Chef Alyssa’s Kitchen will serve salads, bowls, wraps, sides, and boxed lunches. Photo by LunahZon Photography.

Chef Alyssa’s Kitchen grew to be the city’s most popular cooking class while in a small corner of Atherton Market, launching as an idea between business brain Andrew and the namesake chef Alyssa Wilen. Their interactive classes are themed around seasons, occasions, and cuisines, and ends with guests eating the meal they cooked.

The classes moved to a much bigger location exclusive to them earlier this year in the Bowers complex, off of Old Pineville Road near Olde Mecklenburg Brewery. They kicked off in the new space with an Italian class in August, and this week they expand yet again, this time launching catering.

The catering menu mimics the principals behind Chef Alyssa’s Kitchen: good food made using local, wholesome ingredients. You’ll find salads, sandwiches, sides, and bowls, as well as boxed lunches. There’s a $100 minimum for pickup and $200 minimum for delivery, which is available within 17 miles.

The bowls follow an international theme. On the menu are a Marrakesh market bowl, with beef and lamb meatballs in a roasted pepper and tomato sauce, vegetables, and labneh; a Rio Grande bowl with rice, adobo chicken, avocado and white beans, zucchini, marinated tomatoes, and a chipotle-cilantra crema; and a South End bowl, made using rice, pulled chicken, smoked cauliflower, butternut squash, sautéed greens, buttermilk slaw, and an aji dulce barbecue sauce.

See the full menu, including the wrap and salad options, here. The catering launches just in time for holiday parties. For home cooks who don’t want to do all the work on Thanksgiving, you can also now order family-sized Thanksgiving sides for pickup Thanksgiving week.

Up next for Chef Alyssa’s Kitchen is a grab-and-go breakfast, something the area is lacking. In the kitchen with chef Wilen is chef Jonathan Moore, formerly of Sea Level NC.  —Kristen Wile