DH Kitchen & Mercantile coming to Norris
Chloe Childres will open her new restaurant and boutique in downtown Norris in September. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
Operating hours and days have yet to be posted, along with the actual opening date, but the new business now has a Facebook page (DH Kitchen & Mercantile) where it says the restaurant’s food offerings will include “daily specials” and “scratch desserts.”
The menu for the restaurant also is still being developed.
The “DH” stands for “Dirt Hippie,” the name Childres had already been using for her fresh honey business, in which she sells honey at various special venues, including local farmers’ markets.
The front part of the building, at 8 West Norris Road, will be the restaurant space, just as it was with Vega.
But there is a small room at the back side of the building, accessed through a door on the side where the Norris Market is, that will hold the mercantile part of the business, Childres said.
That area was occupied by a walk-in cooler while Vega was in business, but the cooler has been dismantled and moved out to make room for the shop.
A new door will be installed to replace the nondescript one now in place.
Childres, who has lived in Norris for the past six years, said earlier this month that she plans to operate the restaurant along with her mother, and she is now doing some remodeling in the building, which is next door to the Norris police and fire station.
The building also houses BenchMark Physical Therapy on the side closest to the fire station.
“We’ve put a suggestion box on the front door so people can give us ideas about what kinds of food they want, and what days and hours we should be open,” Childres said.
“My mom and I both have lots of restaurant experience, and we’re looking for some different things.”
Childres is a union welder by trade, but isn’t able to work right now because she’s expecting her first child in November, she said.
“But I’ve worked in restaurants since I was 16,” she said. Locally, she has worked in the restaurant at the Museum of Appalachia most recently, she added. Her mom still works there.
She suggested that her new eatery might do only carry-outs at first, but she intends it to be a regular dine-in restaurant.
“I’m excited to have a business with my mom,” Childres said.
She knows she has big shoes to fill in replacing the popular Vega Cafe, which closed in March after about five years in business, because of health issues of its owner, John Fletcher.
Fletcher operated Vega four days a week – Wednesday through Saturday – and offered weekly special entrees, soups and desserts, along with a full menu of regular items.
The former Vega location is across West Norris Road from the shopping center that had long been the site of Archer’s Market, which closed earlier this year, and a string of different restaurants, whose space is now vacant.