After moving to Starkville over a decade ago, Ty Thames, executive chef and restaurant owner, embarked on an endeavor to bring locally sourced ingredients to residents through eclectic dishes at Restaurant Tyler.
For Starkville Restaurant Week, he hopes to expand the general awareness and understanding of the benefits to using sustainable, farm-to-table techniques.
"Farm-to-table is a gateway opportunity for the public to see the types of things that are in the community," Thames said.
The upscale, Southern fusion restaurant at 100 E. Main St., opened eight years ago. Thames along with the restaurant's Chef de Cuisine John Fitzgerald, looked for ways to support local farmers and producers while shifting the menu quarterly with seasonal changes.
"As a restaurant owner, you are an economic driver and if you locally source things it all stays in the nest, if you will," Thames said. "It's natural to me to the type of chef I am. I want to get back before the 1940s when every town had a butcher. That kind of infrastructure will sustain us."
Thames attended the University of Southern Mississippi and culinary school in Parma, Italy, before working in fast-paced fine dining restaurants in Washington, D.C. While out east, he honed his skills in the kitchen, changing the menu at an italian restaurant twice a week.
Thames came to Starkville after his business partner, Brian Kelley, wanted to open Bin 612. After Bin 612 opened, Thames knew he wanted to start an upscale, fine dining Southern restaurant based around using local ingredients.
At Restaurant Tyler, Thames works with around 20 different local businesses to secure regionally-grown ingredients.
From working with chicken farmers to get eggs for brunch, herb gardeners for accents to butchers in Mathiston for pork, the chef-driven restaurant uses local items to maintain freshness and flavor, he said.
Working with places like DeRego's Bread, Thames uses day-old bread for croutons and desserts. All breads, aside from the contract with DeRago's, are baked in-house, he said. Partnering with local businesses helps sustain the community, Thames added.
"For me, it's a natural process to seek out the best local ingredients," Thames said. "Those aren't coming from California or processed and shipped. Some things lose their flavor in that transitionary period in shipping."
For produce, the group sources whatever is in season from local greens to asparagus. All peppers used in dishes are grown on Thames' farm and made into a hot sauce sold at the restaurant.
With Brian Kelley, Thames' business partner, the pair expanded on the locally-focused message through creating, "Eat Local Starkville," a brand to combine the efforts of Restaurant Tyler, Bin 612 and Tyler's basement speakeasy, The Guest Room.
Restaurant Tyler offers blue plate specials during lunch, from fried Mississippi Delta catfish to hamburger steak. For dinner, options range from duck burgers and steaks to Vardaman sweet potato gnocchi. The chef's tasting menu changes weekly and a dish on the featured menu is never repeated, Thames said.
Lunch specials run at $8 and includes a drink and two sides. Dinner entrees run from $10 to $28, and steaks range from $28 to $38.
"The community is really starting to trust us," Thames said. "Over the past winter, we did a pig ear pasta and people said they wouldn't normally try it, but when they came here they tried it because they trusted us."
Supporting local businesses ties into Starkville Restaurant Week, he said. Restaurant Tyler will offer a three course, structured menu as a special during the week with barbecue crab sweet corn hushpuppies, roasted pork loin and a double-chocolate marshmallow brownie with house-made rocky road ice cream.
"Anything that we can do to promote Starkville and the community, that's what we are trying to do," Thames said. "Restaurant Week brings people from all over the area and people get to try these specials during the week and it's special for restaurants and with the charities, the cause is an incentive for people to get out and support the community."
Playing with the menu helps lets the kitchen staff experiment. Most of the kitchen staff have worked with Thames for five years or more.
"I am fortunate now that the staff I have now—kitchen staff—I've had for a long time now," Thames said. "The chefs and kitchen staff have been with me since we started basically. Our staff has a really strong bond through everything we've been through. Having a familiar staff lets us be flexible."
Before the eatery was operating in the black, Restaurant Tyler was only able to use about a quarter of the local ingredients used by the staff today, Thames said. After eight years, over 90 percent of all ingredients come from local or regional providers.
"We are still evolving," Thames said.
As part of Restaurant Week, he urged residents to get out and experience Starkville's restaurant scene.
"People come in from the area and the whole eat local thing isn't about eating at my place," Thames said. "We want people to support businesses in the community. It's like a circle of life for the community. That way we can build smaller-based operations that can uphold the quality."