Science museum cafes aren’t known for their culinary delights. Most of them serve fast food of a sub-McDonald’s caliber at Panera prices. They can get away with it, too, because they have captive audiences: patrons who don’t want to leave the premises to grab a bite. The museum café’s where you head, grudgingly, when you’re in an unfamiliar city and your kids are hungry and you don’t want to go through the trouble of getting your hand stamped for reentry.
The Daily Planet, the café in the new wing of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, strives for more. Its menu incorporates locally sourced ingredients like Neomonde Bakery bread, Larry’s Beans coffee, and nitrate-free bacon from Pinetown. Items like bison burgers, turkey-and-black-eyed-pea chili, fish tacos, and roasted beet wraps appear alongside standard deli fare like BLTs and club sandwiches. Vegetarian options abound.
I tried the tomato basil soup and the grilled local brie with bacon and apple chutney. The sweet apples and salty bacon complemented the creamy brie nicely, and the bread was grilled to a crisp golden-brown. The soup was assertive: bright and peppery, perhaps a touch overseasoned. Its pleasant astringency was well balanced by green notes from the basil.
Plus, the Daily Planet’s employees were friendly and its atmosphere was bright and airy, with floor-to-ceiling windows contributing to the open feel. The food’s very reasonably priced for the quality. (And they even do special events with serious foodie cred, like the recent Monster Feast featuring osso bucco and corn bisque garnished with bull’s blood! All the other museum cafes are hanging their heads in shame right now.) If I worked in downtown Raleigh, I could see it becoming one of my regular lunch spots.
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