Greer Gilchrist and Cameron Neal opened the Harbinger Café and Bakery in 2017. Nestled in Charleston’s North Central neighborhood, the cafe quickly gained a loyal following, with neighborhood folks, remote workers and tourists flocking to the cozy space for inventive pastries and cheekily named coffee drinks.
Sister eatery, Harken Café & Bakery, opened on Queen Street in 2019.
“We’ve been asked by our regulars — and by people who don’t live here — for recipes or for a cookbook [for years],” Gilchrist said. “It was always something that seemed like a really fun idea, but not something that was super feasible, especially in the beginning because, any small business owner will tell you — it’s really hard.”
Gilchrist said last year, when she and Neal decided they had a pretty decent handle on both businesses, felt like the right time for writing a cookbook.
“It’s a lot to make sure the recipes will work in a home kitchen and to cut them down from a commercial setting,” Gilchrist said. “And then [to have to] think about what to say — what is interesting to other people?”
She said that years of reading “a million cookbooks” helped her fine tune what stories and recipes she would include in the cookbook.
Her interest in food writing runs deep — she even enjoyed perusing the backs of cereal boxes for stories in her youth — and she tapped into that when coming up with blurbs and back stories for the recipes in the cafes’ new cookbook.
The personal is universal
Gilchrist also said she spent a lot of time in her 20s reading cookbooks to gain knowledge about food and the food business.
“I loved reading those stories,” she said. “It helped me see people’s evolution, because a lot of times you see people when they’ve made it, but you’re like ‘How did you get here?’ And in your 20s you’re so desperate to know that.
“I really just tried to think of my lost 20-year-old self and what I would want to read — and hopefully that’s interesting to other people.”
The cookbook features more than 40 of the cafes’ recipes, both savory and sweet, from salads to cookies to sandwiches. Readers can look forward to some of the cafe’s popular dishes like the Best Friend cookies and the Great Dane bar, as well as an item that’s near and dear to Gilchrist, the raspberry pound cake muffin.
She said that while one particular recipe isn’t directly related to a memory, muffins in general remind her of her grandparents, with whom she was very close.
“It was one of those formative memories; we stayed at this bed and breakfast and every morning they had banana muffins,” she said. “Every time I saw muffins I thought of these trips — and it’s really special and important to me.”
She said that the cookbook’s recipe for a green tomato salad was inspired by her time as a 22-year-old working at a bakery in Boston that served green tomato sandwiches. “I was so lost, so broke … It’s nice for me to look back on that version of me now and tell that story,” she said.
Sharing memories and beloved recipes comes natural to Gilchrist, who created cafes for folks to do just that.
“Cameron and I built these businesses because of what we felt was needed [in Charleston] and we felt like we needed these beautiful, welcoming spaces where someone could come and feel comfortable hanging out all day with a friend, a family member, work, whatever, and you know, start with coffee and then maybe grab lunch, maybe leave, maybe come back,” she said. “That was our whole idea — to make this place your place.”
The cookbook will be available online and in-store May 8. Learn more and pre-order the book at theharbingercafe.com/cookbook.
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