How did this couple go from Charlotte restaurant stars to starring in a TV show?
Jeff Tonidandel and Jamie Brown have proved once again that they know how to use historic buildings in Charlotte to their advantage.
On Tuesday night, the husband-and-wife team that co-owns some of the city’s hottest restaurants — including Plaza Midwood’s Supperland and Dilworth’s Lelulia Hall, both of which are located in repurposed historic church buildings — hosted a premiere of their new PBS docu-series in a most apropos place:
“Welcome to the beautifully restored Carolina Theatre,” Brown said to a crowd of about 800 people gathered in the renovated historic uptown room that reopened earlier this year, after overcoming a parade of construction challenges. “I’m sure a lot of you have never been here before. It’s a fantastic venue; and the two of us, I know a lot of you know, we get into some pretty crazy restoration projects.
“So we could not dream of a better stage for tonight’s event.”
That was the segue for a Charlotte screening of Episode 1 of Season 1 of “Fork & Hammer,” a new show that over the course of 10 half-hour episodes will explore how Brown and Tonidandel have built a restaurant empire in Charlotte both figuratively and quite literally.
Indeed, the “Fork” in the title refers to the restaurant aspect, while the “Hammer” is a nod to how heavily construction work plays into the development of their concepts. For example, most recently, the couple has received boatloads of press for heavily remodeling the building that became Lelulia Hall and for saving a 1903 building from demolition by having it picked up and moved 750 feet — onto a lot next to Lelulia, where in the coming year it will become their seventh concept. (Their existing six? Ever Andalo, Growlers Pourhouse, Haberdish, Leluia Hall, Reigning Doughnuts and Supperland.)
We know from watching the premiere that those two projects will serve as focal points for “Fork & Hammer.”
As for how the show came together in the first place, and what else to expect from it moving forward? We got answers from Tonidandel and Brown to those questions and more during an interview on Monday at Lelulia Hall. Here are the highlights from that conversation.
They’d flirted with some semblance of reality-TV stardom for a while.
“We had heard from different agents over the years who were interested in potentially doing some sort of a television series,” Brown says. “But nothing ever panned out with those different groups.”
One of their chief concerns about the potential concepts that had been pitched in the past ...
... was that the focus would be on “rifts between chefs and sous chefs and (other staff),” Brown says. “We didn’t want to go that direction with our team.” They felt that, because their concepts are so varied — from donuts to steak — a show about them shouldn’t have to hinge on bickering.
Normally, Tonidandel says, “a restaurant show without drama’s a little tough, because 99% of the time you have one cuisine and you’re making the same 20 dishes over and over again. All you have to rely on is the drama. With us ... we have a lot of different things going on. ... Moving a building, our constant struggles and growth, and trying to get better every day adds enough layers in there for content.”
So Brown decided to experiment with the medium on her own.
“I had this dream, when we started working on the Leluia Hall space (in early 2022), of doing a documentary around the build-out of the restaurant,” Brown says, “because it’s a 1915 church, it had been a number of different congregations, and then retail businesses, and then, of course, a restaurant, Bonterra. I thought people would find that interesting. So Jeff bought me a really nice camera, and I came in and started taking shots all around ... trying to capture some different scenes, like the first time we were up in the attic.”
Her pet project eventually evolved into a YouTube channel called “Restaurant Road” in 2023 ...
... and became more all-encompassing of their restaurant group. “We had some (content on the channel) about Leluia Hall, but not much,” Brown says. “It was mostly about our team and what we were doing, because we wanted to go more in-depth. We were finding social media to be — it’s so flashy, it’s so fast, and you don’t ever get to know the people, or the reasons why.”
“Restaurant Road” featured everything from pastry chef Savannah Foltz walking through how to make Supperland’s carrot jam to Tonidandel talking about business-oriented challenges the couple’s restaurant group faced.
Then in January 2024, they got a call from a producer from Charlotte-based Susie Films ...
... who had read an article about the couple and their restaurants in Charlotte magazine that had been published in December. He pitched an idea for a “docu-follow” series, Brown recalls — something “very organic,” and “very educational ... more like about that ‘edutainment’-type stuff, as opposed to being people-drama-focused. ... This seemed like a great fit. So we jumped on board.”
And PBS jumped on board not long after that.
“I think what we do has so much breadth and it’s so dynamic that getting pigeonholed to any network that’s all about food, or all about design, or all about construction, didn’t really fit for us,” Tonidandel says, “whereas PBS has been an awesome outlet and partner for us because we can just go and tell our story. We don’t have to make it about anything else.” (The main sponsors and funders of “Fork & Hammer” are the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, Trust20, the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority and the Biltmore Estate Winery.)
Shooting for “Fork & Hammer” began in June 2024 and ended right after Leluia Hall opened on May 6 of this year ...
... with a long production pause during the second half of winter and the first half of spring as the opening sat in a holding pattern. Although the run-up to the opening of Leluia Hall is the main thread throughout the 10 episodes, the story will actually begin with the opening of Tonidandel and Brown’s first restaurant — Crepe Cellar (which was replaced by Ever Andalo) — 16 years ago. Episode One’s title? “It Started With a Crepe.”
Brown was relieved to have the professionals take over — “because frankly, I’m not a photographer-camera person ...
... or an editor, or any of that kind of thing” — but the production team did use pieces of her original work, including footage shot on her camera and her phone.
The show isn’t set entirely inside their restaurants.
At one point, the film crew follows them 4,000 miles across the ocean to Spain, where they took their three children on a family vacation. Tonidandel says they “were basically just doing what we do when we go on vacation, which is do research for the restaurants, go to cool places, learn as much as we can, go to wineries. ... So it was pretty cool. And exhausting. ... We had filmed ... three days in a row before here (in Charlotte). But we were able to go home and (get a break). There, it was just nonstop.”
They’ve gotten to take a look at rough cuts of episodes, and they’re pleased with what they’ve seen.
“It’s neat to see our team on there,” Brown says, but “it’s also just a very positive showcase for the restaurant business overall. I think a lot of times it gets a bad rap. The most recent show that’s out, of course, is ‘The Bear.’ It shines a really tough light on the business. And it is tough. This business is hard. ... But there’s also a lot of beauty in it — people getting to showcase their talent, welcoming people in for a beautiful dining experience, to create memories — and it’s been a lot of fun to put together with everybody.”
Tonidandel and Brown are the stars, but other strong characters will emerge ...
... over the course of the season, too. Among them: Chris Rogienski and Jon Rosenberg, who during the arc of “Fork & Hammer’s” first season go from executive chef and general manager at Supperland, respectively, to the same positions at Leluia Hall; and Courtland Bradford, executive sous chef at Supperland who has worked with Rogienski for many years.
On the other hand, Tonidandel says that out of the more than 300 staffers they employ “we have a few shy people ... (who) do not want to be on”; and dating back to the days of the since-discontinued “Restaurant Road,” Brown adds, they’ve always told the staff, “‘If you don’t want to be on camera ... that is perfectly fine.’ ... Zero pressure.”
While a second season is “not a done deal,” according to Tonidandel, everyone involved seems open to the possibility ...
... and there’s definitely good fodder: The concept for the historic building that was moved down the street and placed next to Leluia Hall is currently a secretive work in project that the couple hopes to open next year.
WATCH: How to see ‘Fork & Hammer’
The premiere episode will debut on pbs.org and the PBS app on Monday, Oct. 13, with the initial televised airing in North Carolina set for 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 14, on the North Carolina Channel (PBS NC, formerly UNC-TV). Check your local listings for details and additional showtimes. New episodes of the show will be released every week thereafter.
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This story was originally published October 8, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
