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Tastefully Curated to open next month on North Trade Street

 

TRYON—For those of you who miss Huckleberry’s restaurant after it left downtown Tryon in the fall of ’22, a taste of it is returning to Tryon this spring. Huckleberry’s will operate alongside another restaurant called Chef Sharone in a building called “Tastefully Curated” at 90 North Trade Street. It’s a new trend in the hospitality industry called a collaborative commercial kitchen.

“Hospitality owners work together in the same space,” says Christine Cowles, who does marketing for Huckleberry’s. “They run their businesses entirely separate soup to nuts whether it’s employees, ordering, policies and procedures but they’re sharing the space and that allows them to do things like cross-utilize equipment, maybe join forces to do some bulk buying to reduce some of their food costs. Sometimes, it might allow you to cross-utilize employees if you have a shortage or someone is sick or you have a larger event and you need more staff.”

Cowles says the idea is to work together to deal with some of the industry’s current challenges like labor shortages, rising food and utility costs and finding suitable spaces to operate. 

Michaila Cowles Lawter opened Huckleberry’s in Lake Lure in 2010 and moved it to downtown Tryon in 2014. She closed the Tryon location in October 2022 and has been operating Huckleberry’s out of a food truck and doing events. Sharone English has worked at several restaurants in the area and will operate Chef Sharone, which will offer premade items from soups and salads to take-and-bake dinners. At Huckleberry’s, customers will order off the menu with meals made on-site that can be eaten at outdoor tables or taken to go. 

“It’s centrally located in downtown Tryon, and it’s on the pedestrian side so they’re going to do a lot of events like cooking classes, some private chef-to-table dinners, food tastings, things like that that will help draw tourism back to the area,” says Cowles.

Lawter and English have renovated the building and are moving commercial kitchen equipment in the next week. They hope to be open by the third week of April.