At his Waynesville restaurant, Singletree Heritage Kitchen, founder and Head Chef Josh Weeks puts in the work. Take his steak dinner: Weeks chargrills a peppered prime New York strip to order and serves it over whipped North Carolina sweet potatoes alongside local French beans, smoked tomato-infused butter, and a house steak sauce.
The sauce alone takes four days to make. Weeks starts by creating a bone stock, which is cooked down into a demi-glace and further processed into a cuisson, infused with stone fruits, fresh herbs, and a red wine from Singletree’s meticulously curated selection.
“We go the hard route every time,” Weeks says with a laugh. “But it works. We really care about the end result and the quality. We care so much about the experience people are going to have.”
The work doesn’t stop there. If you’re enjoying supper at the bar, the single slab of black walnut beneath your plate was also harvested, crafted, and installed by Weeks and his wife, Singletree co-owner McRae Davis. If you’re in the dining room, the wormy chestnut table you’re seated at is also a Weeks original, made from local reclaimed barnwood. Oh, and the dining room itself — with its large windows overlooking Singletree’s gardens and the Smoky Mountain peaks beyond — was designed by Weeks, who’s spent more than 30 years training, cooking, and dreaming of this restaurant…