The Southern Highland Reader

Every town worth its grinds needs a coffee magnate, and now Sylva has one.

John Bubacz, owner of Signature Brew Coffee Company and Bubacz’s Underground on Main Street has purchased the competition — Shot in the Dark Cafe — from Lucy Silverman and Justin Goble.

Silverman and Goble were recently married, and she has taken work in Durham. Goble’s departure will be felt on both ends of Main Street, as he is also a workhorse reporter for the Sylva Herald newspaper.

Bubacz, who roasts his own joe at Signature Brew, will reopen Thursday, January 21.

“I’ll move my coffee roaster up there in due time,” says Bubacz, “but we’ll immediately offer fresh pastries, organic fair trade coffee and espresso, snacks and grab-and-go lunch. We will be open 7am-6pm Monday-Thursday with weekend hours TBA.”

Bubacz opened Wha Cha Want Bodega on the WCU campus in 2001, and combined that business with Sylva’s Juice Junkie in 2002. He moved the whole shebang to its current location at the Underground in 2006.

Once, about ten years ago, I was having lunch at a Sylva restaurant called the Spring Street Cafe.

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.

MURPHY–Dwight Otwell, staff writer for the Cherokee Scout in Murphy, reported recently about efforts made by mountain farmers to diversify and to profit from niche crops.

Agriculture has dwindled rapidly in the mountains, where farmers face not only the standard competition from industrial farming, but the added challenge of a lack of flat land.

Otwell’s lead:

Farmers who make their entire livelihood from working the land are almost a relic from the past in Cherokee County.

As the number of large farms has steadily dwindled, a new type of farmer has emerged, one who can forge a living from an acre or two growing for a specialty market.

He goes on to interview a vintner, a dairy farmer and vegetable farmers, all of whom are using innovative methods to make their famrs work.

Another excerpt:

A new type of market is using the Internet to sell products to high-end restaurants or consumers. The main market for this area is Atlanta.

The idea is that a chef gets the fresh produce he wants the next day, Wood said. The chef knows the farm the produce comes from and he trusts it. A person with as little as a half acre of land willing to grow specialty crops can make $20,000 to $30,000 an acre.

Read Otwell’s story in the Scout here.

DILLSBORO–This story, in which Constance Richards writes up Barry Kennon’s tiki bar party spot outside his house on the Tuckasegee near Dillsboro, first ran in the August edition of swanky WNC Magazine.

It’s been posted online since, so, given that party journalism pieces are few and far between in the mountains, it obviously needed sharing.

Kennon, a championship kayaker, modeled his tiki bar after one he knew in Costa Rica, and built it around his boat takeout.

Here’s an excerpt:

As more decorations go up, including tiki totems and palm leaves, Dieter Kuhn, Sylva’s resident brewmeister and owner of Heinzelmännchen Brewery, takes the B.Y.O.B. standard to a master’s level and taps a keg of his seasonal Hoppy Gnome. The set-up crew continues their work with golden pints in hand.

“If you only eat your own food and drink your own beer, you’re selling yourself short,” says Kuhn. “We have so many great venues in this little area—people really come together and like to share what they have to offer.”

In the kitchen, [former Spring St. Cafe chef Karl] Engelmann is crisping slices of fresh ciabatta bread and sesame-covered filone from Annie’s Naturally Bakery in the oven, which will be served with a panoply of cheeses. For the early guests, he sends out a platter of thick triangles of farmstead cheeses from Yellow Branch Pottery & Cheese, globes of Dark Cove goat cheese covered in chopped chives, and crudités.

Moving on to the trout, he blends pork sausage from Nantahala Meats and Poultry in Franklin, chopped croutons, garlic, and herbs, and spoons the mixture into the whole trout before wrapping each with bright green banana leaves and tying them with string. “This will literally steam the fish, keep the moisture in, and enhance the flavors,” Engelmann says. He has another trick in mind, too. Shells from the boiled peanuts he’s serving with the Cobb salad will go into the grill flames to add a nutty flavor.

Read the whole story here.

BRYSON CITY–The Smoky Mountain Times’s Jim Casada takes a break from recent reviews of outdoor literature to share some Thanksgiving memories of eating and hunting in the Smokies.

An excerpt:

From that point on throughout my boyhood and beyond, rabbit hunting loomed large in Thanksgiving weekends. Hunts on Thanksgiving Day were normally abbreviated, because we had a grand feast and family gathering commencing sometime in early afternoon and culminating with a feast featuring fare like Grandma’s cathead biscuits and gravy, Aunt Emma’s ambrosia, Mom’s applesauce cake, and of course, turkey.

The trimmings included things which aren’t standard everywhere, as Grandma Minnie provided delicacies such as watermelon and peach pickles, leather britches beans, and a brown-sugar topped casserole using cushaws – an old-time winter squash.

Read Casada’s piece here.

Michael Pollan is author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, along with many other books and essays. His new book is called “Food Rules”.

He says “If you follow these rules, you will be purchasing and eating real, whole food most of the time.”

1. Don’t buy anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. Like anything orange that isn’t salmon, a carrot or an orange.
2. Avoid products containing ingredients that can’t be found in an ordinary pantry. Even better, avoid anything that has more than five ingredients. Better still, if you can’t pronounce most of the ingredients, you don’t want to eat them.
3. Don’t buy anything that lists sugar in its first three ingredients. And NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP! Not even a little.
4. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay away from the middle–that’s where most processed food is shelved.
5. If it came from a plant, buy it (and eat a lot of it). If it was made in a plant, pass it by.
6. If it says lite, low-fat, or non-fat on the package, put it down. You’ll be more satisfied if you eat a little bit of the real thing.
7. Avoid food that is pretending to be something that it is not. This includes soy-based mock meats.
8. Food making health claims on the package is not food you want to buy. Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.
9. Avoid food that is advertised on television. And remember, if it is delivered through the window of a car, it is not food.
10. Get out of the supermarket. Look to farmer’s markets for the majority of your food and snacks.

Pollan collected more rules from readers of the New York Times Magazine, which can be read here.

REGIONAL–David Tell at the Macon County News reports on the opening of deer season this Monday.

The season, which is expected to be an active one, runs until December 12.

Tell’s lead:

Deer hunting season opens Monday, and it’s expected to be a good one.

Whitetails are numerous, active, mobile — and hungry, according to wildlife officials, and hunter interest and presence are seen as strong.

Read the whole piece here.

MT. HOLLY–It’s been three decades since the place was burnt to make room for a warehouse, but my memories of my grandparents’ farmhouse in the rolling hills near Mt. Holly are all emotion and texture.

The kitchen is at the heart of it, of course, as with all house recollections, so when Tipper at the Blind Pig and the Acorn wrote about cornmeal mush recently I took a second to close my eyes.

The large kitchen had west-facing windows, and coffee in a percolator. There was a breakfast porch for when the weather was right, and giant pin oak trees, a row of stone outbuildings and jumbled blankets of ivy right outside.

Inside there was little breakfast table where my pa-pa rolled his cigarettes. The wall lamp had a rooster shade, and the plate on the light switch said “outen the light”.

My grandmother made cornmeal mush here, although not without complaint. She said it took too much stirring.

NATIONAL–Slate Magazine’s “Green Lantern” provides “illuminating answers to environmental questions” in a Q-n-A format.

The current question? “I know you can buy local or buy organic, but I’ve heard that some crops are simply more resource-intensive than others, regardless of how or where they are grown. So what’s the key to picking foods that have the smallest environmental footprint?”

Here’s an excerpt from the Lantern’s answer:

Certain crops require loads of phosphate fertilizer, for example, which is mined from the ground and can eventually cause stream-choking algal growth. Other fruits and veggies are grown with heavy doses of pesticides, fungicides, and other chemicals that can pollute waterways and cause reproductive problems in animals. So how do you know which crops are best to eat? Here’s the Lantern’s rule of thumb: Try to keep your more extravagant fruit cravings in check, but don’t sweat the low-impact calories that come with your carbs.

Read the piece here.

Sylva’s McDonald’s restaurant — the oldest franchise in town — will close for three months in early 2010 to replace its current structure. The local owners will completely remove the current building and replace it with another.

An upshot of the closure is that McDonald’s will be required to come into compliance with Sylva’s sign ordinance. The owners will have to remove the current, large, 80’s-era arches and replace them with a much smaller “monument” style sign.

Franchise owners approached the Sylva town board recently asking to keep their current sign. They expressed concern that their considerable setback from business 23, combined with the impact of a smaller sign, would hurt business. The circumstances disqualified McDonald’s from consideration for a variance, however, and the town asked the restaurant to come into compliance.

While the McDonald’s sign change requirement is tied to the length of the store closure, Sylva residents could see other sign changes soon. The ordinance prevents updates to current oversized signs; owners may not spruce them up without coming into compliance. As a result, current big signs such as those at Wendy’s restaurant and Ingle’s grocery store are likely to become gradually more dilapidated before they are ultimately replaced.

SYLVA–The secret’s out about Asheville’s status as a beer town.

But the southwest mountains don’t fare poorly, either, with Sylva’s five-year-old Heinzelmannchen Brewery leading a three-pack that includes upstarts Nantahala Brewing Company and the Tuckaseegee Brewing Cooperative.

The brewers at each of these three have been kind enough to recommend their favorite beers to enjoy on a cool autumn night.

Dieter Kuhn from Heinzelmannchen Brewery, Sylva, NC:

Big Butte Smoked Porter from Highlands Brewing Co. This was a Pro-Am entry into the Great American Beer Fest this year. A dark rich, malty, roasty, and smoky porter that evolves as it warms in the glass. Flavors are intensive but never get harsh, and it has a smooth, big-body mouthfeel and somewhat noticeable hoppyness. Enjoy the various flavor layers and warming alcohol finish. 7% alcohol by volume.

Hop Rod Rye from Bear Republic Brewing Co. This Rye IPA has won a handful of medals. It pours turbid amber with a frothy white head, the aroma is definitely hoppy, mostly citrus but some piney scents also. Mouthfeel is creamy and substantial due to a big rye malt load, and smooth. The taste is hop heavy, including grapefruit, citrus and pine flavor. Malt sweetness is present along with the chewyness of rye malt. The finish is a unique interplay of hop flavor and malt. ABV 8%.

Big Amber Gnome from Heinzelmannchen Brewery. This is a gold medal-winning amber ale at this year’s Carolina Championship Of Beers. A specialty ale brewed for our 5th anniversary this year is a compilation of 5 different malts and Chinook, Cascade, and Willamette hops that yield an exceptionally smooth, malty big-bodied mouthfeel. Several malt and roasty flavers are layered before a reserved hoppiness takes over in mid-swallow. Finishes with a pleasent sweet aftertaste and an alcohol warming in the stomach. Very drinkable to celebrate just about anything, including your favorite team’s victory. ABV 8.2%, available only at the brewery on Saturdays in 2L growler fills. Come early, as the 15 gal keg is usually sold out by 2pm!

Chris Collier from Nantahala Brewing Co., Bryson City, NC:

We have spent a good bit of time traveling back and forth from Atlanta to Bryson City for the startup of the new Nantahala Brewing Company. Whenever we travel, we are always in search of beers that we cannot get at home in GA.  NC has several breweries distributed in the state that have not yet made it to GA, so we typically stick to those treats when we are up here and we also love to bring some unique offerings from GA to share with our business partners.

When autumn comes around it’s time to start enjoying the beautiful colors of the season.  This includes the garnets and amber hues of the malty, sweet beers that begin to take the place of the bright, crisp thirst quenching pilsners and wheat beers of summer. Fall would not be complete without the rollout of seasonal Oktoberfest beers. We love to try them all. This year we have been enjoying  Boone Brewing’s Blowing Rock Oktoberfest Lager.  Typical of the style it sports a nice amber color with a toasty, malty balance with roasted caramel notes.  It serves as a great session beer.

We think big IPAs are good anytime.  But, this time of year, a higher gravity IPA really compliments the cool weather. Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale (7%) and Ska Brewing’s Modus Hoperandi (6.8%) are two IPAs that fit that bill.  Both have big floral, citrusy and pine hop characteristics balanced with a substantial malt backbone that imparts a nice residual sweetness and a little alcohol warming. While neither is from NC (Michigan and Colorado respectively), they are a local staple for us when in NC.

One of the most recent beers we have transported from Georgia is Terrapin’s Depth Charge.  This is the second in the Midnight Brewing Project series which is a collaboration between Terrapin Brewing Company (Athens, GA) and Left Hand Brewing (Longmont, CO).  This combination of a creamy milk stout and espresso roasted coffee beans is absolutely to die for and is a great companion for curling up with next to the fire on a cold rainy evening.  Terrapin beers are distributed in NC, but this is a limited, special release that may be a little hard to find, but is definitely worth seeking out.

Chris and Cristina Collier are BJCP National Beer Judges, beer travelers, award-winning homebrewers, and beer columnists for the Southern Brew News. Before the end of the year, they will be tag teaming the brewing duties at western North Carolina’s newest microbrewery – Nantahala Brewing Company.

Sean O’Connell at Tuckaseegee Brewing Cooperative, Cullowhee, NC:

Deschutes Black Butte Porter is my all time favorite fall beer for those cold high desert Idaho nights, but it isn’t available here, so I’ll move on to these three:

Black Mocha Stout from Highland Brewing Company. Deep, dark, complex, and warming.  A roasty beer with extra character to provoke the taste buds and fire up the soul.  Best for the colder fall nights.

Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA from Dogfish Head Craft Brewery. High alcohol, hoppy, and sweet.  Another warmer, but a good sipper for the day time as well as the evening.  Maybe best as a dessert beer.  I’d recommend the 120 Minute IPA, but that’s illegal to purchase in North Carolina — 20% alcohol by volume and 600 calories per bottle!

Spaten Oktoberfest from Munich’s Spaten-Löwenbräu Group. An all time favorite brew of mine and certainly one for this season.  Brewed in the spring and lagered until fall, this one is highly drinkable (5.9% ABV) and highlights the brewing powerhouse that is Germany.  Goes well with colorful leaves on and off the trees.

Sean O’Connell teaches biology at Western Carolina University an is a founding partner of the Tuckaseegee Brewing Cooperative.

REGIONAL–Highland Brewing Company’s annual Cold Mountain Winter Ale is due out before too long, and this is the week the folks at Highland create the recipe. Self-interested Asheville blogger Ashvegas is all over the story.

An excerpt:

The rules are that the Highlands crew will come to work at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, having brushed their teeth at least one hour before and having not had any coffee or eaten anything. It’s all about arriving with a clean palate. They’ll then start sampling their brewmeister’s concoctions to start whittling down the winning recipe.

Read the whole post here.

STATEWIDE–We noted last week that The Center for Science in the Public Interest thinks it’s a good idea to tax soda pop.

Along the same lines, the Raleigh News and Observer noted over the weekend that the NC Medical Society might recommend taxation of nutritionally worthless foodstuffs.
An excerpt from the story:

“Obesity is our number one health issue, as far as chronic issues are concerned,” said Scott Donaldson, a Hendersonville urologist who supports the resolution. The resolution includes a series of “whereases” that discuss the rise of obesity in the state (rank – 12th in a recent report), the costs of treating it and its link to various ailments such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer.

The N&O adds that the NC Medical Society resolution is expected to be discussed in committee on Saturday, Oct. 31. If the committee sends it to the society’s House of Delegates, they’ll vote the next day.

More reading:

Read the N&O blog post here.
Report on obesity (mentioned in excerpt above) from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Lily’s Treasures

Loretta Womack’s toy store “Lily’s Treasures”, open for about two years now at the corner of Main and Spring, is closing.

It’s a loss for Main St., in that it will leave a big hole at a prominent location, it’s a loss for the Downtown Sylva Association, of which Womack was president-elect, and it’s a loss for local families who like a step up from the standard fare, toy-wise.

“Almost all of the toys I carry have an underlying social or educational value, and they require interaction on the part of the child,” Womack told me recently. “Our kids need to explore and develop their own superheros and princesses,” she added. “Where is the imagination if all that is done for them?”

A nurse by trade, Womack has hired on with WestCare.

Spring Street Cafe

When most recent owner Lisa Agee closed Spring Street Cafe in late summer, it ended a 15-year stretch during which an eatery filled the spot beneath City Lights Bookstore.

Ownership of the restaurant has reverted to founder Faye Holliday, but the space still belongs to bookstore owners Joyce and Allen Moore.

The three are still considering possibilities, but clearly would like to see another dining establishment in the Spring Street space — one that’s as complementary as possible to a bookstore, Joyce Moore emphasizes.

NATIONAL–The Center for Science in the Public Interest has compiled a list of foods most likely to make you sick.

Here’s a quote from the authors of the report:

“A globalized food system, archaic food safety laws, and the rise of large-scale production and processing have combined to create a perfect storm of unsafe food,’’ the C.S.P.I. writes. “Unfortunately, the hazards now come from all areas of the food supply: not only high-risk products, like meat and dairy, but also the must-eat components of a healthy diet, like fruits and vegetables.’’

Here’s the top ten:

1. Leafy greens
2. Eggs
3. Tuna
4. Oysters
5. Potatoes
6. Cheese
7. Ice cream
8. Tomatoes
9. Sprouts
10. Berries

Of course, these items will make you sick right now. Items that’ll make you sick on down the road come at it from a different angle, and the Center has some thoughts about those foods, too. They think we should tax the hell out of soda pop, for example.

Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center, says this: “Soda is dirt cheap and promotes expensive and debilitating diseases, which in turn run up healthcare costs at all levels of government.”

More reading:

From the New York Times
From CNN
From the Washington Post

REGIONAL–Mountain Xpress columnist and blogger Anne “Edgy Mama” Fitten Glenn holds forth on the health benefits of beer in her most recent Xpress column here.

An excerpt:

Out of 1,700 women participating in the study (average age was 48), those considered moderate beer drinkers had the highest bone density.

At this news, I jumped up and danced a little happy dance, during which I spilled some of my medicinal Scottish ale. I love beer and luckily, I live in Beer City, USA, where I could drink a different locally crafted beer every day for a month without quaffing the same brew twice. Hurrah!

The researchers, from the University of Extremadura in Caceres, Spain, found that regular drinkers tended to have better bone density than those who never consumed beer. While they only tested women, I assume this holds true for the male persuasion as well. Men get osteoporosis too, especially as they age.

Read the whole pint here.

SYLVA–Heinzelmannchen Brewery in Sylva has released its 2009 Roktoberfest seasonal ale, and is getting ramped up for a fall-full of activities.

Brewmeister Dieter Kuhn describes the Roktoberfest as a “malty, deep amber ale with just a bit of hoppiness.” The brewery – located on Sylva’s Mill St. – is selling 4 oz. samples at the brewery. Customers can buy any of Heinzelmannchen’s beers in take-out, re-useable growlers, and the beer is also available at a variety of local restaurants.

Here’s a rundown of the brewery’s early autumn events:

Food and Beer pairing:
First Friday – Sep 4, 5-8 p.m.  AT the brewery
Guest Restaurant:  Cork & Cleaver from The Waynesville Inn Golf Resort and Spa

September 26 – Enjoy an Oktoberfest Festival at The Waynesville Inn Golf Resort and Spa
Delicious German Fare, Heinzelmannchen Brewery and Cats on Tap, Your Gnometown Band, playing Oompah music!

October 1, 2, 3 – Make reservations at Restaurant 553
Delicious German Fare, Heinzelmannchen Brewery and Cats on Tap, Your Gnometown Band, playing Oompah music!

October 2 – Food & Beer Pairing
AT the Brewery 5-8 p.m.
Guest Restaurant:  The Lake Club at Bear Lake Reserve

October 10 – You’re invited to Bear Lake Reserve for their Oktoberfest!
Delicious German Fare, Heinzelmannchen Brewery and Cats on Tap, Your Gnometown Band, playing Oompah music!

REGIONAL–Tipper at the Blind Pig and the Acorn posts today about fall gardens.

Our relatively mild climate will allow for some light-frost-tolerant crops well into autumn.

An excerpt from Tipper’s piece:

Look for veggies that can tolerate a light frost-like you do in the early spring. Often here in western NC our first frost of the fall will be light and another frost won’t occur for several weeks.

Radishes, swiss chard, mustard greens, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, turnips, and lettuces, are all considered good choices for planting in the fall.

Read the post here.

The Nourished Kitchen with an overview of the five top problems associated with vitamin D deficiency.

A recent study showed that an amazing 70% of US kids don’t get enough, and adult rates are dropping, too.

Vitamin D is critically important to overall health and, sadly, most of the population suffer from deficient or suboptimal vitamin D levels.  Indeed, a recent study indicated that a whopping 70% percent of US children (no, folks, that’s not a type-o) suffer from deficient or insufficient vitamin D levels1.   Similarly, adult men and women average suboptimal vitamin D levels and these average levels seem to be decreasing year by year2.  Remember: the terms “average” and “normal” do not necessarily equal “optimal.”

Chalk the deficiency up to poor eating habits and lack of sunshine, yet, regardless of the reason behind this epidemic-level vitamin deficiency, the general health of the public is suffering.  Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency is associated with many and varied diseases as well as increased overall mortality.  Conversely, researchers in human aging have found an association between optimal vitamin D levels and increased longevity.

SYLVA–A ten-year-old mainstay of the Sylva food scene announced its closing yesterday.

Spring Street Cafe owner Lisa Agee said times had become too lean to continue operation, and closed her doors.

Spring St. Cafe and City Lights Bookstore

Agee bought the restaurant three years ago from founder Faye Holliday. Holliday opened in 2000 in a space previously occupied by City Lights Cafe, beneath City Lights Bookstore in Sylva. Holliday had been an employee of City Lights Cafe owners Joyce and Allen Moore for most of the nineties, and had learned her trade in part under Hector Diaz, founder of two famous Asheville restaurants, “Zambra” and “Salsas”.

Holliday’s idiosyncratic culinary flair and long-term staff members were a staple of the downtown Sylva scene through the early 2000’s, and during that time the Cafe’s Sunday brunches and Tuesday night old time music jams were central to the routines of many area residents.

One of Holliday’s employees, Jen Pearson, went on to open Guadalupe Cafe, on Main St., in 2005.

Agee, a baker, moved from Virginia and bought the restaurant in 2006.