She made crepes when she was ten, and she never left for school until she’d watched the early morning cooking shows.
“Cooking has always been in my blood,” says Jen Lindsay, owner of Cherry Street Kitchen. Her mother was friends with Ruth Young, and that’s how she came to be a server at Young’s legendary Queenie’s. She yearned to be a chef and so, two years later, she opened her own little restaurant, Cafe Boston. It was 1988, she’d never cooked professionally before, but she read every cookbook she could get her hands on.
Lindsay opened Cherry Street Kitchen in 2017 and quickly attracted a following of regulars drawn by the innovative brunches and sandwiches.
“I think of my food as South by Southwest,” says Lindsay. “I love to take flavors from the Southwest – chipotle, roasted hatch peppers – and mix it up with traditional Southern items – pimento cheese perhaps – maybe I’ll put it on a fresh baked biscuit with fried green tomatoes or perhaps an egg.”
One of the most popular items is the humboldt county turkey melt, a panini topped with herbed goat cheese, fig jam, fresh tomatoes, spring mix and smoked turkey. Baked goods, all made from scratch, are a big draw, too.
Cherry Street Kitchen has just moved into a big, modern space downtown (111 W. Fifth St.), and this new place will have all this and more. It will be open for dinner as well as breakfast and lunch, with hot entrees, including pasta dishes and salmon fish and chips. Pies and cakes will join the brownies, lemon bars and cookies. There will be a grab and go for quick takeout and a full bar. Check the restaurant’s social media for updates.
“I’m super pumped about it,” says Lindsay. And she’s also pleased that all of her most experienced chefs and servers from the old place will join her at the new.
