BON APPÉTIT (June, 1998)
Jean Anderson
In an area where new restaurants pop up like hushpuppies in deep fat – and collapse faster than a cooling soufflé – Ben and Karen’s Magnolia Grill still packs them in. Indeed, people will drive a hundred miles just to eat there.

So how did Karen, a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn, and Ben, a Southerner practically weaned on pork barbeque, team up to create a restaurant that has won national recognition and a wall full of awards? Their story begins at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, New York. “We sat next to each other on the first day of school,” Karen says . . .

By 1986, the Barkers were ready to open their own restaurant . . . For some months they’d had their eye on a health-food grocery in Durham, which occupied a space that Ben had always thought would make a good restaurant. The place was nothing much to look at – a squat, square red-brick building. . . Ben called the neighborhood “odd, off-the edge,” . . . Well the Barkers liked the old grocery. They liked the neighborhood. And they liked Durham. Besides, as Karen says, they weren’t out to “blow people away.” They were just aiming for a neighborhood bistro. As Ben puts it, “we wanted people to feel that we were casual and sort of rambunctious. No dress code. A come-in-once-or-twice-a-week kind of place . . . ultimately our philosophy is that the less contrived food is, the better it’s going to be . . . be true to your ingredients.”

In the end, what has made Magnolia Grill an ongoing success is that the Barkers have stuck to the original goal: “to promote a thoroughly enjoyable dining experience.” That means deft, courteous service as well as consistently imaginative, consistently good food paired with fine wines.

“I love it,” Ben says. “People walk in here in a crappy mood and walk out feelin’ happy. THAT’s success!”