Together at the Table
BY COURTNEY SEARCY
Many of my strongest memories revolve around food. The pancakes at the breakfast table in conversation with my grandfather, the glass of cider at a café while in Paris with a few of my friends, the dinner co-op with meals shared through my first years after college while my friends' children ran around the house. These moments built around food and drink shape our routines and sense and belonging. We build our families and our communities — chosen or given to us — around these rituals.
In the months of the COVID-19 pandemic that stretched after the initial lockdown, I found myself working from home. Days stretched into months of uncertainty — the novelty of zoom meetings and virtual events became monotonous, and the feeling of isolation continued to creep in as meals shared at tables became meals eaten alone from a takeout container. I remember wishing for those chance encounters sitting in a coffee shop, bumping into an acquaintance and having a short, meaningless conversation.
Fast forward to February of 2021, when a thick blanket of snow fell on Jackson, the deepest snow I’d seen in years. The snow finally began to melt as Turntable Coffee Counter’s opening day approached, and there was a line stretched out the door of Turntable Coffee Counter that Saturday morning as freezing temperatures and flurries persisted. For the first time in a year, I sat with masked faces temporarily unveiled, across from my friends to enjoy a cup of coffee.
Now, in their new location on East Main, so much that felt miraculous then feels commonplace. The routine of my week is oriented around this “third space” — I start my morning work with coffee, and watch quietly while someone picks up the Journal and reads a story. I meet a stranger who I notice is writing and editing next to me, I hug a friend who’s had a hard week. On Saturdays, I sit down to enjoy a pastry and a coffee, marking the beginning of the weekend without my laptop in tow. It’s become an anchor to Downtown Jackson’s community life. But despite the way it has become part of our “new normal,” there’s a careful art and science behind this gathering place.
When you walk up to order at Turntable Coffee Counter, if you’re lucky to get there early enough, the first thing you see is a pastry display on top of a counter made by a local craftsman Chris Deming, stocked with whatever seasonal lineup of baked goods happens to be featured.
When you order, you’re also likely to peek behind the barista and see a few women working methodically, rolling out dough and assembling each pastry. It’s all a well-oiled machine, or as the bakers describe it, like an ant farm of production as they navigate the narrow aisles of the small kitchen tucked in the coffee shop. It’s business as usual, but so much of the magic happening is what you can’t see.
Rebecca Creasy, the Lead Baker at Turntable, is a big part of that magic. In 2021, Rebecca was on a firm career path, doing a job she loved. But she was always baking for friends and family, creating space for them to enjoy what she baked. She was a close friend of owner Anthony Kirk, who one day asked her if she wanted to bake for Turntable as they expanded to a larger space.
Initially Rebecca took it as a joke, but the joke persisted, and became a real offer. Before she knew it, she was making the bold choice to step away from the path she had started on.
Although deciding to bake for Turntable was a significant step for her, it was also one that had followed her entire life, like the Saturdays after Thanksgiving when the women in her family would gather to bake sun up to sun down. Her grandmother would bake for church gatherings and taught her to make pie. Going to these gatherings with her illustrated one thing to her: "food brings people together." This would follow her through college and beyond, as she would cook and bake and build friendships. So she took the leap. Something new for Rebecca meant something new for Jackson, too.
“We tried to look at what other people were already doing well, knowing we didn’t have to recreate or compete with that, to see where Turntable pastries could fit in with what’s already in Jackson. How can we bring something different to the table with our food, drinks, and atmosphere? How can we serve the community in a way that isn’t being done yet? That’s so important when you think about a community, having all of these places for different moods, feelings, cravings. We’re giving people the opportunity to have a variety to choose from,” Rebecca said.
This approach has manifested in multiple facets of the menu — with unique, nostalgia inspired pastries like the fruity pebble hand pie featured in their summer menu. The menu balances familiar flavors while bringing them to a unique creation, like a recent cornbread scone. Furthermore, Rebecca has a commitment to their items to being handmade from the crust down to the jams and toppings included.
“Everything is done with reason and purpose. It's not just a pastry — there’s a thought or a feeling behind it. Our first summer menu was inspired by memories of being a kid on summer break and you eat that peanut butter sandwich with chips – it harkens back to these feelings or memories,” Rebecca said.
“Becca isn’t scared to try things that no one else is doing in Jackson,” owner Anthony Kirk said of Creasy.
This creativity has led to the success of the in-house bakery, as it has grown to become a team of four baking to keep the display cases stocked. The balance of familiarity and novelty has also been an effort to create a welcoming space for the community.
He described drinks like “Elvia’s horchata,” made with Elvia Trejo’s recipe and that serve as a familiar cultural tradition to some and a new experience to others. Anthony said this means the menu and the space have things that are familiar, like a record their mom listened to among Green Hawk Record’s selection in-store or a menu item like a snickerdoodle cookie — but the menu also offers what may be new to a customer, like a galette or a sweet potato latte.
I think back to those days of lockdown often, because it is easy to have rushed back into our lives without really marveling at the miracle it is that we can gather at all, that we can have those chance encounters and connections, that we can share our grief and joys, our monotony and our chaos with each other.
“People are here every day, or they come here just to celebrate something, or for their Saturday morning when they want to get out of their routine. It’s people from different walks of life marking milestones. A wide spectrum of people sit next to each other daily,” Anthony said.
It’s clear that spaces like Turntable, and the approach to the food and drink like they are offering there, are a vital part of the kind of “making” our community that we set out to highlight in this issue, even if food may not always be the first way we think of as progress. Yet they are part of developing a culture with a unique and thoughtful identity, our community as a more connected and inclusive space, and giving us a space to bring that connection and shared identity into changing our community.
I imagine some days, the repetitive actions of rolling out dough, cutting it into servings and keeping the case full may be monotonous, and not always infused with a great sense of meaningfulness. Maybe on the surface, nobody would pin a pastry as anything more than a pastry in the larger picture of our community.
There’s a well-known Mother Theresa quote that says, “Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.” It doesn’t surprise me that Rebecca describes everything she bakes as a labor of love.
Many members of our community do daily work that will never be seen in the pages of this magazine, but I think the work of people like Rebecca reminds us to both look at our own work and at the work happening all around us with that same intention. If we are going to make our community and our world, we will make it with our daily, repeated efforts, with love and intention, but we won’t do it alone. We’ll bring it all together at the table.
COURTNEY SEARCY became the Program Director of Our Jackson Home at theCO in 2020, having contributed to OJH as a writer, photographer, and volunteer since 2015. Courtney serves as Editor-in-Chief for the blog and magazine and coordinates events and Our Jackson Home projects. She thinks the best things in life are good food, art, music, and friends to share it all with.
