RESTAURANT NEWS | NORTH CAROLINA
Lutra Cafe & Bakery Brings Its Cult-Favorite Buns to Durham’s American Tobacco Campus
By Eric Barton | 8:11 a.m. ET, April 27, 2026
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.
Durham has a new place to follow the scent of baked dough, coffee, and ambition. Lutra Cafe & Bakery, the bakery from chef-owner Chris McLaurin, now has a permanent cafe, turning a two-year run of farmers markets, collaborations, and sold-out buns into a brick-and-mortar restaurant.
The cafe occupies a 2,600-square-foot space on the north side of the American Tobacco Campus, next to Ment Beverage Co., with 36 indoor seats and another 20 on the patio. It’s counter-service, which feels right for a place built on the kind of food people had already learned to chase across the Triangle.
Orange bun
Lutra started with McLaurin’s sweet and savory buns, and those remain the gravitational pull. The cafe gives him room to build around them with breads, soft pretzels, brunch, breakfast, lunch, coffee, espresso drinks, wine, beer, and the sort of breakfast sandwich that makes more sense when the bun has already done half the work.
The menu includes Lutra’s rotating baked goods, along with eggs Benedict, biscuits and gravy, seasonal sandwiches, salads, and 100-layer hash browns, a dish that sounds like breakfast made by someone who enjoys turning potatoes into architecture.
McLaurin is a Chapel Hill native with a serious kitchen résumé behind the pastry case. He trained at L’Academie de Cuisine and cooked under James Beard Award-winning chef Johnny Monis at Komi and Little Serow in Washington, D.C. After returning to North Carolina, he worked in several Triangle restaurants before serving as chef de cuisine at Poole’side Pies, part of Ashley Christensen’s restaurant group.
Chris McLaurin
After Poole’side Pies closed in late 2023, McLaurin launched Lutra Bakery and built a serious cult following. Lutra sold more than 10,000 buns and appeared at more than 130 pop-ups in 2024, adding farmers market appearances and a Sunday brunch pop-up at Cheeni in downtown Durham.
Lutra sold 10k buns last year alone
Lutra buns
Lutra Cafe & Bakery is open seven days a week, with weekday hours from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and weekend hours from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Durham already knows the drill by now: follow the buns.
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