Pies for the Times

Taking Convenience Food to a Higher Level

This mushroom-and-leek quiche is typical of the rustic-gourmet fare at Barnhouse Kitchen.
Photo by Colby Rabon

Nestled away on their family farm in Flat Rock, Cole and Tatyana Lindsey are hard at work rolling out the dough for another round of pies and strudels. Barnhouse Kitchen offers handcrafted, frozen, heat-at-home meals perfect for a quick family dinner. Mushroom-and-leek quiche, pesto antipasto strudels, and lamb shank with root-vegetable meat pies are just a few examples of their offerings. Bold Life caught up with Cole Lindsey to find out what makes this business model unique.

Co-owner Cole Lindsey holds a portrait of his father, Lark, who started the restaurant at Highland Lake Inn & Resort.
Photo by Colby Rabon

Did your business pick up because of COVID, since it’s a takeaway service?

At first it didn’t. At first, everything just stopped, and we were really wondering what we were going to do. But as soon as the markets opened back up again, we were selling more than we’d ever sold. It was such a quick swing in the other direction, and we had to catch up and scramble.

Early on, I realized that we have a product that is helpful to people — people that don’t want to drag their butts out to a restaurant or don’t want to have to cook dinner again. We have something that is very fairly priced, and you take a couple of our pies, a nice salad, and a bottle of wine, and you’ve got a wonderful experience without taking the risk of going to grocery stores or restaurants. 

Barnhouse Bread.
Photo by Colby Rabon

How did Barnhouse Kitchen come to be?

I grew up in and around Asheville. My dad [the late Lark Lindsey] was a chef for my entire life — he went to culinary school and started the [restaurant at] Highland Lake Inn & Resort in the late ’80s, early ’90s. They were one of the first farm-to-table restaurants [in the area]. I grew up working there, and when I was in high school, they did sell the inn and the resort, but they kept a lot of the property that surrounded it.

There was an old barn that some Scottish cows lived in that my grandparents owned. But when they died, they didn’t really do anything with it. Well, my dad took it, and he actually put a commercial kitchen in it, and he catered high-end weddings and a bunch of different things for years. When I came back into the picture, I basically just took over the kitchen. 

The Barnhouse is housed in a real barn.
Photo by Colby Rabon

So Barnhouse Kitchen didn’t happen overnight…

It took us a long time to get to the place where we are. Each year, we figure out better ways to improve the quality of each product that we sell. So it’s been years and years of refining something that no one has really done this way. 

Every year [the pies] get better, and that’s the big thing about them. 

Tatyana Lindsey prepares to brush a pie.
Photo by Colby Rabon

Lamb shank and roasted roots over toasted pistachio couscous, pot-pie style.
Photo by Colby Rabon

Barnhouse Kitchen, 368 Lily Pad Lane, Flat Rock. To view a menu, including seasonal specials for Thanksgiving, and to pre-order food for pickup at the Kitchen, at a local tailgate market, or at a scheduled drop site, see barnhousekitchen.com.