“People love to pick up casseroles and take them home.”
Suzanne Young, owner of The Kitchen CarryAway & Catering, is talking about the shop’s Artichoke Chicken Casserole, one of its bestsellers.
But if you haven’t stopped by lately, you probably don’t realize just how many other delicious things are coming out of that kitchen on South 5th Street.
For a decade, Young has been answering a question every Highlands household asks.
What’s for dinner?
Some days the answer is a scratch-made soup or salad. Other days it’s a platter of hors d’oeuvres, an elegantly catered rehearsal dinner, or something irresistible from the bakery case.
And sometimes, it’s a casserole.
Young and her husband, Dan, bought the business – then known simply as Kitchen CarryAway – from founder Holly Roberts in December 2016. Then she did something few new owners have the patience to do.
She changed almost nothing. For a year.
She’d read the comments longtime customers left when Holly announced she was selling: Please don’t change a thing.
So Young waited, giving people a chance to know her before she touched a single recipe.
“I left everything exactly the same for the first year,” she recalls.
That patience paid off.
Today, The Kitchen is woven into the rhythm of Highlands life, feeding busy families, second homeowners, and the wedding season that fills the town’s weekends spring through fall.
Young’s background prepared her for it. She spent more than three decades in the restaurant business, including 13 years teaching culinary arts at a technical school in Rock Hill, South Carolina, where school-district catering jobs doubled as training for her students – and quietly became the source of many of the recipes she still prepares today.
Among those recipes is the Artichoke Chicken Casserole, built on chicken, mushrooms, quartered artichoke hearts and Parmesan beneath a crisp topping.
Young and longtime kitchen manager Dori Moschouris eventually reworked the original entrée into casserole form when demand outgrew the pan.
“We can’t keep it in stock.” Young says. She understands that casseroles never really go out of style. “They’re what people reach for when there’s no time to think – comfort prepared before its even needed.”
That same instinct runs through everything at The Kitchen: excellent scratch-made soups, a Caesar dressing regulars buy by the quart, and bakery favorites like peanut butter pie, Texas sheet cake and a lattice caramel apple pie whose recipe traces back to a school fundraiser that once produced 130 pies a season.
Behind the scenes, additional refrigerators and freezers have been added simply to keep pace with demand.
On the catering side, Young has carved out her own niche – not by chasing the Plateau’s largest weddings, but by feeding all the celebrations that surround them: welcome parties, bridal luncheons, rehearsal dinners, bridal breakfasts and farewell brunches. Enough that she joined The Knot this year as a vendor.
Ten years in, Suzanne Young has built more than a place to pick up dinner. The Kitchen CarryAway & Catering has become part of the way Highlands gathers, celebrates and cares for one another.
Discover all the culinary enchantments at thekitchenofhighlands.com.
Favorites Count: 0