Rustic Roots farmer-owned restaurant is Bunn's best-kept secret

Vanessa's first memory in the kitchen was when she was three years old.

Her cousins owned a restaurant, and her entire family worked in the business. That's where she learned hospitality.

"Where I learned to cook was from my mom," Vanessa said. "We always had to be in the kitchen helping her."

Vanessa and her sister, Heidi, opened their own restaurant, Sister's Cafe in Bunn, and that's where Vanessa met Russ Vollmer.

Russ, who comes from four generations of North Carolina farmers, worked with his father at Vollmer Farms. When Russ and Vanessa fell in love, she left the restaurant business to help him run the farm after his father passed away.

Becoming a farmer only made Vanessa more passionate about food. She couldn't, however, get the restaurant business out of her head.

"Before I met Russ I didn’t have an appreciation for where food came from," Vanessa said. "I hate to admit that, but that’s the truth."

When Russ and Vanessa opened Rustic Roots in 2020, they didn't realize until they selected the location that Russ's grandfather had built the building, which was used to store tractors and farm equipment. As chance would have it, it was right beside Sister's Cafe, which Heidi still runs.

"Sometimes it gives me chillbumps when I tell that story of how it was just meant to be here,” Vanessa said.

Since they were farmers themselves, the Vollmers knew Rustic Roots had to approach farm-to-table differently. That means creating their menu based off what's in season and paying farmers everything they deserve.

"We want to pay full price for the product they're selling," Vanessa said. "People will get to experience something that may have been in the field that morning on their plate that night."

Rustic Roots uses lettuce greens and micro greens from JJ's Greens in Louisburg and fresh chicken from Joyce Farms in Winston-Salem. They work with dozens of other farmers and use produce from their family's own Vollmer Farm, now run by Russ's cousins. Vollmer Farm provides blueberries, squash, zucchini, heirloom tomatoes and even flowers to decorate the tables.

"It's so funny because in the spring we'll have local farmers coming in the restaurant all the time asking what we need," Vanessa said. "Whatever they're growing, we'll make something out of it."

"It's just being creative on the fly," Russ said.

The Vollmers know the importance of supporting local growers because they also have sold their own produce to restaurants. To fully support farms, restaurants need to consistently source from local farms as much as possible.

"It's much easier for chefs to order their product in ... it's consistent with when it's going to arrive, they're not dealing with bugs and insects and crop loss and all those things local growers are dealing with," Russ said.

Getting ingredients faster and cheaper is why some restaurants fall off the true farm-to-table experience. Sales from farms drop off when it becomes easier and less expensive to source other ways.

"That's heartbreaking for a farmer when you're planning your season on a promise that really doesn't come through," Vanessa said, remembering her own experience selling tomatoes to a restaurant. "But we couldn't grow them for what they wanted us to sell to them for."

"We decided to go at farm-to-table differently than what we experienced when we were the farmers selling our products to them," Russ said.

Many of Rustic Roots' recipes come from staples taught to Vanessa by her mom, which she tweaked and made creative.

"I'm very interested in food, it's almost an obsession," Vanessa laughed.

Try the food at Rustic Roots once, and you'll be hooked. On the dessert menu, the brown butter cake is both a staff and customer favorite.

"It's my favorite. You haven't lived until you've had it ... that's what some people say," said Alli Strickland, who has worked with the Vollmers since Rustic Roots opened.

Other favorites are the roasted beet salad, hot honey chicken, tacos and Angus-certified burgers. The constantly changing menu features almost anything you could imagine, including Mexican food, pastas and prime rib.

Alli learned her way around the kitchen from Vanessa. She and the other chefs at Rustic Roots are as passionate about the food as the owners.

"We have a bunch of different people that are like-minded and care as much as we do," Vanessa said.

Nancy Cordero, who moved to the United States several years ago, makes homemade corn tortillas every day from scratch and wows everyone with her fresh tacos.

"Everything fresh every day," she said.

Naomi Boykin is in charge of the bar, which also sources local liquors and ingredients. On the menu now is a cocktail made with homemade lavender and lemon simple syrups, orange liquor and bitters from Raleigh-based Crude bitters.

Naomi's wife, Jacquelyn, is another long-time staffer. They got married after they started working at Rustic Roots and love spending time with their work family in the kitchen and outside the restaurant.

"We care about them," Russ said. "We care about their lives out of this place."

Vanessa encourages her entire staff to dream up new menu items and experiment in the kitchen.

"I love to see other people shine," Vanessa said. "Because it's not all about us, it's about all of us together and the love we can bring to other people."

To Russ and Vanessa, food is love.

"The real magic is in the people that work here," Vanessa said. "Our guests come and spend their hard earned money with us. They make them feel so important. And then you couple that with the food ... it's quite an experience in this little place that was built to be a tractor and farm truck garage."