Tupelo Honey Cafe is a restaurant chain based in downtown Asheville, North Carolina, specializing in Southern cooking. [1] [2] [3] [4]
The restaurant was established in 2000 by Sharon Schott. [5] The company has since expanded to 26 locations across 17 states. [6]
Original owner Sharon Schott, after traveling around the US, recognized the need for a restaurant that could offer locals and tourist a taste of the south but with healthy ingredients. On December 7, 2000 Tupelo Honey Cafe opened their downtown Asheville North Carolina location. [7] In 2008 the cafe was purchased by Stephen Frabitore, seeing it as the ideal business to run during his retirement although he had never worked in the industry before. Frabitore grew the team with large investments into the company's headquarters to enable it to support multiple locations. [8]
Brian Sonoskus was executive chef at the cafe from 2001-2016. During his tenure he co-authored two Tupelo Honey cookbooks: Tupelo Honey Cafe: Spirited Recipes from Asheville's New South Kitchen, Tupelo Honey Cafe: new southern flavors from the Blue Ridge Mountains. [9] [10] Eric Gabrynowicz, a 2011 James Beard Foundation semifinalist for Rising Star Chef USA, was named executive chef and vice president of culinary operations. [11]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tupelo Honey began the Tupelo Honey Employee Relief Fund (E.R.F) to help provide additional support to team members facing unexpected hardships. The profits from every order of biscuits goes directly to the fund. The fund is now called the Tupelo Honey Relief & Development Fund and had raised $575,000. [12]
Tupelo Honey has expanded to 26 locations across 17 states. The newest location in Columbia, South Carolina is expected to open in the BullStreet District by early 2024. [13]
In 2014, Tupelo Honey Cafe opened a location in Johnson City, Tennessee. This location was in the renovated Clinchfield Railroad train depot that featured a 16-foot train model replica of the city during the 1940s. [14] This location subsequently closed in 2018.
Tupelo Honey Cafe was featured on Rachael Ray's $40 a Day show on the Food Network on November 14, 2004. [15] Kita Vermond of The Globe and Mail , in her search for culinary treasures in North Carolina wrote of the restaurant serving traditional foods with a healthy twist, such as fried green tomatoes dished over goat-cheese grits and basil. [16]
The cuisine of the Southern United States encompasses diverse food traditions of several subregions, including Tidewater, Appalachian, Lowcountry, Cajun, Creole, and Floribbean cuisine. In recent history, elements of Southern cuisine have spread to other parts the United States, influencing other types of American cuisine.
Asheville is a city in, and the county seat of, Buncombe County, North Carolina. Located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the state's 11th-most populous city. According to the 2020 census, the city's population was 94,589, up from 83,393 in the 2010 census. It is the principal city in the four-county Asheville metropolitan area, which had a population of 424,858 in 2010, and of 469,015 in 2020.
The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) is an American private college and culinary school specializing in culinary, baking, and pastry arts education. The school's primary campus is located in Hyde Park, New York, with branch campuses in St. Helena and Napa, California; San Antonio, Texas; and Singapore. The college, which was the first to teach culinary arts in the United States, offers associate, bachelor's, and master's degrees, and has the largest staff of American Culinary Federation Certified Master Chefs. The CIA also offers continuing education for professionals in the hospitality industry as well as conferences and consulting services. The college additionally offers recreational classes for non-professionals. The college operates student-run restaurants on its four U.S. campuses.
Tyler Florence is a chef and television host of several Food Network shows. He graduated from the College of Culinary Arts at the Charleston, South Carolina, campus of Johnson & Wales University in 1991. He was later given an honorary doctorate from the university for his culinary success. He is the owner and executive chef of Wayfare Tavern in San Francisco.
California-style pizza is a style of pizza that combines New York and Italian thin crust with toppings from the California cuisine cooking style. Its invention is generally attributed to chef Ed LaDou, and Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California. Wolfgang Puck, after meeting LaDou, popularized the style of pizza in the rest of the country. It is served in many California Cuisine restaurants. Such restaurant chains as California Pizza Kitchen, Round Table Pizza, Extreme Pizza, and Sammy's Woodfired Pizza are four major pizza franchises associated with California-style pizza.
Edna Regina Lewis was a renowned American chef, teacher, and author who helped refine the American view of Southern cooking. She championed the use of fresh, in season ingredients and characterized Southern food as fried chicken, pork, and fresh vegetables – most especially greens. She wrote and co-wrote four books which covered Southern cooking and life in a small community of freed slaves and their descendants.
Daniel Boulud is a French chef and restaurateur with restaurants in New York City, Palm Beach, Miami, Toronto, Montréal, Singapore, the Bahamas, the Berkshires and Dubai. He is best known for his eponymous restaurant Daniel, in New York City, which currently holds two Michelin stars.
José Ramón Andrés Puerta is a Spanish-American chef and restaurateur. He owns restaurants in several cities around the United States, and has won a number of awards, both for his cooking, and for his humanitarian work.
Charles David Ayers, Jr. is an American chef, cookbook author, and restaurateur. He is the former executive chef for Google, from 1999 until 2006. His work there was widely publicized in the media, and David Vise's corporate history The Google Story contains an entire chapter about him called "Charlie's Place." By the time he left Google in 2006, Ayers and his team of five chefs and 150 employees were serving 4,000 daily lunches and dinners in 10 cafes across the company's headquarters campus in Mountain View, California.
S&W Cafeteria was a Charlotte, North Carolina-based chain of cafeteria-style restaurants. The chain specialized in low-cost, Southern-style food. Branches were located in the Southeastern United States from Washington, D.C. to Atlanta, Georgia.
Firestorm Books & Coffee is a worker-owned and self-managed "anti-capitalist business" in Asheville, North Carolina. Named after the firestorm, this infoshop operates with an eye on creating a sustainable, radical community event space. Firestorm features regular events, such as film screenings, political and economic teach-ins, local and traveling musicians and community workshops.
The Bon Marché Building of Asheville, North Carolina, now the Haywood Park Hotel, was built in 1923 by E.W. Grove for the store's owner, Solomon Lipinsky. This was several years before Grove began construction on nearby Grove Arcade, one of Asheville's most famous architectural landmarks. The Bon Marché building was designed by W.L. Stoddart, a hotel architect who also designed the Battery Park Hotel and Vanderbilt Hotel.
Hugh Acheson is a Canadian-born chef and restaurateur. He owns four restaurants in Georgia, and serves as a judge on the reality cooking competition show Top Chef, and as an Iron Chef on Iron Chef Canada.
Ronni Lundy, is an American author and editor, whose work focuses on traditional Southern American foods, Appalachian foods, and music.
Roy Choi is a Korean-American chef who gained prominence as the creator of the gourmet Korean-Mexican taco truck Kogi. Choi is a chef who is celebrated for "food that isn't fancy" and is known as one of the founders of the gourmet food truck movement. In 2019, Choi began presenting a cooking series on Netflix with Jon Favreau titled The Chef Show.
Robert Danhi is an American research chef and food writer specializing in Southeast Asian Cuisine. Danhi is also the author of the James Beard finalist cookbook Southeast Asian Flavors.
Vivian Howard is an American chef, restaurateur, author and television host. From 2013 to 2018, Howard hosted the PBS television series A Chef's Life focusing on the ingredients and cooking traditions of eastern North Carolina — using the backdrop of the Chef & the Farmer restaurant in Kinston, North Carolina, which Howard co-owns with her husband and business partner, artist Ben Knight. In 2014, Howard was the first woman since Julia Child to win a Peabody Award for a cooking program. In 2017, she authored the cookbook-memoir Deep Run Roots.
Edward Lee is a Brooklyn-born celebrity chef, author and restauranteur. He has made numerous television appearances on shows including The Mind of a Chef and Top Chef as well as a judge on Gordon Ramsay's Culinary Genius. He is a nine-time James Beard Award nominee, owns multiple restaurants throughout the United States and the Caribbean, and is the author of two award winning books Buttermilk Graffiti and Smoke and Pickles.
Katie Button is an American chef and restaurateur. She holds the title of Executive Chef and CEO of the restaurant group Katie Button Restaurants which includes Cúrate Bar de Tapas and La Bodega by Cúrate located in Asheville, North Carolina.. She also operates an online Spanish food market, Cúrate at Home, and a culinary travel company, Cúrate Trips.
Ashleigh Shanti is an American chef and sommelier. She is a freelance chef and was the chef de cuisine of Benne on Eagle in Asheville, North Carolina. Shanti specializes in African American foodways, including Black Appalachian cuisine.
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