2694 Durham Chapel Hill Blvd, Durham, NC
Diner style with sandwiches/subs, salads and breakfast
$ – Appx $9 for lunch

When you walk into Foster’s, you get the impression that this place is a local institution — and not just because it feels like it has been around for a very long while. They’ve got that old country store feel going on, and not the fake feeling Cracker Barrel style (in a side note, I ate at a Cracker Barrel recently for the first time in like 10 years and had NO IDEA that they were so blatantly racist at one time. That went right over my head as a kid. Just check out their Wikipedia: “In 2004, an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department found evidence that Cracker Barrel had been segregating customer seating by race.” LOLZ, good try Cracker Barrel–you can’t have segregated seating in 2004!…but I digress). This place feels like an authentic, old country store/diner, probably because it is an actual old country store.

The menu will make you dizzy:  there are so many options, a giant sandwich board, about a dozen salad options (fruit, pasta, potato, chicken, tuna–anything that can’t be considered a “real” salad is represented), a huge breakfast menu and countless, handwritten daily specials scattered about.

Totally overwhelmed, I order the THREE SALAD SAMPLER ($9.50) with the SUCCOTASH, PESTO PASTA SALAD, and TARRAGON CHICKEN SALAD, and it turned out to be a huge portion. As expected, there wasn’t a bad bite on my plate. The chicken salad had a great, fresh flavor with large chunks of chicken breast, green apples, grapes and celery. The succotash had a rather strong green pepper taste with all that you might expect in a good succotash: corn, lima beans, tomatoes and onions. Served chilled with fresh mint/basil mixed in, it was quite a pleasant summery dish. The pesto pasta salad with elbow pasta, spinach, tomatoes, squash, zucchini and cheese (I think?) was delicious.