The Players Retreat

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

Seven Decades and Counting

On February 27, 1951, Bernie and Mickey Hanula — Bernie a former Wake Forest football player — opened a tavern near N.C. State that would quietly become one of Raleigh's most enduring gathering places. Team photographs dating back to the era of leather football helmets still cover the wood-paneled walls. Beer steins belonging to longtime regulars still hang above the bar. Very little, the current proprietor will tell you, has changed on purpose.

In 2005, the PR came within days of closing as a new wave of plasma-screen sports bars swept through the city. Richard "Gus" Gusler, a Raleigh lawyer who had worked there as an N.C. State student in 1971, led a partnership that bought the place and set about updating it without erasing it. The result earned a designation that says something: the State of North Carolina formally recognized the Players Retreat as a historic sight and sound, resolving that "the keg of kindness has never run dry."

The Kitchen Behind the Bar

Gusler's most consequential move was hiring Chef Jean Paul Fontaine, formerly chef-proprietor of the well-regarded Bistro 607, to take charge of the kitchen. Fontaine's French-trained instincts show up across the weekly specials — pan-seared local sheepshead with poblano purée, blackened Scottish salmon with crayfish andouille butter, reef-caught fish with mango-pineapple-smoked chile salsa — while the everyday American menu holds its ground with certified Angus beef burgers ground on-site, beer-battered fish and chips, NC pit-cooked BBQ with slaw and cornbread, and a full brunch built around Anson Mills heirloom grits. Ingredients are sourced as locally as possible; quality, not novelty, is the stated ambition.

On the first weekend of every month, Fontaine and the kitchen crew turn to Mexico for inspiration — a tradition born from staff meals cooked by two line cooks who are Mexican natives. Lamb barbacoa, chile rellenos, and house-made corn tortillas share the menu with thoughtfully paired wines and tequila cocktails.

Drinks Worth the Trip Alone

The bar program is where the PR truly surprises. Gusler assembled what is reportedly the largest collection of single-malt Scotch whiskies in North Carolina, sourcing rare bottles on annual trips to Scotland, and built a cellar that now dispenses more than 100 wines by the glass through a state-of-the-art preservation system. That cellar earned a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence — credible recognition that the American and seafood-forward menu has a drinks program equal to its ambitions. A dedicated Scotch Club formalizes the enthusiasm for whisky enthusiasts who want to go deeper.

The Chef's Table and the Bigger Picture

For private gatherings of up to twelve, the Chef's Table offers a different register entirely. Fontaine works directly with guests to design custom menus — a five-course French tasting, Spanish tapas, family-style Italian, or anything in between — paired by a sommelier who walks the table through each selection. It is a side of the PR that would surprise anyone who knew only the wood-paneled bar.

What holds all of it together is the spirit Gus Gusler describes simply: "a place where people from all walks of life rub elbows, share toasts, good times, and laughs." The PR has been that for 74 years. The cooking and the cellar just give people more reasons to stay.