August 19, 2026
New weekly dinner series to highlight the food of Appalachia and “Mamaw Shirley”
Chef Tucker Bell’s Victuals Supper Club brings a more downhome tasting menu concept to Gastonia
by TM Petaccia
Tasting menus are coming to downtown Gastonia, but chef Tucker Bell does not want anyone to mistake the format for formality.
Bell, executive chef of Barrister’s inside the Esquire Hotel, is launching Victuals Supper Club, a weekly Saturday dining experience in the hotel’s newly renovated downstairs dining room. Each dinner will include six to eight courses, with menus shaped by what Bell can source from local farms and what the kitchen has preserved.
“A lot of people who live in Gastonia go to Charlotte for dinner,” Bell says. “So we’re trying to find ways to keep people in town.”
Gastonia-born Bell arrived at Barrister’s about two months ago to lead the hotel’s main restaurant, Barrister’s. Victuals developed after he took the job. His earlier experience includes time at Counter- in Charlotte and Canoe in Toronto; most recently, he worked at North Hickory Market in Hickory.
The setting gives the new dinner series more than a little history to work with. The seven-story Classical Revival building at 168 W. Main Ave. in downtown Gastonia was constructed in 1916 and 1917 from a design by Wilson & Sompayrac. First National Bank occupied its first two floors from 1917 through 1933, with offices above. National Bank of Commerce owned it from 1934 until 1957, and it was known as the Lawyers Building from 1957 through 1982.
The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and later underwent a multiyear conversion into the 35-room Esquire Hotel. Its former life as a home for attorneys still echoes in the names Esquire and Barrister’s.
Victuals will use a tasting-menu structure, but Bell described the goal as a “not very stuffy, fun dinner.”
“It’s not a supper club in the traditional sense of the name,” he says, “but in the atmosphere of the restaurant, we wanted to have the feeling that you’re coming together with your friends. We’re just presenting the food in a different way. It’s not altered too much.”
The food begins with Bell’s family, particularly his great-grandmother, Mamaw Shirley, whose handwritten cookbook and notes he still owns. Growing up, he said, food was “very much a family thing.” For Victuals, he is pulling from dishes such as hoecakes and hot-water cornbread, along with other traditional Appalachian recipes. Her food was known outside the family as well. “I’ll be at church on Sunday and someone will come up to me and ask, ‘Have you made those fried apple pies yet?’,” he says.
That restraint will carry through the menu, even as the courses are presented in a tasting-menu format. “I try not to alter the food very much,” he said. “I just cook it in a simple way and present it in a simple way.”
Bell is showcasing local Carolina farms as much as local cuisine. The menu for the supper club’s inaugural menu this Saturday includes Boy & Girl Farm, Small City Farm, Catawba Mushroom Partners, Coosaw Farms, Anson Mills, and other. Bell said North Carolina’s Joyce Farms and Brasstown Beef will supply most of the proteins. The inaugural dinner is scheduled for 6 p.m. this Saturday, August 22. Tickets are $100 and include a wine or cocktail pairing with each course. Nonalcoholic pairings will also be available. Each week’s menu will be released near the beginning of the week, once the available ingredients are known.
Rabbit is one ingredient Bell especially wants to work with: He grew up caring for, butchering, and cooking rabbits on his family’s small farm. Victuals will source its rabbit from Joyce Farms, and Bell called the protein “close to my heart.”
The pairings will move between wine and cocktails. Bell said Ian Mullins, a mixologist from Hickory, will collaborate on the beverage program.
Despite the Appalachian foundation, Bell does not intend to turn the menu into a rigid survey of regional dishes.
“I’d say I’m more interested in exposing people to the hospitality of the mountains rather than the food of the mountains,” Bell says. “Because there’s going to be some things that we cook that aren’t rooted in traditional Appalachian cuisine. But I want the hospitality of this place to feel like you’re walking into my grandma’s.”
“I just want it to be a genuine, fun concept.”
