The Tupelo Honey Cafe

We are looking forward to our first ever trip to Knoxville’s Biscuit Festival this weekend! Chef Brian has been sharpening his biscuit cutter and we’re ready to rumble down Biscuit Boulevard. He’s making Tupelo biscuits with his fantastic pimento cheese, which we think is a great combination – plus it’s orange-ish!  Please stop by and say hello.

You will also find a new offering at our booth – our Sweet As Pecan Pie card. We are selling only 500 of these beauties and they are exclusive to our Knoxville restaurant. The card is loaded with $400 worth of Tupelo credit FOR ONLY $300! That’s a 33 percent return on your money! The card functions just like a gift card. Additionally, you will receive a 20 percent discount in our on-line store through 2012 on orders of $50 or more. You’ll also receive a complimentary copy of our beautiful cookbook and invitations to our special events and dinners. When was the last time you gave someone $300 for a $400 gift card?  

And if you haven’t already joined our Shoo Mercy Loyalty Club, you can do that at our tent as well. It’s free and entitles you to a free meal on your birthday and on your anniversary – plus points and discounts at any Tupelo Honey Cafe.  When you sign up,
you’re automatically entered to win our Grand Opening Sweepstakes – two seats at our grand opening event, a night at the beautiful Oliver Hotel and $200 credit in our on-line store plus $100 in credit in our restaurant.

We’re eagerly watching changes happen at our new Knoxville address at 1 Market Square. It’s exciting to see things beginning to come together, and we are anxious to move in and start those ovens.

After months of plotting and planning, Tupelo Honey Cafe is happy to announce our new Pimento Cheese of the Month Club! We are really excited about this new way to enjoy a little Tupelo Honey at home, and it is perfect for last minute drop overs, afternoon drinks on the porch, a delicious (and convenient) appetizer, or snacks in front of the big game on the big screen.

We’re also thrilled to be partnering with two terrific Asheville partners – Hickory Nut Gap Farm, which is providing us with fantastic charcuterie, and Roots and Branches, who make wonderful artisanal (and vegan) crackers.  Our opinion is that this club is also the perfect gift for just about anyone on your list and to celebrate just about any occasion under the sun. It’s also the perfect gift to give yourself!

To subscribe to our PC of the Month Club, click here.  You’ll receive a shipment delivered to your door every other month, with each month featuring a different PC concoction from Chef Brian, a different type of charcuterie from HNG and a package of R&B crackers. We’re eager to hear what you think! All shipments are guaranteed or you get a full refund – and you can resign from the club whenever you wish and receive a refund for your balance of shipments.

At Tupelo Honey, we’re wild about our Pate of the South.

I was fortunate to be part of a Tupelo Honey contingency who got to spend yesterday visiting the Tri-Cities, just north of Asheville – Bristol, Virginia and Bristol, Tennessee, Johnson City and Kingsport, Tennessee. We were overwhelmed with the warm welcome and the remarkable hospitality that is unique to our Mountain South, a hospitality that is indeed Southern, and yet has its own singular personality.

Folks who live in our beautiful mountains are just as welcoming and friendly as other parts of the South, but they are somehow also markedly industrious, pragmatic and dependable. I believe it comes from a long Appalachian tradition of both determined self-reliance and loyalty to home, family and neighbors. People in our region are also preternaturally generous to one another and proud of their communities.  We saw this repeatedly
during our visit.

The Tri-Cities good-naturedly admits they profess a certain “co-opetition,” a friendly nod to their commitment to the ideas of both cooperation between the communities and a healthy competitive drive between the cities.  We heard this over and over: “We want you in our city, but please come to the Tri-Cities area, regardless of where you choose.” We’re definitely coming! And we appreciate the acknowledgement that borders, city limits and state lines are all arbitrary when it comes to being good neighbors.

All of us at Tupelo felt honored to be a part of such an amazing day in the Tri-cities area and want to thank everyone for making us feel so welcome!

Thank you, Knoxville! We had a fantastic time this past
weekend at Knoxville’s Dogwood Arts Festival on Market Square (our future
home)! The hospitality was amazing, and we were thrilled to meet so many of you
who came by to say hello and sign up for our Shoo Mercy Club, our loyalty club
that rewards you with special offers on your birthday and anniversary as well
as other discounts. You will also receive our monthly e-newsletter, detailing
all you need to know about Tupelo!

And speaking of rewards, how gratifying to hear so much
enthusiasm for our new restaurant in Knoxville! We’re excited about it as well,
and we’ve already started buying things – including some beautiful pieces from
our future neighbors at Bliss Home and our around-the-corner neighbor Yee Haw.
Chef Brian did a demonstration in the new Publix demonstration area, which was
gorgeous! All in all, it was a rocking good time, and we can’t wait to come
back for Biscuit Fest!

The season for farmers’ markets has started across the South, and folks are coming out of the woodwork in search of early spring crops and products – mountain ramps, spring onions, early spinach and lettuces, swiss chard, some early strawberries, fresh eggs and local cheeses, artisanal breads. It’s our favorite time for cornucopian celebration!

We are fortunate to have a thriving farmers’ market and tailgate market community in and around Asheville, and we look forward to getting to know the farmer’s market that will take place right outside our front door on Market Square in Knoxville. Talk about farm to table! Chef Brian has been in discussion with several Knoxville area farms and we hope to spotlight some of them on an ongoing basis.

In the Asheville area, our farming community is often connected with the restaurant community through the wonderful work of a great organization here – the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project with the likely website address of www.asapconnections.org

Our farms and farmers are critical to our local economies and to our connection to fresh, flavorful food. So get out there and support them at your local tailgate markets! And enjoy the wonderful fruits of their labor.

Go Big Orange! Look at the progress we’re making at 1 Market Square, future home of Tupelo Honey Cafe Knoxville! We are getting more and more excited about our new digs and look forward to meeting, greeting and feeding all of our fans.

Want to get a jump-start? Be ahead of the hunger game?  We will be at the Dogwood Arts Festival April 13-15 and you can come by and sign up for our Shoo Mercy Club, a loyalty club for all things Tupelo. It’s free, super easy and will set you up with special celebratory offers for birthdays and anniversaries, as well as add you to the list of in-the-know Tupelo Honey friends. When you sign up, you’ll also be automatically entered to win our VIP Grand Opening Prize – an overnight at The Oliver, a $100 gift card to Tupelo Honey Cafe, an autographed cookbook and a $200 gift certificate to our on-line store!

Also, look for our Executive Chef Brian Sonoskus, who will be demonstrating his culinary creativity during the festival on Saturday from 12:30 – 1:15. Please come by and say hey!

Next month – April 11 to be exact – Chef Brian will be collaborating with our friend Jamie Ager of Hickory Nut Gap Farm as part of EarthFare’s Itty Bitty Bites Program. Mr. Guyers’ 4^th grade class from Estes Elementary will visit Jamie’s farm, learn about his family’s history on the farm, and visit the family’s homestead, affectionately known as “The Big House.” The class will take a tour of the farm and learn about the animals, how they are cared for and how the farm operates. The group will end up at The Big House, which was originally a stagecoach stop-over and inn and is now one of the oldest residences in Western North Carolina.

The purpose of the field trip is to teach the students a little about what is required to run a livestock farm and how its food is brought to market. They will also gain an understanding of the care and feeding of the animals and how they fit within the food chain. When they arrive at The Big House, Chef Brian will do a cooking demonstration and teach them about the proper methods for cooking Hickory Nut Gap Farm pork.

Whether you’re an omnivore or a vegetarian, it’s important to know where your food comes from and, in the case of meat products, how the source animal is treated and raised.  We appreciate the opportunity to participate in this great learning experience and thank EarthFare for connecting us with the students at Estes.

Our very own Elizabeth Sims co-authored our cookbook, Tupelo Honey Cafe: Spirited Recipes From Asheville’s New South Kitchen, with Chef Brian Sonoskus.  What you may not know about Elizabeth, is that she is former president of the Southern Foodways Alliance, an organization that studies, celebrates and documents the foodways, cultures and traditions of the South.

Next month, she’ll be at the Converse College “Okra2Opera” Conference on Southern Culture.  Yesterday, Greenville station WSPA interviewed her about the conference and about Tupelo’s cookbook.  Watch it here.

Once a year, we all wear green and raise a pint o’ something to the Irish. Some Southern cities take St. Patrick’s Day quite seriously – Savannah, GA and Jackson, MS, come to mind. It’s a meaningful day for Asheville and Western North Carolina because so much of our heritage is wrapped up in Celtic traditions, including our mountain music and clogging – a traditional dance brought across the Pond all those hundreds of years ago.

One of the ways we wear green at Tupelo Honey is our efforts in being certified by the Green Restaurant Association. Naturally, we strive to connect with our local farms in bringing you the freshest produce around (and emphasizing our green footprint). But we do other things as well. Our Director of Store Operations Alan Wolf was just interviewed about our green-ness, in fact. Check it out here:

GO GREEN!

Installation is complete! As part of our green initiative, we’ve just installed a Therma-Stor Heat Recovery System. It takes heat from the refrigeration units and heats water before it goes to the hot water heater. Now that “waste heat” isn’t wasted! This new system…..It’s another way Tupelo Honey Cafe is staying true to our green selves! See the photos:

Do you remember the drawing we had for folks who threw a little Tupelo Honey party at home? Our winners – an amazing group of Atlanta-area foodies – came to Asheville this past weekend to claim their prize: a stay at Montford’s Applewood Manor Inn, a trip to Biltmore, and, of course, LOTS of Tupelo. Here are some photos of the good times. Think they had fun?

Our dinner at Tupelo could not have been better (pic 4287).  Tried as we might, we didn’t get to try everything on the menuL.  Guess that means we have to come backJ!

Our waiter, Trevor and Chef Igor were great.

While we had a great Tupelo Honey Cafe party at home cooking from the book- the “real deal” was better.   In a word- Incredible!!!

We loved the Biltmore tour and walking all those stairs helped us build up an appetite for our celebration Tupelo dinner.

Tupelo’s teaming up with Applewood Manor Inn B&B was a great idea.  Nancy and Larry treat their guests like family – - although I am not sure that when Larry said we could come to breakfast in our robes that he thought we would do it.

Thank you Barbara and friends for spreading the Tupelo Honey Cafe spirit!