‘Fork & Hammer’ Series Chronicles Tonidandel-Brown’s Biggest Project Yet

The news broke on Dec. 6, 2021, with a scoop from Kathleen Purvis published by Axios Charlotte: “Supperland owners to buy historic Dilworth church that houses Bonterra.”

Nine months later, they had a name for their new establishment they would place in the old building: Leluia Hall.

“We’re looking forward to seeing the name, decor, menu direction and story all come together for a new, unique dining experience in Charlotte,” Jeff Tonidandel told Axios then. What he hadn’t imagined in August 2022, however, was that he and wife Jamie Brown were still nearly three years out from opening their new Dilworth restaurant.

During that time, Brown and Tonidandel worked tirelessly to address and move past countless obstacles associated not only with the restoration of the 110-year-old building where Leluia Hall would live but the relocation of a neighboring building, equally historic and equally problematic to preserve, that they aimed to bring onto the next-door property to serve as a sister bar and lounge.

While the headlines largely halted during that time, a new PBS docuseries titled Fork & Hammer gives an in-depth look at what Tonidandel-Brown Restaurant Group (TBRG) went through in that time.   

The series, produced by Charlotte-based production company Susie Films, will premiere at the newly restored Carolina Theatre at an event on Oct. 7 that will include a live Q&A with Brown and Tonidandel moderated by tennis champion Andy Roddick.

The screening will showcase the first episode, titled “It Started with a Crêpe,” a 26-minute program in which Tonidandel and Brown retrace their own journey in the food industry and revisit their first restaurant, Crêpe Cellar Kitchen & Pub, a NoDa staple for 13 years before closing in 2022 to be replaced with another TBRG restaurant, Ever Andalo.

The duo also owns three other NoDa establishments in Growler’s Pourhouse, Haberdish and Reigning Doughnuts as well as Supperland in Plaza Midwood.

Fork & Hammer arrives at an intriguing time for Charlotte’s food scene. Earlier this summer, Top Chef named the Queen City as host for its 23rd season while the Michelin Guide announced plans to review restaurants in the Southeast — including North Carolina — for the first time.

This fall also sees the debut of Kitchen Curious with chef and author Vivian Howard, making two major culinary shows from the Carolinas that are launching nationally in the same season.

“This project is an incredible platform to shine a positive light on our city, the work of talented chefs, Charlotte’s food scene more broadly, entrepreneurship, restoration and hospitality,” Brown told Queen City Nerve in the lead-up to the premiere.

“I never wanted to be a part of a program that focused on drama between people. I wanted to be a part of something that was educational — and something that was uplifting, loving and inspiring,” she continued. “Seeing almost all the Fork & Hammer episodes now, I feel lucky to see those hopes played out.”

The ingredients come together

Scott Galloway launched Susie Films in Charlotte in 2006 and has gone on to produce hundreds of episodes of TV along with films and other programming, almost all of which in the nonfiction realm and largely comprising documentary-style shows.

He’s worked with HGTV, the Food Network, ESPN and a slew of other companies. While his company was responsible for producing 165 episodes of Food Network’s show Food Finds, Galloway has long harbored a desire to do something deeper in the culinary world: a “docu-follow” series that chronicles the day-to-day work that goes into running a restaurant.

What had held him back, however, was an industry-wide reluctance to try such a show due to its inherent risk of stagnation.

“Networks are usually a little reticent to do that because there’s this belief, and it’s founded, that if you do a restaurant show, it’s the same location with the same people making the same stuff,” Galloway explained. “And if that restaurant does well, then usually that restaurant is replicated. So there’s a sameness and a limitation to it that usually scares off networks and studios.”

When Susie Films’ lead editor Jordan Snyder, who lives in NoDa, came to Galloway with the idea of featuring Tonidandel and Brown, the couple proved to be the solution to any concerns of boredom.

Here was a restaurant group operating five establishments, each one cultivating an entirely separate identity from the others, and with a plan to open a sixth. And if that wasn’t enough, there was this other plan in the works to move the Leeper & Wyatt building, Dilworth’s oldest surviving retail building that had been slated for demolition, from where it sat on South Boulevard to the lot on Leluia Hall’s future property on Cleveland Avenue.

How could that not make good TV?

When Galloway approached Brown and Tonidandel with the idea, their first concern was for their employees. As anyone who’s worked in hospitality (or watched fictional FX series The Bear) knows, restaurants make for high-stress environments. Adding a camera crew might only add to that.

Brown took the idea to her team members, including front- and back-of-house workers, to flesh it out with them. She found them all to be fully onboard.

“As it turned out, I think our team was more ready to step into the idea than I was,” she recalled. “That was a massive help for me that I knew I had a foundation of incredible people there to stabilize us, catch us if we fell, and show up to create this fun television show.

“The program is nothing without the professionals we have on our team creating the beautiful food, drinks and dining experiences,” she added.

There for the journey

As it turned out, the real stress of the show, at least its first season, came not from the squeeze of the dinner rush but from the drawn-out process of restoring a century-plus-old church and moving the Leeper & Wyatt building next door.

The season’s second episode, titled “4 Years in the Making,” begins on that journey. Though renowned restaurant Bonterra had operated in the former Dilworth Methodist Church South space for 20 years, the team found no shortage of worrisome issues in the building’s bones.

Then there were all the more tedious hold-ups, including deliveries of everything from silverware to windows that never showed up and even contractors who never showed up to do the work they were hired to do.

Read More: Leluia Hall Proves Tonidandel-Brown’s Penchant for Preservation

“I think in any of these restoration projects, it’s a game of faith,” Brown told Queen City Nerve in January, as the team was coming somewhat closer to what would become a May opening date. “You’ve got to just keep moving forward. It does not always look pretty. This is one of those moments. It’s the chaos that happens right before you go to open.”

Galloway felt as if he was watching masters at work as they moved through one crisis to another.

“I wanted people to see all of the decisions that they have to make, all the considerations; they have to know design, they have to know food, they have to know HR, they have to know marketing, they have to know how to turn historic spaces into restaurants,” he said. “And they’re working with people who are experts in all these fields but, ultimately, they have to make the decisions to make it go. And I find that fascinating because they’re in such a hyper-competitive business.”

Tonidandel and Brown are known as being detail-oriented people — Brown for her expertise in curating atmosphere and Tonidandel more on the culinary side.

Galloway watched the way these two operated in their respective spaces and learned a lot in the process, he said.

“The biggest takeaway I have is that the details are critical — and I mean critical. And they know that,” he explained.

“They’ll talk to you in detail about how the acidity in a new lime is different based on the size of the lime, when it was picked and how long they’ve had it cut sitting in the refrigerator,” he continued, “or how to build a table that’s just big enough for two people to sit comfortably, but not an inch bigger so that you maximize space … They spend a lot of time on this stuff.”

Galloway’s hopes to produce multiple seasons of Fork & Hammer, and he’s sure that with the way the team at Tonidandel-Brown restaurant operates, he can continue to tell intriguing and interesting stories about the business for years to come.

“[TBRG] is continuing to grow and grow in very different ways,” he said. “A lot of times studios and networks talk about, ‘What is their world,’ which means who they interact with. And [TBRG’s] executive chefs, their sommelier, their mixologists, a lot of people in their work orbit are just fascinating people.”

Read more: Colleen Hughes Cements Her Spot as One of Charlotte’s Top Mixologists

Episode 2, for example, introduces the story of two unlikely friends, executive chef Chris Rogienski and executive sous chef Courtland Bradford, who came from different backgrounds and had little in common until Rogienski introduced Bradford to disc golf during the pandemic.

That simple hobby gave the pair an avenue to build a bond that carries into the kitchen.

“It’s such an interesting dynamic, but I think it’s even more interesting because those two guys have absolutely nothing in common except for their love of food,” said Galloway. “So my hope is that people who watch it will get a better understanding of the restaurant business, how competitive it is, how it works — it’s a behind-the-scenes look.”

For a team that’s willing to move buildings, if not mountains, to bring their vision to fruition, the stories never end.