Changing course at Taubman's Norah’s Cafe  

Last Thursday evening, jazzy notes from the Marc Baskind Duo floated across the railroad tracks behind Norah’s Cafe as the audience sipped wine from water-beaded glasses and nibbled on smoked trout cheesecake and gourmet flatbread.

It wasn’t the kind of scene that typically comes to mind when one imagines a museum cafe, where prepackaged sandwiches and bottled drinks are more the norm, but the cafe at the Taubman Museum of Art in downtown Roanoke has never really been typical.

Just as the museum has undergone changes in leadership since it opened in 2008, so has the cafe.

Now, under the management of Blue Ridge Catering, the glass-walled restaurant has a new direction.

Mark Baldwin, who has owned the catering company for more than 10 years, hopes that future includes both tourists and in-town regulars, as well as many memorable events inside a unique Roanoke venue.

A new direction

Baldwin never aspired to have his own restaurant, but he says catering is in his blood.

One of his dad’s buddies was Jimmy Harman, owner of Jimmy’s BBQ and Jimmy’s Outdoor Catering. Before he was old enough to drive, Baldwin helped out with the catering business.

“When I turned 16, it was ‘Here’s the keys to the truck,’” said Baldwin, 35.

After Harman died in 2002, Baldwin, who holds degrees in anthropology and sustainable development from Appalachian State University, started leasing the space at 522 Salem Ave. from the Harman family. In 2003, he started Blue Ridge Catering in the same location, and the company has been steadily growing since.

Baldwin has catered the City Works (X)po two years in a row and also caters a Blue Ridge Land Conservancy event each year. Last year, he partnered with his girlfriend’s catering company, La-Tea-Da’s Catering in Charlotte, N.C., to feed 14,000 people at the Democratic National Convention. After that kind of experience, running a cafe didn’t seem so daunting.

“This works now, where it wouldn’t have worked five years ago, because I’ve got the infrastructure,” he said.

The opportunity to manage Norah’s Cafe came early this year, not long after the Taubman Museum got a new executive director, Della Watkins.

When the museum opened , the cafe was managed by SMG Food and Beverage of Pennsylvania. In 2011, the museum and SMG parted ways and Jerome Bonds, who had been working as executive chef under SMG, formed his own company and signed a contract to manage the cafe.

After Watkins arrived, she wanted to better align the cafe management with the museum’s strategic direction. That meant “very positive creative energy,” whether in the art galleries, the gift shop or Norah’s.

Baldwin feels that Blue Ridge Catering’s experience, clientele and reputation helped win the bid for Norah’s. He said he’s looking to provide “that custom experience, to try to make everything not a cookie-cutter experience.

“There is nothing, food-wise, that is out-of-bounds for us.”

Seasonal menus

Baldwin has built a lot of his business on quality ingredients, and he likes to buy local as often as possible.

“We’ve been able to keep the costs reasonable and competitive. There are plenty of challenges with the local [sourcing], but there are plenty of things, too, that make sense,” he said. “There’s no need to look anywhere else for apples when you’ve got 12 varieties fresh around here.”

Because he’s still got a catering business down the street, Baldwin hired a chef to lead the team at Norah’s.

Rob Carkin, 28, is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America who briefly co-owned a coffee shop at Smith Mountain Lake called Solid Ground. After that, Carkin cooked at Roanoke College for 2 1⁄2 years and worked for Blue Ridge Catering on the side.

In addition to Carkin, Baldwin brought on two other catering staffers, Bess Parry and Sandy Brighton, to manage the front of the house. The cafe is open for lunch every day except Sunday and Monday. On Thursdays and the first Friday of each month, it is open for dinner from 5 to 8 p.m.

The new Norah’s menu will change by the season and feature casual lunch fare and daily specials such as flatbreads and paninis. For example, you might find a fig, prosciutto and gorgonzola flatbread , or an Italian panini with smoked mozzarella, prosciutto, roasted red peppers, caramelized onions and pesto on Bread Craft foccacia.

The “chips du jour” are housemade potato chips with a different seasoning each day, such as Old Bay, chipotle-lime or chili-ranch. Plates are garnished with pickles, but these might be pickled green beans, okra and other veggies.

“You go somewhere else and you get a cucumber pickle spear,” Carkin said. “Here, you never know what you’re going to get.”

Carkin also loves baking. Scones are one of his specialties — so far, he’s made cookies ’n’ cream scones, pumpkin scones and carrot-ginger scones for Norah’s Cafe.

Special events

Serving lunch in the dining room and on the outdoor patio at the Taubman Museum is only half of what Blue Ridge Catering’s contract with the facility will entail.

As the exclusive caterer for the Taubman, the company will be tasked with preparing food for a variety of events, from company retreats to weddings. Available space at the museum includes the cafe and patio, the atrium, the upstairs boardroom and the terrace and auditorium.

Baldwin said weddings have already been booked for 2014, and he is working with the Roanoke Wedding Network to plan an event for late October that might be of interest to brides-to-be.

The Wedding Crawl, which benefits the Roanoke Valley SPCA, will begin at the Patrick Henry Hotel at
1 p.m. on Oct. 27. From there, attendees will get to visit six different reception venues that will each be set up with catered food, wedding cakes, bands, flowers, DJs and more. More than 50 vendors are participating.

Baldwin said some members of the network, including Blue Ridge Catering and the Taubman, will also offer a Winter Wedding Program with discounts during January, February and March, which are traditionally the slowest months for weddings.

“We hope the wedding crawl will be an annual event,” he said. “The response has been great.”

Whether it’s the wedding crawl or just an ordinary lunch hour in downtown Roanoke, both Baldwin and Watkins hope to get people through the door at Norah’s Cafe to try the new fare Blue Ridge Catering has to offer.

“The extra touches are going to make a difference,” Watkins said. “We are really ready to celebrate.”

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