The story below is from our May/June 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
Photo above: Courtesy Food Hut
Food Hut is equal parts brunch destination, entrepreneurial incubator and community gathering place.
When I moved to Roanoke, I thought I’d left my waiting-in-line-for-brunch days in New York. But I’d gladly wait all day, rain or shine for Food Hut’s chicken and waffles or the killer Cubano, with Yard Bull Meats’ Tasso ham, citrus slow roasted Cuban pork, and Swiss piled onto Cuban bread imported from Miami and pressed to perfection.
In addition to Food Hut’s curated menu, which founder Patrick Riley describes as “sneaky elevated comfort food,” it’s Riley’s community-centric approach and his team’s penchant for creative collaboration and entrepreneurial spirit that’s helping create a new kind of community gathering place in downtown Roanoke.
“Roanoke is such a perfect place for entrepreneurs, everything from food to artists and merchants. So much independent, really cool stuff is happening,” Riley says. “One thing we’ve really tried to focus on at Food Hut is being a gathering place for that. To become a third space for the community; a true, safe, reliable gathering place for friends and colleagues and the community of Roanoke.”
Riley originally hails from Chicago and honed his cooking chops in fine dining restaurants there. In 2018, when he and his wife were seeking a lifestyle change and hoping to start a family, the couple moved to Roanoke. While Riley always planned to open a restaurant of his own, he first worked as the head chef at Heliotrope Brewery in nearby Lexington. But when Riley and his wife welcomed a child in 2020, the hour-and-a-half round-trip commute no longer made sense.
Shortly after, the pandemic forced restaurants to shut down. Riley took his time, scouting around for the right spot in Roanoke to open his own eatery, somewhere he could envision cooking approachable food, with a community-focused vibe and potential for collaboration. When the space next door to Golden Cactus Brewing became available in winter/spring 2021—a nondescript walk-up window and a small kitchen, with ample outdoor seating and a built-in, craft-beer loving customer base—he knew he’d found it.
In the winter/spring 2022, Food Hut started with pop-ups in collaboration with local butcher shop Yard Bull Meats, then fully launched in July 2022. As Food Hut has grown, collaborations remain a major focus. During winter, Saturday brunch featured Bread Run Roanoke, which included a pastry pop-up from baker-owner Julie Casey as well as menu specials incorporating her baked goods, such as French toast sticks made with challah and a berry parfait with house made granola (fret not, her challah French toast and Basque chai cheesecake will remain Food Hut menu mainstays). Sundays regularly feature coffee and donuts, with Roasters Next Door coffee and donuts by RND-co-owner and chef Quincy Randolph. Over the last several months, this pop-up has given Randolph a chance to pilot flavors, such as white chocolate with potato chips or cinnamon-espresso sugar, and finetune the donut recipe, which he’s now added to the menu rotation at RND’s Vinton location.
All the while, Food Hut has become a dining destination in its own right. “We try to create dishes that people are going to recognize and be naturally drawn to but try to make each one just a little bit creative, exciting, unexpected,” Riley says. At brunch, that means menu staples like breakfast Cubanos share space with seasonal specials such as a riff on biscuits and gravy starring cornbread made with Gracious Day Grains’ bloody butcher grits, Yard Bull Meats andouille and butterbean gravy. For spring, there’s Gobi Manchurian, fried cauliflower tossed in a sweet and sticky chili glaze crowned with a fried egg and paired with spiced cinnamon vegan aioli; chilaquiles with salsa roja, guacamole and a fried egg; and crab and avocado benedict with lemon sriracha hollandaise.
The kitchen is overseen by head chef Atticus Wooden but everyone on the team has creative input. When chef de partie Lexa Nava suggested doing a general Tso’s inspired fried chicken sandwich featuring a Chinese five-spice spiked sweet-and-sour sauce, Wooden says, “We literally just clapped our hands, and went, ‘Yup, it’s going on!’” Beignets, which Wooden calls an “open canvas item,” are changed up bi-weekly and various team members have inspired flavors such as orange-cranberry, gingerbread and tiramisu. This collaborative spirit has helped foster a kitchen culture that Riley is immensely proud of. “It’s the most fun I’ve had cooking anywhere. I got lucky,” Riley says. “Our team is very familial; we all like and respect each other.”
Riley also credits sharing a building with other like-minded businesses, including Golden Cactus, Gatewood Rose Botanicals and Blade Gaming, as another key factor to successfully creating a third space. One manifestation includes West End Wednesday, a makers’ market hosted by Food Hut, Gatewood Rose and Golden Cactus that hosts a rotating cast of “farmers, makers, food, drinks, plants, friends, music and vibes.”
Other businesses and creatives that pop-up during the week help shape nightly themes and menu moods, including repeat cameos by War on Books, Magic City Disco, Eatza Pizza and Fermented Fire Hot Sauce. “We have a great community of food friends that all work together and spend a lot of time on this little corner we have. We work with a lot of merchants, books, musicians, artists. A lot of those people work at Golden Cactus too, so we all use the space to work together. So much stuff can be incubated and created there.”
As Food Hut approaches it’s one-year anniversary, it’s clear that its collaborative spirit has helped sustain Riley’s third space vision and create a loyal following of diners from broad swaths of the community at large. “We work really hard to make personal relationships with our guests,” Riley says. “We want to know everybody’s name when they come to the window. We try to learn about them, care about them. We want to make sure they know they’re coming somewhere they’re appreciated.”
The story above is from our May/June 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
