Making Daisychains:
The importance of local, now more than ever.
We opened a restaurant with the tagline, “gather round” ten days before the shutdown.
Within weeks, “gathering” was not only no longer a carefree joy, it was no longer an option.
Nearing a year later, we are still cooking, still serving, still opening our doors when we can. In an unprecedentedly complex year, there’s a simple answer as to why we remain. It’s the same answer we gave in our opening interviews, before any of us could have foreseen what our first year in business would hold.
Because of relationships.
Owner, Starr Teel, in Camp Greystone Kitchen, 1990
We opened Campfire Grill as an ode to the place and people that made us, the camps and culture of Western North Carolina,
where so many of our staff and our community learned how to cook, how to fish, how to say grace, how to play well with others.
We have stayed open for and because of those same relationships. The friendships with the bankers who have guided us through, the support of neighbors who call every Thursday for takeout, the guests who give encouraging words to our servers on strange, hard days.
These slow times have allowed us to reflect on all those to whom we owe our continuance, the many hands it takes to knead our daily bread. It feels more important now than ever to acknowledge and celebrate the relationships and sense of place that begins to ground the dining experience months before an order is placed.
Our local farmers.
In the weeks we have been closed, we used the time to visit (masked and socially-distant) our local farmers. Not online or at market, but where they grow.
When we arrived at Growing Green Family Farms in Anderson SC, our presence was announced by what I can only term, “guard geese.”
A gaggle of endangered Cotton Patch Goose squaked our welcome from their corner of the farm where they are bred and tended to by Rebecca and her two eager helpers, her elementary-school aged niece and nephew. The children introduced themselves with fearless ease, more warmly than the geese, immediately introducing us to their favorite chickens, Gandalf and Dumbledore, pointing out the work they’d done on rows of broccoli and lettuces, the promise of microgreens, sunburst tomatoes, and eggplants.
Our self-appointed tour guides helped their aunt and father explain to us the family’s expansion plan for cows, pointing to a green pasture just beyond the portable chicken coop.
“The chickens will follow the cattle,” Rebecca explained, “They’ll eat all of the maggots in the field, so we can raise cattle with no fly problems” She proceeded to point out a few irregular patches of thick, emerald grass, “Those are all of the places the chickens have been before.” After the soil’s been aerated by their pecking. After the land has rested.
When it was time for the children to go up to the house for lunch, their aunt said to me, “You know it’s bad when taking away chores is punishment.”
But, as the land and the past year are teaching us, we grow best when we rest.
It was at the next farm, Stage 22 in Traveler’s Rest NC, that we discovered it is possible to nerd-out over a vegetable.
Sarah and Madison greeted us with a basket of romanesco, the stunning, alien love child of broccoli and cauliflower. I told Sarah, who is in charge of Stage 22’s flowers, that I want to put this vegetable in everything we make, that I want to garnish a cocktail with it, name my first child after it.
Sarah leaned in, an immediate co-conspirator, and whispered “In the least creepy way possible, do you want to see what I have in the back of my truck?”
We didn’t hesitate. “Of course we do.”
Sarah brought us to a wheelbarrow sized bucket in her backseat, filled entirely with dried hayflowers the farm had grown last Summer. Sarah plucked out one of the many, a papery magenta flower the size of my thumb.
“It just kills me,” she said, “how perfect they are.”
Sarah proceeded to fill our arms with the flowers, including the perfect one, reminding us that they’re edible, that they make excellent garnishes for cocktails. We begin to politely refuse, but our arms are open. We want the gift.
On the winding drive back to the restaurant, we brainstorm a cocktail for the hayflowers. Between the two of us, we come up with it quickly: hibiscus, prosecco, vodka, lemon.
It only needs a name.
Over a year ago, when the world was a different place, we were overwhelmed with the naming of things. Campfire Grill- a place to bring people together, to connect, to celebrate where we come from. The Sandburg Skillet, an ode to the “poet of the people,” who’s home stands a mile from our kitchen, who loved this corner of the world as much as we do. The Counselor Burger- the shoutout to where we come from, the very people who taught us how much your people matter-- taught us that all people are your people.
As we drive along the Reedy River, I remember a rare, quiet afternoon with a cabin full of seven-year-olds I was assigned to my first summer as a camp counselor.
For some reason I don’t remember now, our scheduled afternoon hadn’t gone according to plan. The Naturalist had been double-booked or the rock-wall closed for rerouting. Regardless, we’d had to improvise, and I’d been panicked,
until one of my first-year campers plopped down in a grassy patch beside our cabin and started plucking clover blossoms.
When I asked her what she was doing, she answered, “Making daisychains.”
“For who?”
She shrugged without looking up at me, focused on tying stem to bud, stem to bud. “Everyone.”
The whole cabin spent the afternoon in that patch of grass, tying knots, linking. We looked forward to dinner, where we could give everyone in the dining hall the gifts we’d made them with our own hands,for which we needed nothing but what grew, right outside our door.
Campfire Grill’s newest cocktail, made with local ingredients from Stage 22 Farms.
We call it The Daisychain.
It’s been a year.
We are beyond thankful for the relationships, ingredients, and guests that have sustained us.
For everything we need, right outside our door.
Left to right: our flower-powered new friend, Sarah with Campfire Grill bar manager, Lindsay Smith.
Brick, Flame, & Steel:
The story of building the Campfire Grill oven, 35 years in the making.
In 1987, Starr Teel returned to his summer-camp home of Flat Rock, NC to head up the renovation of the Kenmure Clubhouse, where the “cookhouse” (what is now the Grill Room) still stood separate from the main estate. Inspired by ovens he had seen in Italy as well as the historic fireplace still in the house of Dr. King, Teel pursued what has become a characteristic drive of his, to build something that’s never been built before, the first commercial wood-fire oven in North Carolina. Teel has since gone on to build 5 commercial wood-fire ovens, including that of Camp Falling Creek, Hubba Hubba Smokehouse, and the Flat Rock Village Bakery. His favorite though, the oven that he claims the experience of all the others has led to, is the one that now stands as the heart of Little Rainbow Row’s newest eatery, Campfire Grill.
Teel at camp square dance in 1977
“Please be aware that due to the fact that such an undertaking is the first of its kind for Henderson County and indeed the State of North Carolina, the oven in question shall be considered an experimental operation.”
— Henderson County Health Department to Starr Teel August 26, 1987
The Team
If you ask Starr Teel how he accomplishes what he does, he will inevitably answer, “by surrounding myself with smart, caring, passionate people and asking questions.”
Government certified welder for nuclear reactors, amphibious and armored personnel carriers, welder extraordinaire, and, most recently, Campfire Grill’s wood-oven expert Jack Nash.
Jack Nash, of Nash Welding, welding on the custom made doors to the oven, which he crafted along with all of the steel and aluminum used in Campfire Grill, from our flower vases to the custom aluminum framed chimney, pictured below.
Rick & Drew Metcalf, our overall master craftsmen father-son duo, laying Super Duty 3” Brick on hearth and medium duty brick walls, bound not by masonry cement, but gray refractory high temp mortar which gets stronger under high temperatures.
Rick Metcalf installing ceramic blanket.
Nash insulated oven doors.
Wood, brick, & steel multi-talented Drew Metcalf finishes welding connections of smoker framework.
Nash welded a trough around the entire circumference of the chimney for insulation, as well as a luge to redirect any water out the rear of the chimney, protecting both the flames of the fire and the insulation inside the oven.
One of the primary forms of insulation we used is this highly castable insulation, which rather than adding water to (creating a more cement-like substance) we left in its’ sand-like form to act in conjunction with the air in the gaps to break any heat conduction.
The Materials
Since building the Kenmure oven, the materials for all of Teel’s ovens have been provided and consulted on by Larkin Refractory Solutions, headed up by Jim Wunch.
Jim Wunch has been the owner of Larkin Refractory Solutions since 1994. The firm was started in 1976 by John Larkin and on his untimely passing was then acquired by Jim.
Jim is a graduate of Clemson University with a BS in Ceramic Engineering in 1971. Throughout his professional career, he has been involved in all facets of the refractory industry. Beginning in raw material characterization and moving to product development enabled him to transition into sales and marketing. Later he was a plant manager, director of Corporate quality, and a senior executive responsible for sales, marketing and operations of two plants. Jim has traveled extensively throughout his career to visit and consult with most refractory consuming industries worldwide. As a deep thinker, Jim has come up with numerous cost effective solutions to solve thorny problems affecting these industries.
Larkin Refractory Solutions is based out of Lithuania, GA 800.898.4532
The hybrid nature of the Campfire oven makes it unusual, having the flu at the rear rather than the front and building the arch higher than standard not only provides space for racks to smoke fish and meats, but also facilitates bigger fires, the long-burning coals of which are then repurposed to fuel our Santa Maria wood-fire grill.
Jet High Duty 3” Bricks make up the arch of the traditional Beehive oven. Our arch is built higher than a traditional pizza oven, making the heat from the fire refract at lower temperatures that sustain our “low & slow“ philosophy for meats. These bricks, as well as the Super High Duty ones that make up the hearth, and the Medium Duty that form our walls, expand and contract in response to temperature changes. This makes particular and thorough insulation a key element to building any oven, particularly this one.
10” triple wall stainless steel flue purchased through Woodland Direct out of Auburn Hills, MI (844-890-5061)
The second major form of insulation is this 2” ceramic blanket, which wraps around the entire oven, covering any outside exposure.
The Pilot 3000 High Temp Mortar fills every joint and becomes less brittle when exposed to high temperatures.
The white visible above the brick is ceramic fiber paper, which we used as an expansion joint.
