Beefing up business: Angus Barn has grown along with the Triangle to become the go-to place for the business crowd.

• Author: Campbell, Spencer
• Position: PICTURE THIS

They built their steakhouse to resemble a big red barn halfway between Raleigh and Durham on two-lane U.S. 70, which back then was crowded with a lot of nothing. The airport was nearby, but it was little more than a glorified landing strip. So Thad Eure Jr. and Charles Winston relied on a very specific clientele: "The only people to drive out here were their friends who felt sorry for them," says Van Eure, Thad's daughter and the current owner.

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Things have changed since Angus Barn opened its doors in 1960. Research Triangle Park blossomed a few miles away. Raleigh-Durham International Airport is a conduit for roughly 400,000 passengers a month, many of them business travelers. Interstates 440 and 540 make the formerly out-of-the-way restaurant accessible. Consequently, Angus Barn has become a destination not only for visiting heavy hitters--such as Mitt Romney and NFL quarterback Peyton Manning--but businessmen looking for convenience, privacy and steak. "Weekdays we count very, very much on the business community. That's the majority of our business," Van Eure says.

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Eure and Winston decided to open a steakhouse in the late 1950s, though neither had any experience running a restaurant. "It was just two guys talking. 'You know, Raleigh needs a steakhouse,'" she says. "You know, crazy talk." They bought 50 acres for $6,750, but no bank would lend them money to build. Thad Eure Sr., North Carolina's secretary of state from 1936 to 1989, mortgaged his farmhouse to guarantee a loan for his son's venture. The building cost about $200,000. That barn burned down four years later, but a measure of its early success is evidenced by the mob of lenders who wanted to finance the rebuilding. Thad...