CRESCENT Places: Grits & Groceries (Part 1)
So, you’re a husband and wife culinary all-star team in New Orleans. One of you has a namesake restaurant. The other is Emeril Lagasse’s top pastry chef. When you’re expecting your first child and decide it’s time to leave NOLA, where do you go? How about rural Anderson County? See why Heidi and Joe Trull made a new home and thriving dining destination at Saylors Crossroads with “Grits and Groceries.”
NOT JUST FAMILY-STYLE SERVING. IT’S FAMILY-STYLE SEATING
HEIDI: People are funny about the tables here. We only have 38 seats, so we share. We don’t ask because they’re like, “No, we don’t want to share.” We just put ‘em together. and they’re like, “I just found out that guy’s my cousin.”
LEAVING NEW ORLEANS FOR SAYLORS CROSSROADS
JOE: We wanted to find a happy medium between our two homes (Joe is from Winston-Salem, NC, and Heidi is from Sumter, SC). We wanted to be close to home, but neither one of us wanted to be back home. It’s about 3 ½ hours between the two of us.
HEIDI: We were looking for a common denominator that would work. And we had a list of things. I wanted a place we could have horses, a place I could send my child to public school, a house, a business and a good tax zone. So we kind of hit that all with this store
We had 45 days to spend our money before losing it to capital gains. So we called our family that’s always said, “You should open a restaurant here.” So we said, “You each have 2 days to show us what your town has to offer.” So we looked in. We really wanted a place in Manning. The locations didn’t work out for us, so we got in the car and kept trying different places.
Bishopville. Maysville, North Carolina where Joe’s originally from. We hit a couple of towns in that area. And everywhere we went, we kind of based from here.
We have a cousin who lives here and we kind of based from Anderson and we kept driving by this building and I said, “I think that’s my spot. Now, go buy it.” So we called the real estate agent. It was for sale. She showed up and she went to the house next door and I said, “I don’t want to look at the house, I want to look at the store.” She said “Oh yeah, you could tear that down and have a nice back yard.” I was like, “No, I want the store.” So we came in.
It’s the 2nd oldest structure in Anderson County, so they say. We don’t have any proof of that. It’s basically, the 4 walls, the floor, everything you see here except for the kitchen, one light bulb hanging in the middle and plumbing was a hole cut in the floor and a hose pipe connected to the faucet.
I think this is the perfect place for us. We found a builder and worked on the building, and in 3 months, we were open. From the time we bought it until the time we opened, Katrina happened. So we ended up … we bought it and we went back and packed up all of our things in New Orleans and moved here so it was like a 3 month span.
In that Katrina happened, so we had actually had sold our business and house in New Orleans the month before Katrina, thanks to finding this place.
GETTING OUT JUST BEFORE HURRICANE KATRINA
HEIDI: Our house had 9 feet of water in it, so we would have lost pretty much our house. And the restaurant in New Orleans survived without much damage except we wouldn’t have had any business for 6 months which would have put us out of business.
Stay Tuned for Part 2 Next Week.
