Dirt Hippie Kitchen to begin serving takeout in Norris
Dirt Hippie Kitchen plans to begin selling takeout breakfast and lunch items from this building, the former Vega Cafe and Smokehaus, in downtown Norris, sometime this week. There are plans to open it for inside dining later on. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
Eventually, the restaurant will open for inside dining, as well, and there will be a gifts and apparel store operated by Childres in the same building.
For now, breakfast offerings will be available beginning at 6 a.m. daily, and lunch starting at 11 a.m. Dinner hours will be added later when the restaurant opens for in-house dining.
Childres had intended to open yesterday (Oct. 1) for takeout service, but was delayed because the restaurant’s grill had not yet been delivered, she said Monday morning.
Operating hours and days have yet to be announced, along with the actual opening date, but the new business now has a Facebook page (DH Kitchen & Mercantile) where it says the restaurant side’s food offerings will include “daily specials” and “scratch desserts.”
The full menu for the restaurant is still being developed, but for now, breakfast items available for carryout will include biscuits, pancakes, omelets, cinnamon rolls and muffins.
Lunch items offered will include hamburgers, fries, sandwiches, salads, soups, and fresh-baked bread. House-made desserts also will be available
Childres said customers may place orders by phone at 865-310-0372, or inside the store at the register.
“Dirt Hippie” is 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.
As for her new business, the front part of the building, at 8 West Norris Road (next door to the fire and police departments), will be the restaurant space, just as it was with Vega.
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.
Childres, who has lived in Norris for the past six years, said in August that she plans to operate the restaurant along with her mother.
“My mom and I both have lots of restaurant experience, and we’re looking for some different things,” she said.
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 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.
Although a sign on the door at Archer’s said it was “Closed for renovations,” there has been no apparent work done since it closed, and there has been no word from the owner as to when or even whether the store might reopen.
Also still available is the restaurant space next door to Archer’s. It operated as the Sweet Café for several years.