Pizzeria Toro

The Restaurant

Pizzeria Toro opened in 2012 at 105 East Chapel Hill Street in downtown Durham, on a corner directly across the street from the lot where chef-owner Gray Brooks's grandfather once operated his own restaurant, a deliberate piece of family geography that gives the room a particular sense of place. Brooks spent fifteen years cooking in Seattle (notably at Cafe Juanita under Holly Smith and at Spinasse) before returning to Durham to open Pizzeria Toro alongside partners Jay Owens and Cara Stacy. The dining room seats about seventy across a deliberately unfussy space defined by exposed brick walls, salvaged hardwood floors, low pendant lighting over bare wood tables, leather banquettes along one wall and a long counter that runs along the open kitchen at the back of the room, where the wood-fired oven (the structural and visual centre of the restaurant) burns through every service in clear view. The counter seating at the front-of-kitchen pass is the room's most considered solo-dining setup in the Triangle.

Brooks's project at Pizzeria Toro is Italian-inspired wood-fired pizza built on serious sourcing and disciplined technique. The dough is a long-fermented sourdough levain, hand-stretched to a pliable rather than crisp finish, and the wood-fired oven runs at the temperature and pace that produces the leopard-spotted char Neapolitan-style pizza demands. The pizza programme rotates seasonally but holds a recognisable spine: a margherita that anchors the menu, a sausage-and-rapini pizza with local pork and house-cured guanciale, a wild-mushroom pizza with truffle pecorino, a clam pizza with lemon and chilli, a seasonal vegetable pie that rotates weekly and a quattro formaggi that has become the room's most-photographed plate. The opening sections run through a wood-fired seasonal vegetable, a small antipasti programme (the burrata with grilled bread, the marinated olives, the house-cured charcuterie), and a small but serious daily-changing pasta course that draws on Brooks's training at Spinasse in Seattle. The desserts (the affogato, the cannoli, the seasonal sorbet) are unselfconscious.

The drinks programme is the room's quieter advantage: a thoughtfully edited wine list of about eighty references with a clear regional Italian focus, an Italian-and-American craft beer programme, and a small cocktail menu that leans toward classical Italian preparations (a thoughtfully built negroni, a daily aperitivo, a small selection of amari and grappa). The room operates without dinner reservations for counter seating and accepts limited table reservations one to two weeks ahead; the format encourages walk-ins, and the counter at the wood-fired oven supplies the Triangle's most considered solo-pizza-dinner experience. Brooks himself is at the oven most services. Pizzeria Toro has been named News and Observer Restaurant of the Year multiple times across its tenure and has announced a 2026 Raleigh expansion at 807 Halifax Street. For a Durham evening that wants unfussy seriousness, warm room comfort and the Triangle's best pizza, this is the unambiguous answer.