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After more than a decade of slinging decadent biscuits and indulgent French Toast, a legendary Durham brunch spot is closing its doors.
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True Flavors Diner near RTP will close by the end of June, owner Sidney Coves said in a phone interview. For now the final service is up in the air, he said, but the restaurant will close this month.
“It’s bittersweet but it’s a good time for a change,” Coves said. “We’re leaving on our own terms.”
True Flavors started as a catering operation and then opened as a diner in South Durham in 2015. It became one of the Triangle’s most popular brunch spots, serving an enormously creative menu of both flavor combinations. While the menu changes, that has meant classics like The Ultimate Biscuits & Gravy and Chicken and Waffles with blueberry honey butter. But also duck ragu over grits and carbonara French Toast.
Coves, a culinary school grad, loves to serve luxurious ingredients in unexpected places. Like lobster biscuits and duck cheesesteaks.
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At one point, True Flavors expanded to two locations, with an opening Durham’s Lakewood neighborhood in 2018. That location, and its biscuit-centric sister business Debbie Lou’s closed in 2020 in the first few months of the pandemic.
Driving the closing, Coves said, are high costs and rising rent in a strip of NC Highway 55 where he sees it getting harder to compete with national chains like Golden Corral.
“I can’t pinpoint one thing,” Coves said of the closing. “You can work hard, but if you don’t have the right location it doesn’t matter.”
More recently Coves opened Reno’s Cheesesteaks in the Woodcroft Shopping Center at 4711 Hope Valley Road. He said that is the focus for now, with plans to expand to Chapel Hill and Raleigh in the next year and a half.
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True Flavors Diner is located at 5411 N.C. 55 in Durham.
This story was originally published June 12, 2026 at 11:48 AM.