Owner and executive chef of Fork! in Cornelius Tim Groody will take over the executive chef position at Stoke, Unpretentious Palate has learned. Groody’s first day on the job will be in mid-September.

Groody replaces the restaurant’s opening executive chef Chris Coleman, who recently left to open The Goodyear House in NoDa. Groody’s cooking style is a natural fit for Stoke, which is inside of Marriott City Center. He’ll only oversee the restaurant and Stoke Bar; former Stoke sous chef Andres Prussing was promoted to oversee the hotel’s banquet and room service operations. As one of the city’s pioneering farm-driven chefs, Groody will continue the restaurant’s push to be a destination for locals as well as hotel guests. The menu at Fork! changed daily based on seasonality.

The Cornelius restaurant, which has been open for six years, has been sold and will continue operating as Fork! with the rest of Groody’s staff in the short term.

Groody was offered the position after providing a tasting to the hiring team at Marriott. Among the dishes he cooked were simple roasted figs with honey and seasoning, black bass and peas, shrimp with panzanella salad, and roasted eggplant. Several dishes had components that could be converted to bar snacks.

“[The dishes were] very similar to what they were doing on the menu, but lighter, because my style is a little bit lighter,” Groody says. “Things they could see in the dining room and see in the bar, as well.”

Groody will be tasked with taking a restaurant long known largely as Coleman’s and making it his own. He plans to lighten up the menu a bit, bringing in simpler dishes that bring out the flavors of the ingredients.

Before opening Fork!, Groody was the longtime chef at Sonoma Bistro, and Groody says regulars from Sonoma haven’t stopped asking him when he’ll be cooking in Charlotte again. Finally, they have their answer. —Kristen Wile

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