Life & Work with Tal Blevins of Fisher Park/north Downtown in Greensboro, NC

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tal Blevins.

Hi Tal, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I grew up in Greensboro, NC, but moved to San Francisco in the mid-‘90s to pursuit a career as a video game, entertainment, and tech journalist. My wife and I moved back to Greensboro in 2017 to be closer to my family and for a more affordable, better quality of life. We both love good food and drink, so while we were re-familiarizing ourselves with the local culinary scene, we met and became friends with chef Kevin Cottrell when he was working at another ambitious, upscale restaurant in Greensboro that unfortunately had to shutter its doors not long after due to lack of local interest.

Disappointed with how the experience ended, Kevin planned to move to a city that already has a bigger, bolder food scene like Chicago or Charleston. I needed his food and I knew others in the area would go gaga over his culinary creations given more awareness, so I suggested he stay and we collaborate on a pop-up dinner series that would let him bring the kind of modern American food that we both felt our region needed and deserved. He would be in charge of the food program, and I could help build the marketing and awareness side of the business.

MACHETE began as a monthly pop-up supper club at my house in Greensboro in August 2018 for family and friends. Our approach seemed to strike a chord, because demand for pop-up events grew exponentially as word spread. In just a few months, we went from 12 guests at a single dinner to 180 requests for 40 seats per supper club. However, for a lot of people who live in our region, it’s not fine dining without white tablecloths, classical music, and fancy flatware. Even some folks who came to our pop-ups when they heard we planned to eventually open a restaurant, said “This is the best meal I’ve ever had, but your concept will never work in a traditional city like Greensboro.”

They were almost right, but not because of a lack of local dining interest. We opened MACHETE as a full-service restaurant on February 25, 2020, three weeks before the COVID pandemic shut down restaurants in the US. MACHETE faced many of the same struggles during the pandemic as most restaurants in America. We kept the doors open by completely changing our business model in 24 hours from an in-house dining experience to takeout only, even though we never planned for a takeout option originally because of the care we take in building each dish on the plate. We developed an entirely new, fun takeout menu that reflected our vision yet would travel well with guests, and the community really stepped up to support us during those incredibly tough times.

After in-house dining returned, we got back to our original vision for MACHETE. Our philosophy is that food and drink should not only be creative and delicious, it should evoke memories and reflect the place where you live. Greensboro got its nickname “Gate City” back in the 19th century, when up to 60 trains arrived or departed town each day. Today the city is still a major gateway for many people and cultures. More than 100 languages are spoken in Greensboro, and less than half the city’s residents are white. MACHETE’s menu reflects our city’s many food cultures, with influences from Vietnamese, Mexican, Thai, Spanish, Japanese, French, Indian, Peruvian, and Chinese cuisine (among others) as well as the Southern cooking tradition chef Kevin Cottrell grew up with. Our entire menu, food and cocktails, changes with the seasons. In the spirit of supporting our community, we also source many of our ingredients such as fresh produce, seafood, and meat from local growers, fishermen, and farmers in NC.

We aim to provide an elevated dining experience that uses simple perfection – dishes and cocktails that focus on few ingredients, exceptionally prepared and service that is professional yet warm and welcoming, an eclectic wine list that features affordable selections from around the world – to delight the senses without being pretentious. We love combining traditional Southern ingredients like pig jowls, grits, and corn with global products such as sea buckthorn, aji amarillo, and koji, and providing dishes that are simultaneously familiar yet adventurous and new, such as our pork cheeks with burnt romaine and lettuce soup or roasted maitake mushrooms over Carolina Gold rice.

And here we are, nearly five years later and going strong at MACHETE.

A lot of people ask, “Why the name MACHETE?” So my years as a journalist and story-teller always leads me to want to say it’s because we’re exploring new territory, carving a new path in Greensboro, and we’re cutting edge, but it’s actually much more on-the-nose than that: chef Kevin had a machete he used to love to play with in the woods around Greensboro, NC when he was growing up, so it’s a childhood memory that kept coming up when we were brainstorming names. We like to play around with childhood memories a lot in our food (Fruity Pebble ice cream, double-fried chicken nuggets with burnt lemon kewpie, we did a take on a Boberry biscuit dessert inspired by Bojangles, etc.), so the name fit the vision. We were also inspired by more modern restaurants with more aggressive names like Gunshow in Atlanta and Destroyer in LA, so it was a name we just continued to gravitate towards as we developed our vision for the restaurant.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
We opened MACHETE as a full-service restaurant on February 25, 2020, three weeks before the COVID pandemic shut down restaurants in the US. MACHETE faced many of the same struggles during the pandemic as most restaurants in America. We kept the doors open by completely changing our business model in 24 hours from an in-house dining experience to takeout only, even though we never planned for a takeout option originally because of the care we take in building each dish on the plate. We developed an entirely new, fun takeout menu that reflected our vision yet would travel well with guests, and the community really stepped up to support us during those incredibly tough times.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We aim to provide an elevated dining experience that uses simple perfection – dishes and cocktails that focus on few ingredients, exceptionally prepared and service that is professional yet warm and welcoming, an eclectic wine list that features affordable selections from around the world – to delight the senses without being pretentious. We love combining traditional Southern ingredients like pig jowls, grits, and corn with global products such as sea buckthorn, aji amarillo, and koji, and providing dishes that are simultaneously familiar yet adventurous and new, such as our pork cheeks with burnt romaine and lettuce soup or roasted maitake mushrooms over Carolina Gold rice.

And here we are, nearly five years later and going strong at MACHETE.

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
The next 5 to 10 years for the restaurant industry are probably going to be some of the toughest yet, especially with more automation and higher operational costs. I think (well, hope) there will always be a place for an elevated, fine dining experience since it’s transportive, experiential, and difficult to pull off at home. But I think we’ll see a big shake-up in the quick-service side of the industry with jobs being replaced with automation and quality continuing to go down as corporations look to save money on food costs by relying on low-quality ingredients.

Contact Info:

• Website: machetegso.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/machetegso
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/machetegso