A favorite Sylva gathering spot returns
From my table I caught a quick glimpse down an unlikely sightline — framed just so by some plants and interior drapes, down a hallway, and through a cracked door — of a baker’s table. On the table was a wedding cake, and the cake was being carefully decorated by two hands. The hands were all I could see.
The owner of those baker’s hands would one day become my wife, and we would come to own a house across the street from the cafe, where we live today with our three girls.
Spring Street, which has been closed for nearly a year, will soon open again under the ownership of former employee Emily Elders, a Cullowhee native. One of her ideas for an advertisement is a group shot of kids that have sprung from the many friends that have surrounded the cafe for the past ten years. (It better be a big ad).
All along, Spring Street Cafe has held a particular niche in Sylva’s lively-for-a-small-town restaurant scene.
First, in the nineties, it was City Lights Cafe, a small eatery attached to the bookstore upstairs, and under the proprietorship of Joyce and Allen Moore.
About a decade ago it was expanded into it’s full service self by Faye Holliday, whose culinary flair traces at least a little of its lineage to Asheville’s Hector Diaz, owner of the eclectic and popular eateries Salsa’s, Zambra and others.
Holliday and her unusually loyal (for food service) crew built a strong following through wild explorations of fresh local and world cuisines, and Tuesday night old time jam sessions and Sunday brunches were de rigueur among a certain Sylva social set.
Faye’s slow food influence can now be felt in a number of kitchens in the southern mountains.
Holliday sold the place to Lisa Agee a few years back, and Agee, whose desserts were quite a calling card, closed her business last spring, a victim of the economic malaise.
Enter Ms. Elders. As a single mom, a student and director of the Jackson County Greenways Project, you’d think she might have enough on her plate to worry about what’s on everybody else’s, but she’s game. She and a band of volunteers have been sprucing the place up in preparation for a January 26 opening.
“I’m very much inspired by Faye’s ideals,” Elders says. “We’ll be as local and as organic as we can be. My goal right away is to keep price points down, and bring back a lot of the items people remember and love.”
Elders has assembled a crew of former employees and a front-of-the-house manager that’ll be familiar to Sylva folks: Michael Redmon has been a longtime employee of Annie’s Bakery.
Several of the specifics that fans of the place remember will return, sushi Wednesdays and Sunday brunch among them. In addition, Elders and new City Lights Bookstore owner Chris Wilcox hope to develop a more symbiotic relationship than the two businesses have shared before. The cafe’s hours will be much closer to those of the bookstore, and the bookstore will open on Sunday afternoons.
Spring Street will hit the ground running, events-wise. Elders will host a Chamber of Commerce business after hours on January 28th, and will open for business the next day.
Book-signings and an art opening are already on the schedule for February.
Tags: Asheville, Business, city lights bookstore, Food, food service, Spring Street Cafe, Sylva
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Great story, Bill. I’ll check it out next time in Sylva!
Fantastic! I was crushed when we were heading to dinner there one evening and found it closed. Definitely one of the best places around…hope the quality continues.