It’s not just the Triangle’s population that is expanding; in recent years, our local food culture has bloomed and evolved, too. Consumer demand seems to be at an all-time high for local, responsibly sourced produce and products, making homegrown eats and drinks a rapidly growing segment of the food industry.
Take a look around, and you’ll find thoughtful and impassioned artisans operating with guild-like adherence to crafts, steeped in both ancient and new techniques, ingredients, and processes. These days, much of what you consume can come from somewhere local, linked to a face you can recognize and a hand you can shake.
We took a look around and selected ten of our favorite outstanding food artisans and their wares, from a one-woman, part-time show to a family-run company that has gone international.
FAIR GAME’S FLYING PEPPER TOBAGO VODKA
Sitting in the cozy tasting room of Pittsboro’s Fair Game Beverage Company, Chris Jude is quick with his response about the company’s local ingredients. Jude, the head distiller for this maker of spirits and wines, references his latest concoction, the Flying Pepper Tobago Vodka. Fair Game doesn’t distill its own vodka, so Jude sources it from Chapel Hill’s Top of the Hill Distillery. TOPO’s acclaimed vodka comes from organic, soft red winter wheat.
“TOPO was a natural fit for Fair Game because it’s an American-made product and, just like us, they celebrate ingredients grown here in North Carolina,” explains Jude, who landed in Pittsboro to work at Piedmont Biofuels after graduating from Appalachian State with a degree in biofuels technology.
Jude also found that the particularly sweet flavor profile of the crystal-clear spirit balanced well with the smoky, rich tobago peppers. Jude first encountered the little prune-shaped wonders seven years ago through Doug “Dr. Pepper” Jones, a local organic farmer for four decades.
“It had a mysterious, fascinating flavor,” remembers Jude.
Enamored, he began to grow his own tobagos, which possess the complex, fruity flavors of habañeros without the burn. When he finally steeped the pepper in vodka, he knew after one sip he was on to something.
Sourcing an adequate supply of local tobagos proved a challenge, though. After many calls and emails, he found five North Carolina farmers to satisfy his demand after the end of this summer’s growing season. He plans for a bumper crop in August. After more sleuthing, Jude, who learned that the pepper is popular in Cuban cuisine, found a specialist near Miami who will fill the gap until then.
As head distiller, Jude has been able to combine his scientific training with a passion for regional farming and sustainability.
“I perfected the science of my distilling and fermenting craft in renewable energy,” says Jude. “And now I get to mix in the passionate, creative side of making something delicious and homegrown.”
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BOXCARR HANDMADE CHEESE’S LISSOME
Just north of Hillsborough, a family of first-generation cheese makers is quickly gaining national popularity. In 2014, Samantha Genke and her brother, Austin, turned their dream of owning a business together into Boxcarr Handmade Cheese.
At twenty-one, Samantha managed the cheese department for a Whole Foods in Florida. Her work sparked an interest in cheese making, so the company allowed her to go on sabbatical at Climax’s Goat Lady Dairy. She went on to work as a cheese maker at Chapel Hill Creamery. As Samantha was perfecting her craft, Austin followed another path in the food industry. After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in New York, he headed to Las Vegas and eventually worked at Mario Batali’s B&B Ristorante at The Venetian.
The siblings remained close and, finally, in 2009, realized they were meant to work together. Samantha had noticed a growing area demand for local food. Her passion convinced Austin and his wife, Dani, who bought a farm north of Hillsborough, naming it Boxcarr Farm. The family farmed, raised chickens and pigs, and refurbished a dilapidated food truck they used to sell fresh pastas and tacos.
“We were building a name,” says Austin, “but we were stretched too thin. We didn’t know what to focus on.”
They elected to go with cheese, cobbling together money and building a cheese-making facility on the farm. They took their very first batch to New York and quickly built accounts. With the help of Alessandra Trompeo, a native Italian cheese maker, Boxcarr now produces several unique milk cheeses, including the runny and chalky Rocket’s Robiola, the smoky and crumbly Campo, and the creamy and fruity Lissome, a little like taleggio. Smooth and imposing, it looks almost as beautiful as it tastes.
“What makes our cheeses unique is that, although we do adhere to recipes used by American cheese makers, we’ve reined in wild and unpredictable culture combinations,” Samantha says. “We could have played it safe with our cultures, but we took some risks, and it has paid off.”
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TWO CHICKS FARM PICKLES
Many dream of making a living through idyllic pursuits on their own terms. At Hillsborough’s Two Chicks Farm, Audrey Lin and Debbie Donnald did that by quitting their day jobs and learning to make pickles.
The pair met more than two decades ago while working in Research Triangle Park. Eventually, Lin’s engineering career led them to Austin, Texas, where she began to feel an itch to start her own business. At the same time, Donnald began working at a garden center and discovered a new passion. In 2005, the two returned to North Carolina to be near Donnald’s family in Durham, where they noticed substantial new growth in local food.
“We’d go to farmers markets,” remembers Donnald, “and see that people were buying up anything grown locally and made fresh.”
The women took the plunge and launched their own farm, selling their vegetables at local farmers markets. They learned how to pickle the leftovers and eventually turned to fermentation. By 2010, the duo farmed vegetables specifically for homemade kraut, kimchi, pepper jelly, and pickles. Weaver Street Market began stocking Two Chicks products, and sales exploded. Their farm still provides almost all of the vegetables needed for their goods, from cabbage and turmeric to cucumbers and dill.
Although their products are gaining national attentiontheir kimchi and dill pickles recently won Good Food AwardsLin and Donnald remain focused on quality.
“We’ve grown slowly on purpose,” says Donnald. “It’s all about quality control on our farm and in our kitchen. Sometimes that means selling out of a product during a growing season. But our customers wait patiently for the next batch, because it’s worth it.”
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JOIE DE VEGAN’S FRUIT TARTS
After years of health struggles and doctor visits, Christiane Voisin was finally diagnosed with a load of food allergies in 2003corn and milk, even a sensitivity to wheat. Her doctor advised her to cut processed sugar from her diet. After she made the changes, she felt better but had one new problem: her favorite part of any meal was dessert.
“Necessity is the mother of invention, and I wanted dessert,” affirms Voisin. “There were so few gluten-free and vegan options in the Triangle that I decided to learn how to make them myself.”
Her first foray came when she entered a baking contest held for employees at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill library. Her mint truffle brownies won in the “healthiest” category, and the victory inspired her to keep experimenting. She now operates Joie de Vegan from Durham’s co-op kitchen, The Cookery, sourcing several ingredients locally and taking most of her orders online. The current menu includes more than a dozen items, but she works with customers to tailor desserts to their tastes and dietary needs.
Those have led to some wild ideas, including green tea wintermelon cupcakes, but her most popular items are chocolate chunk cinnamon brownies and cream tarts with seasonal fruit. They’re so good, you’ll never notice the dietary limitations.
“The vegan community in the Triangle is still small, so people quickly get to know the bakers and restaurants who can accommodate their dietary restrictions,” she says. “I don’t see their needs as restrictions because this food is delicious in its own right.”
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SWEET PEAS URBAN GARDENS’ MICROGREENS
Tami Purdue says that growing seasonal produce inside Raleigh’s beltlineenough to supply major commercial accounts and busy area restaurants, evenis no problem for Sweet Peas Urban Gardens. Along with her business partner, Julie Gauthier, Purdue grows nearly two dozen vegetables and herbs in her backyard with two “tiny” twists: The plants are microgreens, or nutrient-dense baby crops harvested with their first true leaves. And two, the entire farm exists inside a CropBox, a shipping container retrofitted with a hydroponic growing system she monitors via iPhone.
Purdue became interested in microgreens when she first noticed them on her plate. They were more than a garnish, and they added to the dish’s flavor. Her curiosity led her to an Inter-Faith Food Shuttle class on urban farming. After twenty years managing a successful law practice, she made the shift and began selling her microgreens at local markets. In 2012, while researching microgreens, she found Gauthier, a veterinarian and U.S. Department of Agriculture employee who also sold microgreens. Purdue reached out for advice, and the two quickly realized they were both interested in urban gardening. Their joint business took a major positive turn when The Produce Box, a North Carolina produce-delivery service, added their crops.
Noticing that the restaurant scene was exploding in downtown Raleigh, Sweet Peas’ farming recruit, Evan Bost, decided to call on chefs before lunch or dinner shifts, produce in hand. Hot spots like Garland, Fiction Kitchen, Death & Taxes, more., and Gravy now have Sweet Peas microgreens delivered to their door, usually within two hours of being harvested.
“Container gardening in urban spaces isn’t just a trend,” says Purdue. “It’s changing what, where, how, and when we grow produce.”
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VINTAGE BEE’S CREAMED HONEY
What began as a part-time job for Laura Tapp has evolved into an international venture: Vintage Bee. After she lost her job in 2010, Tapp’s husband, Van, suggested she work with his father, Jack, on a small but lucrative business selling beekeeping equipment online. Jack, who started keeping bees as a hobby in 1985, had spent a decade perfecting a recipe for raw creamed honey, a whipped spread. He made it in his basement and sold it on the weekends.
“Unfortunately,” says Tapp, “none of us knew anything about large-scale production or how to get it into stores.”
Laura went to work, scouring the Internet for advice and directly contacting producers. She began to think in terms larger than the five-gallon bucket and the single drill press Jack had used. Soon, big companies such as Southern Season, Harris Teeter, and Lowes Foods began to pick up the products. In six years, the family has gone from producing fifty cases a week to 250 a day. Overseas demand for American honey, especially in China, provided another boon.
“I went from wondering how we were going to pay the next electric bill,” Tapp remembers, “to flying around the world placing our product.”
In addition to the current twelve fruit- and spice-flavored creamed honeys, they offer raw liquid honey, all sourced from hives in the Southeast. Even with such large-scale production, Vintage Bee continues to eschew syrups and extracts and remains a family-owned business.
“There’s blood, sweat, and tears in this venture every day,” says Tapp, “but I just keep in mind that it was a true calling.”
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J. BETSKI’S SAUSAGES
John Korzekwinski’s ten-year-old restaurant, J. Betski’s, doesn’t rest on its laurels. For the past decade, the German-Polish eatery, tucked into a quiet corner of Raleigh’s Seaboard Station, has remained a favorite among foodies, seasoned local chefs, and food-industry veterans. J. Betski’s has consistently stuck to its East European roots, too, serving up Old World cuisine with innovative European flair.
“I’ve got a dedicated staff that never stops tweaking what we do,” says Korzekwinski. “A lot of my employees have been with me since the beginning. Together we’ve been completely focused on building a solid, stable brand.”
That consistency and quality are clear in a couple of perennial favorites: two pierogi varieties and three sausagesbratwurst, smoked kielbasa, and regular kielbasa. The recipes for J. Betski’s sausages are based on family recipes, including one for kielbasa that stems from his great-uncle, a Polish butcher in Queens. All of the meat comes from Heritage Farms in Seven Springs, seventy miles away.
Korzekwinski recently made his first foray into retail sales, offering the same sausages from his menu for sale at Orrman’s Cheese Shop, a gourmet grocery in Raleigh’s busy Lafayette Village shopping center. The shop stocks a freshly made batch of J. Betski’s sausages every week.
“I’m going to see how this goes,” says Korzekwinski. “If there is a demand for our product and I can meet that demand with the same quality we offer at the restaurant, then we will grow this new side of the business.”
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TEMPEH GIRL’S TEMPEH
When Beth May earned her master’s degree in biological and agricultural engineering, she had every intention of continuing her research in fungi. But life presented her with a different path, one that included two children and a husband. Soon after graduating in California, she found herself living in New Hampshire, staying at home, and caring for her family. While May reared her children, she read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which inspired her to move her family to a place where people were growing, producing, and celebrating food. In 2006, after some Internet research, she chose Carrboro.
Soon after moving, May read about tempeh, a fermented whole soybean cake that’s a staple of vegetarian cooking. She realized tempeh production perfectly combined her interest in food production and her scientific training. She bought a giant batch of beans from Whole Foods and began crafting Tempeh Girl at, of all places, the Chapel Hill barbecue bastion The Pig. What made May’s tempeh unique was her choice to pre-ferment the beans, creating lactic acid before cooking. Almost all American tempeh producers, she says, skip the step by adding an acid to speed up the production process.
She began selling small batches of her product to local grocery stores and soon needed more space for production. She set up shop at Hillsborough’s Piedmont Food & Agriculture Processing Center. All her beans are sourced from nearby Hickory Meadows Organics in Nash County.
“Using science,” says May, “has allowed me to supply food that consumers can trace from start to finish. I’m proud of that. I did what I set out to do.”
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BOLD SAUCES’ SEVEN
Chris Tamplin, a longtime Raleigh resident known as a bartender and rock-club booking agent, is also the mastermind behind the hot sauce Seven. Tamplin made Seven for the first time when a friend had a surplus of peppers in the garden. She gifted him a grocery bag overflowing with poblanos, habañeros, jalapeños, and a few others he likes to keep secret.
“With the very first batch,” remembers Tamplin, “I knew I was on to something. It was spicy yet sweet, beyond good.”
The proud cook shared samples with friends, who agreed he should sell it. Instead, he bottled it and gave it away as gifts. One recipient, the graphic designer and poster artist Chris Williams, liked Seven so much he designed a label for Tamplin. (Disclosure: Williams works at the INDY.)
Unemployed at the time, Tamplin approached his former employer, Pete Pagano, owner of the Irish pub Tir Na Nog, to ask for permission to use his kitchen. Pagano agreed. During one of Tir Na Nog’s Local Band Local Beer concerts, Tamplin sold close to a hundred bottles from the trunk of his car. A few days later, Pagano called him and asked him if he wanted to take on three business partners. They formed Bold Sauces.
At one point, Bold Sauces was selling seven to ten cases each week. But just as demand ramped up, Tir Na Nog shuttered. Production has been at a standstill since late last year, but the partnership has now secured an established professional kitchen space and will soon begin batching Seven again. Tamplin will continue to source his peppers from small farms near the Triangleand, of course, from friends with too much produce in their gardens.
www.facebook.com/sevenhotsauce
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ROSE’S MEAT MARKET & SWEET SHOP’S CHARCUTERIE
The idea for Rose’s Meat Market & Sweet Shop in Durham formed when Justin and Katie Meddis were still shelling out big bucks for rent in San Francisco. They decided it was time to quit working for other people and combine their culinary talents. The couple had spent years in the food-service industryJustin as a chef and butcher, Katie as a pastry chef. They’d even met while working at Charleston’s Cypress, a fine dining restaurant known for house-cured meats and hams.
“We had a great run in San Francisco,” says Justin, “but we always knew at some point we wanted to strike out on our own.”
Expensive real estate and a saturated food scene led the couple to consider other cities. After attending the North Carolina Choices’ Carolina Meat Conference, the pair visited Katie’s parents in Carrboro. They scoped out local commercial real estate and realized Durham was both affordable and ready for more fresh pastries and locally sourced niche meats.
“We found that people wanted to know where their food comes from, and there is care and responsibility in how the meat they buy is handled,” Justin remembers.
Since opening in June 2013, Justin and Katie have increased charcuterie offerings from eight to twenty-five. They offer whole animal butchery, sausage making, curing courses, catering, and pop-up dinners. And their homemade ice cream sandwichesmade with imaginative flavors like lemon buttermilk, black sesame and candied orange, and matcha green teahave become the stuff of local lore.
“Our core values were drilled into us when working in restaurants. Always be consistent and grow your quality,” says Justin, noting they both work seventy hours a week to advance their standards. “Never move backward.” •
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