She was mixing through Charlotte before cocktails were cool. Now she’s up for James Beard
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Colleen Hughes is a groundbreaker.
The beverage director for Tonidandel-Brown restaurant group didn’t have an obvious pathway to learning more about the beverage industry when she moved from Western New York to Charlotte and started out behind the bar at Growler’s Pourhouse, a beer-and-shots kind of spot.
She ended up blazing her own way, making connections throughout the Charlotte bar scene and digging up as much information as she could put her hands on at a time when craft cocktails had not yet caught on.
Now, Hughes — whose personal motto is “I make fancy cocktails for nice people” — is among the first group of James Beard Award semifinalists breaking ground for her work at Supperland in a new category: Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service.
The awards, now celebrating their 35th anniversary, added the distinction along with Best New Bar and Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service this year “in recognition of the ever-evolving independent restaurant landscape.”
Climbing to the top
In the cocktail world, Hughes is kind of a big deal.
She’s a founding board member and former president of the Charlotte chapter of the U.S. Bartenders’ Guild who has also served on its national board of directors. She’s now leading the organization’s membership committee.
She’s been featured at Charleston Wine + Food, and she’s been touted in Thrillist and Forbes magazine.
In 2022, when Supperland landed at No. 15 on Esquire’s list of Best New Restaurants in America, Hughes was deemed the magazine’s “Cocktail Guru of the Year.”
Hughes describes herself as “young at heart and very much a Capricorn.” That penchant for making things happen has led her to managing the beverage programs at Haberdish, Supperland and Ever Andalo, all at once. And she’s already at work on a tropical-style drink menu filled with rum and Pisco for the newest Tonidandel-Brown restaurant, Leluia Hall, which is set to open soon.
“Each restaurant’s so different from each other,” she told CharlotteFive. “You have to keep in mind what that place is.”
It’s a balancing act that keeps her bouncing between time at the computer, meetings, research and Saturday night service at her happy place, Supperland’s speakeasy.
Adding on another level of challenge for Hughes is dyslexia, which makes tasks like ordering inventory highly difficult.
“Because I’m very dyslexic, I’m very cognizant of the fact that we have different styles of learners,” she said. “And so we try very hard when we’re doing trainings and stuff like that of presenting things in three different ways. Because I know I learn best from hearing it and doing it, but there are other people that learn much better going home and reading something and digesting it that way.”
Supperland bar manager Rhea Buck — one of her good friends — also backs her up, stepping in “like a little ray of sunshine who is exceptional at all of the things that I am terrible at,” she said.
Blending work and life
These days, much of Hughes’ time is spent holed up in a 600-square-foot outbuilding in her backyard that serves as her research and development space. It’s outfitted with nearly a full kitchen — minus an oven — and is stocked with juicers and staple liquors to craft seasonal menus.
Often, that looks something like a punch at Haberdish, an after-dinner drink with an Italian influence for Ever Andalo and something fun that can be made in high volume at Growler’s busy bar. Supperland’s bar menu is a huge undertaking itself, with three differently-focused spaces: the dining room, the adjacent bar and the basement speakeasy.
She works in her outbuilding in four- and five-hour shifts, tasting and spitting out most everything as she goes. The aim is not only to blend new tastes, but also to get more efficient and further reduce waste each time.
“I’m not afraid to reinvent something I’ve already done — I have absolutely no problems with it. I think if you get stuck on the way you’ve always done things, you kind of miss what’s coming up,” Hughes said.
After that block of time, “your palate’s kind of blown,” she said. So she’ll break for a “solid sandwich” and maybe take a walk to refresh herself. Then, she’s back to the grind there for another four- to five-hour block of research and development time, jotting down detailed notes along the way.
“It does get kind of lonely,” she said. “And especially if you’re a bartender, you’re a people person — like, that’s why you got into it in the first place. If you don’t genuinely enjoy talking to people, you have no business in the bar industry, really.”
As a vegetarian/pescetarian, when she finally ventures out of her space for dinner at one of the company’s restaurants, it’s most often at Ever Andalo. There, the menu features Ricotta Gnocchi, Mushroom Tortelloni and Spaghettini alla Nerano (the zucchini-forward dish popularized by Stanley Tucci in his CNN Series “Searching for Italy”).
“Who doesn’t like house-made pasta?” she asked rhetorically.
At home, Hughes sticks to a fairly clean, seasonal diet, with salads accented with hydroponically-grown herbs and fresh greens from her indoor garden, and plenty of vegetables from Saturday morning trips to the Charlotte Regional Farmer’s Market. She makes regular trips to Verdant Bread, and cheese is a staple, too.
“I spend a lot of money on my own diet — a lot more than some people. I try to stay away from fast food or junk food ... I’ve got to save all my bad. If you’re gonna drink this much, then you kind of have to eat a lot of salads,” she joked.
Her favorite spirits are gin and Armagnac (a type of brandy), and lately, she’s been into high mineral white wines and natural wines. But she said she spends “so much of my day really blisteringly thinking about cocktails and engaging with them and thinking about their flavor profiles,” that she mostly keeps it simple in her off time — with wine or a beer.
Otherwise, when she and partner Stefan Huebner (a fellow mixologist who co-owns Dot Dot Dot) go out, she’d spend too much time “thinking about it instead of the person I’m sitting with that I should be talking to.”
“It’s like my opportunity to just turn my brain off and enjoy it,” she said.
Supperland
Supperland is styled as a shareable church-supper sort of steakhouse, a concept that meshes with the setting of the revamped house of worship it operates in. As you step inside, various aspects of the restaurant hit all of your senses, from the stunning decor and clinking of floral plates to the smell of the 14-foot wood-fired grill, wafting out waves of burnt hickory and oak.
The menu boasts enormous steaks — an 18 ounce prime ribeye, a 10 ounce prime filet and a 16 ounce Wagyu NY strip — plus spatchcocked branzino; a grand seafood platter stacked with colossal shrimp, crab cocktail, raw oysters, ceviche and lobster tail; and traditional Osetra caviar service. Its all-you-can-eat brunch buffet takes things to another level.
But much as the food is worth is worth your focus, so is the bar, set in a separate building out back that’s surrounded by a wandering Southern garden.
Supperland has a 200-bottle wine list, shepherded by wine director Michael Klinger, a level 3 sommelier. But the bar menu primarily shows off Hughes’ expertly crafted cocktails, private barrel bourbons and rare features like its absinthe fountain, filled with ice water to drip over a sugar cube with your choice of the botanical-flavored spirit.
For cocktail aficionados, another star of the show at Supperland is its speakeasy, where Hughes pours an immense amount of her time and energy into getting innovative and experimental, shifting the focus every 8 to 10 weeks. Think: high-end bourbon tastings, seasonal selections and out-of-the-box offerings such as the Star Wars/Star Trek-themed “A Vulcan & a Jedi Walk into a Bar.”
It’s “where we try to fully push the envelope,” she said.
Another bright spot on the Supperland bar menu is its Karma Cocktail, a rotating feature that puts part of the proceeds toward charity. Right now, that program benefits Carolina Refugee Resettlement Agency with a cocktail that’s a vegan blend of Old Grand Dad bourbon, Hoodoo espresso liqueur, vanilla, mole bitters and hot water, garnished with a lemon twist.
What’s ahead
Hughes is planning for the opening of Leluia Hall to take up a great deal of her focus for perhaps the next year or so. But — as usual — she’s got other irons in the fire, too.
She’s working on expanding her knowledge of Asian spirits such as saki and soju, just to keep learning.
“Every time I feel like I’ve got a pretty good level of mastery on something, I’m like, ‘Well, what’s the next thing?’”
Hughes is also dedicated to her work with the U.S. Bartenders Guild, where she’s helped to shape the industry landscape for people who have alternative learning styles by figuring out how to ”help people wrap their heads around how to make more inclusive spaces.”
“I’m very dyslexic, and guess what, so are a lot of bartenders,” she said, noting that she’s preparing to speak at the guild’s upcoming bar summit in Atlanta.
Another priority on her plate puts a chunk of time toward mentoring the next generation of beverage professionals, offering opportunities to professionally connect in ways that she didn’t get at the beginning of her career.
“I’ve been doing giveback for years because, honestly, I didn’t have a mentor when I first started. And I really wish I had.”
Supperland
Location: 1212 The Plaza, Charlotte, NC 28205
Cuisine: Steakhouse
Instagram: @supper.land
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This story was originally published January 30, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
