Photo courtesy of Cugino Fratello.
The high summer harvest is here: overripe tomatoes are splitting on the vine, that cucumber you meant to pick last week has entered its “blunt object murder weapon” era, and coworkers keep leaving bags of mystery squash on your desk. Might as well just go with the flow, and feast.
This Sunday, Aug. 10, St. Cugino’s Day takes over The Mill & Mine with an Italian-inspired, all-vegetarian celebration of food and drink spotlighting East Tennessee’s ripest produce and Knoxville’s most playful chefs. The event doubles as a fundraiser for two beloved local nonprofits: CAC Beardsley Community Farm and Pilot Light.
Kory Robinson and Andrew Sayne. Photo courtesy of Cugino Fratello.
The event is the brainchild of Kory Robinson and Andrew Sayne, founders of Cugino Fratello, which has been staging Italian food pop-ups around town for the past few years. “Beati sunt qui festinant” (Blessed are those who party) reads the invite, and a party is exactly what this sounds like: Each of 11 food vendors was assigned a different fruit or vegetable, and it was up to them to decide what dish to make with it.
Here’s what they came up with:
My friend Liz summed it up: “The menu for St. Cugino’s Day looks daaamn delicious.”
Your ticket (available here) gets you access to all of these bites plus three drink tickets for a special wine tasting from Zero/Zero. Also, there’s a cash bar featuring specialty Italian cocktails and a “spritz station” operated by Fly By Night, and an espresso cart from Adrift Coffee Co.
DJ Dozibrion will be spinning all evening, with a performance by Cattywampus Puppet Council’s hot-pink marching band Knoxville Honkers & Bangers to close out the night. Summer vibes and decorations are by Husmus Studio.
It feels like Knoxville’s food and drink scene has been riding a wave of spontaneity and collaboration in recent years. Maybe it accelerated during the pandemic, when chefs had to think on their feet. Food trucks have boomed, giving chefs room to experiment on a more nimble scale. Spaces like Real Good Kitchen have helped incubate a new crop of food entrepreneurs. There’s more cultural inclusivity, too, thanks in part to Knoxville’s increasingly adventurous palate, and to restaurateurs like Yassin Terou, who brings a “rising tide lifts all boats” ethos to the table. And quietly, a new generation is stepping into influence, and they have little tolerance for the toxic, insular restaurant culture of yesteryear.
Kory Robinson and Andrew Sayne. Photo courtesy of Cugino Fratello.
Photo courtesy of Cugino Fratello.
I spoke to Kory and Andrew of Cugino Fratello about the origins of the project and the event. “Kory and I are good buds,” Andrew says. “We’ve been really, really close friends since about 2010.”
That was when they started working in a restaurant together. Their culinary paths have taken them in various directions – Kory is at Gourmet’s Market, helping to run the catering department; Andrew is sous chef at Potchke – but they’ve kept close and, in 2018, for fun, started hosting Wednesday night dinner parties.
“They were always Italian dinners, and we had a great time doing it,” Andrew says. “The parties grew and grew and grew, and it got to this point where both of our wives were like, ‘We love you guys having a great time, but if you’re going to keep growing, it needs to get outside of the house.’”
Their first pop-up dinner was at Gourmet’s Market. They had a positive enough response to try it again, at Potchke. “And then it just kind of evolved,” Kory says. “We started reaching out to friends that ran restaurants or even coffee stands or wine bars or anything in between, and being like, ‘Hey, can we just come over and make food?’ And people were really receptive. So St. Cugino Day feels like a culmination of that because all these people involved are friends we’ve worked with before in some kind of way.”
The idea for St. Cugino Day was born from Kory’s experience at a St. Joseph’s Day festival in Philadelphia: “I had a blast and got back and said, ‘Andrew, we need to do something. We need to get together all of our friends, and we need to celebrate what we’ve been doing.’ And we made up this fake saint, St. Cugino, and picked a bunch of vegetables and fruits, and picked our favorite places and all the friends who have helped us out.”
They had originally approached Jesse Newmister about doing the event at Kaizen, but it quickly became clear they were going to need a bigger boat. Jesse and his wife Margaret Stolfi are also managing partners of Otsu and The Mill & Mine, and they set them up with the space.
“That opened things up, and now it’s bigger than us,” Andrew says. “There are so many restaurants involved and cool wine bars and cool cocktail bars, musicians, vendors – this is a celebration of community. And I would love for it to be something that continues with that in mind. And the fact that we’re fundraising for Pilot Light and Beardsley just makes it feel that much more meaningful.”
Photo courtesy of Cugino Fratello.
Photo courtesy of Cugino Fratello.
Both nonprofits hold significance for Andrew and Kory. With the event’s emphasis on vegetarian-forward food, Beardsley Community Farm was an obvious beneficiary, especially since they’ve had a tough year due to federal funding cuts to the AmeriCorps program, Kory notes.
Pilot Light, a 25-year-old nonprofit music and arts venue in the Old City, recently launched a membership drive to help ensure sustainability for the next 25 years. “The Pilot Light has meant so much to me,” Andrew says. “I’ve played there since I was 19. In all these changing times and the way downtown is transforming, it’s more important than ever to realize these places happen because people make them happen.”
So, come on out to eat good food and drink good drink for a good cause!
What: St. Cugino Day
When: Sunday, Aug. 10 at 4 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Where: The Mill & Mine (227 W. Depot Ave.)
Tickets: Available online in advance here or at the door.
Admission: $85 + Taxes and CC fees includes food and 3 drink tickets good for the Zero/Zero wine tasting station or Peroni from the keg
N/A Admission: $75 + Taxes and CC fees: access to the event and food. No drink tickets.
This event is for all ages. Everyone, including children, must have a ticket to attend.
Disclosure: I serve on the board of directors of Pilot Light and Cattywampus Puppet Council, nonprofit organizations that are mentioned in this story.
Dining and Cooking