NORTH CAROLINA | THE SOUTH

Raleigh’s Dining Scene is Fire, and Mala Pata is its Most Exciting New Restaurant

★★★★★

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By Eric Barton | Oct. 10, 2025

AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.

We’ve all been hearing it for a while now: Raleigh is one of the South’s most exciting restaurant cities. It’s the sort of phrase that gets tossed around by national food editors who’ve never actually spent an hour waiting for a table at Crawford and Son or eaten a bar seat dinner at Bida Manda. But then I went to Mala Pata, and suddenly, I understood.

You can feel it before you even sit down—the hum of something bigger happening here. In a corner of Gateway Plaza, between the chocolate shop and a vegan place, there’s the bright glass doors leading to Mala Pata. Inside, servers dart between tables, the smell of roasted corn and slow-cooked pork filling the air. It’s the sound and scent of a city cooking with confidence.

Mala Pata is the work of some of Raleigh’s most respected names: Angela Salamanca of Centro, Marshall Davis of the former Gallo Pelón, and chefs Eric Montagne and Zack Gragg of Locals Seafood. Together, they’ve created a restaurant built around masa—heirloom corn, nixtamalized and ground on-site every morning. That sounds technical, and it is, but what it really means is that every tortilla, every tamale, every bite has that unmistakable sweetness and chew you only get when someone’s doing it the old way.

But even with that close attention to a single ingredient, there’s no attempt at precious minimalism. The space feels lived in—handmade plates, records stacked near the stereo, and an open kitchen glowing like a stage. It’s hard not to order too much: lechoncito tacos, rich with confit pork and folded into tortillas slicked with pork fat; rajas enchiladas drenched in a Cheerwine mole so perfectly North Carolina; and a pile of buñuelos, golden and cheesy.

Everything is bright, acidic, a little smoky. The drinks hit the same note: a roasted-corn cordial with cola, a mezcal cocktail with the underlying scent of a campfire.

There’s a small bar next door called Peyote, part of the same operation, and it’s worth a stop before or after dinner. Seven seats, low lights, and cocktails that stretch what mezcal and tequila can do. The team wanted to build a space where people could linger, and they’ve done exactly that.

But what strikes me most isn’t the food or the drinks or even the design—it’s the feeling that this place didn’t need to prove anything. Raleigh used to have to shout to be heard. Mala Pata doesn’t raise its voice. It doesn’t rely on nostalgia or gimmicks. It’s confident in its purpose, which is to honor Latin American flavors with precision and care, and to make them feel utterly at home in North Carolina.

If you still doubt that Raleigh belongs among the country’s great food towns, go here. Order the buñuelos. Sit at the bar. Watch the corn go from kernel to tortilla to memory. You’ll taste it—the proof that Raleigh isn’t just exciting right now. It’s arrived.