About bu•ku
The name “bu•ku” comes from an international slang twist on the phrase, “Merci, beaucoup” meaning, “Thank you, very much.” Located at the corner of Wilmington and Davie Street, in the center of the quickly emerging food conscious Wilmington Street area, Chef William D’Auvray presents a local restaurant that tells a global story.
Inspired by food from the pushcarts of vendors in cities across the globe, bu•ku serves an array of street foods from around the world. The common link: these are foods that people love. Working within different regional traditions, our menu brings together complex and flavorful dishes and that have been honed over generations. Foods like Polish pierogis, Colombian arepas, and Thai papaya salad served in a banana leaf can be found on the street corners of Warsaw, Bogota, and Bangkok. Their predecessors, prepared in kitchens and over outdoor cook-fires for hundreds of years, are popular favorites that have morphed into street foods to meet the demands of changing times. William hopes to convey the immediate thrill a traveler feels eating foods like these as they first cross over the cart and exchange hands into the urban setting.
We are a locally owned and operated restaurant. Watching the influx of people from around the world moving to the Triangle, we decided to open a place where people with different nationalities could eat something familiar or try something they’d never had before. Our Global Street Food menu is a new type of dining, designed for mix and match tasting and plate sharing that starts conversations. If you prefer a more traditional menu, our large “In off the Street” section provides familiar entrées, and our varied vegetarian selection will continue to grow. Our casual fine dining atmosphere and large private banquet room make us well suited for romancing a significant other or casual fling, holding an event celebration, or crying alone into food. The prices on our menu represent a decision to make our food accessible to as many people as possible without compromising our Chef’s long-standing commitment to serve high quality produce, hormone-free farm-raised beef and sustainable market seafood.
Global Street Food naturally lends itself to a fresh, fast, affordable downtown lunch with healthy options. Beginning at 3pm, the bar and lounge will offer a Happy Hour, with street food bar menu specials and a Chef-inspired approach to hand-crafted beer, wine, and cocktails. In the near future we hope to offer a dim sum Sunday brunch, and to roll a pushcart serving international fare from our kitchen onto the streets of downtown.
Open until midnight during the week and 2am on the weekend, bu•ku joins the beer and cocktail connoisseur Wilmington Street Circuit that includes The Busy Bee, Raleigh Times, The Foundation, Landmark and the City Market District. Our international cocktail menu features drinks from around the world.
Theme nights constantly change and are updated on our calendar. Visit us during our Sitar Lounge to listen to a sitar player at the bar or watch Bollywood movies in our projection room. As a venue, we will bring in musicians from eclectic backgrounds, ranging from DJ/percussion combinations, to Klezmer bands, to chamber music quartets. We hope to make bu•ku a vital home for food and music from around the world.
Merci, bu•ku.
