants me to do well. It’s like you’re buying something from your brother. There’s nothing in the gray you can’t see.”

A crowd gathered on March 28, 2019, outside the West End Wine Bar on Franklin Street to hear the story of the Chapel Hill Nine and the town’s plan for a new marker to honor that history. The site is the former Colonial Drug Store, where the teens held a sit-in in 1960.
A crowd gathered on March 28, 2019, outside the West End Wine Bar on Franklin Street to hear the story of the Chapel Hill Nine and the town’s plan for a new marker to honor that history. The site is the former Colonial Drug Store, where the teens held a sit-in in 1960.

A rare wine bar

Resnick, who grew up in Chapel Hill, opened West End after first catching a glimpse of a wine bar while traveling in Israel.

“I said to my dad, ‘This is what Chapel Hill needs,” Resnick said. “It was a crazy idea.”

The bar opened with two dozen wines by the glass, a list that steadily grew to 40, then 110, with some prices reaching $250 a glass. Offering rare wines by the glass remains uncommon, but West End did it by gassing bottles with nitrogen, so the wines wouldn’t oxidize. By keeping them fresh, West End served highly sought-after wines, such as first growth Bourdeaux and Petrus, the famous French merlot.

Resnick said it wasn’t a money-maker to have such an expansive wine list, but that the aim was to offer customers tastes and glimpses of grapes and regions they had never had, and weren’t likely to run into easily.

“For me it’s always been about education, but never taking it too seriously,” Resnick said. “When I give lectures I tell people to remember all it is is fermented grape juice in a glass.”

Chapel Hill’s West End Wine Bar as the first of its kind when it opened in 1997. Owner Jared Resnick, will close the wine bar, but keep the Durham location open. Mediterranean Deli owner Jamil Kadoura, left, will buy the building and turn it into an event space.
Chapel Hill’s West End Wine Bar as the first of its kind when it opened in 1997. Owner Jared Resnick, will close the wine bar, but keep the Durham location open. Mediterranean Deli owner Jamil Kadoura, left, will buy the building and turn it into an event space.

COVID reopening

With the Chapel Hill and Durham West End Wine Bars being entirely closed since the pandemic began last year, Resnick said the prospect of reopening was uncertain. With the sale, the Durham location seems better suited to bounce back, Resnick said.

“The Durham spaces are poised to do well,” Resnick said. “The thing about COVID is it changes every day. One minute you’re closed, then all of a sudden maybe we’re reopening in two weeks.”

North Carolina allowed bars to reopen indoors starting in late February. Many Triangle bars, including West End, have yet to reopen their doors, but Resnick said it’s helpful to have something to work toward. Though the sight of large crowds and unmasked gatherings will take some time to accept, Resnick believes people are eager to go out, calling it his “ice storm theory.”

“Whenever we have an ice storm, we have to be ready for the first day out,” Resnick said. “Everyone goes out. Everyone goes out for days. They were locked up for three days and go out for a week. We have to be prepared. People have been put through hell, all of us have. We’ve all lost somebody. We have to be there for people and understand there’s going to be a lot of tension and anxiety about what it means to go into spaces again and see large groups of people.”