Mateo Bar de Tapas

The Restaurant

Mateo Bar de Tapas opened in 2013 at 109 West Chapel Hill Street in downtown Durham, in the restored old Book Exchange building on a corner that anchors the city's restored Five Points dining district. Chef-owner Matthew Kelly had spent the previous decade running the kitchen at Magnolia Grill, Ben and Karen Barker's pioneering Durham fine-dining room, before opening Mateo as his first solo venture. The dining room seats about ninety across a warm space defined by exposed brick walls, dark wood floors, leather banquettes along one side and a long marble-topped bar that runs the length of the front room facing the open kitchen pass. The lighting is deliberately low, the acoustics are calibrated for conversation rather than spectacle, and the small two- and four-tops along the back wall are reserved by regulars for the kind of evening where the conversation matters as much as the cooking.

Kelly's project at Mateo is contemporary Spanish tapas filtered through a Southern ingredient sourcing lens. The menu rotates regularly but holds a recognisable spine of greatest-hits dishes that have built the restaurant's reputation across more than a decade: the gambas al ajillo with garlic and chilli, the patatas bravas with smoked paprika aioli, the manchego-stuffed dates wrapped in bacon, the house-cured chorizo with Marcona almonds, and a series of jamon iberico and lomo selections that read as serious. The larger courses centre on a charcoal-grilled whole fish (often North Carolina grouper or branzino), a paella mixta that requires forty-five minutes and is the room's most-photographed plate, a slow-braised lamb shank with chickpeas and harissa, and a wood-grilled steak with Cabrales blue cheese sauce. The desserts (the basque cheesecake, the chocolate budino with sherry-soaked figs) are the deliberate tail of a kitchen that knows what it is.

The drinks programme is the room's quiet advantage. The wine list runs to about two hundred references with serious depth in Spanish bottles (Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Albarino, Cava), a careful French and Italian section and a thoughtful selection of small Carolina producers. The cocktail programme at the marble bar leans toward Spanish vermouth, sherry-based aperitifs and the kind of low-ABV pre-dinner work that pairs gracefully with a long tapas meal. Kelly himself is at the kitchen most services and has been a four-time James Beard Best Chef Southeast semifinalist; the 2025 Michelin Guide American South induction confirmed Mateo's place as Durham's senior dining room. For a downtown evening that needs to register as locally consequential and nationally serious, Mateo is the answer Durham regulars choose first.