Meet Newcomer Fran's Meat + Three at East Market
Plus, local businesses offer fun ways to celebrate Lunar New Year.
Meet Newcomer Fran's Meat + Three at East Market
By Erin Edwards
It’s not often that after finishing a meal, I want to hug the person who cooked it.
That’s the urge that swept over me last Friday following a lunch of fried catfish, cornbread dressing, collard greens and much more at Fran’s Meat + Three, a new vendor at East Market. It had been a frigid and trying January week, and I appreciated the comforting reminder of my hometown, Nashville, which was home to some of the first meat-and-three restaurants.
You could tell there was a lot of heart in Fran’s cooking–from the excellent, roux-based mac ’n’ cheese to the stellar banana pudding—and so I wanted to talk to (and possibly hug) the person responsible.
Now entering only its fourth week, Fran’s is owned and operated by Christianna and Carlos Berry, a married couple of entrepreneurs who relocated last year from Cleveland to Columbus. They are also government contractors who run a cafeteria, Scratch Cafe + Catering, for an air traffic control center in Oberlin, Ohio.
Christianna grew up in the Cleveland area and says she wanted to be a chef from an early age, inspired by those she saw on The Food Network, like Emeril Lagasse and Ina Garten. During her junior and senior years of high school, she started taking part in culinary competitions, and not long after she enrolled in Johnson & Wales University’s culinary school in Charlotte, with an eye towards becoming an entrepreneur.
“Now, [it’s not] the Food Network chefs I idolize. It’s the everyday chefs in these restaurants, because it's hard to run a business,” Christianna says.
For the last 10 years while living in Northern Ohio, Christianna says she would drive down to visit Columbus frequently. “It was always food-related,” she says. “We’d go to the North Market, and my sister and I would go to any new restaurant that opened, and then we'd go back home.”
She saw a lot of opportunity in Columbus, and so she and her husband made the leap last year.
“I'm always thinking of new businesses. I always have a running list. When my husband and I visited East Market early last summer, I said it smelled like candied yams when I walked in the door,” she says, laughing. “I went to look for them, and I didn't see them. We sat down, and I was like, ‘You know what they're missing? There needs to be soul food, Southern food, something like that. What about a meat-and-three?’ ”
A meat-and-three is a style of Southern restaurant, not a cuisine—though it is most often associated with soul food, the cuisine traditionally prepared by African Americans in the South. At a meat-and-three, you select one protein and then choose three vegetables (or sides), all for one fixed price. Drinks and desserts are extra.
Though Christianna may not have grown up dining at meat-and-threes, she did grow up with her grandmother’s cooking. Fran’s is named after her.
“I was always a side dish girl,” Christianna says. “So [it] was really important to me...to make sure that the sides were actually good. In a lot of places, the meat’s always the focus, but I feel like the sides are just as important, if not more important."
During The Foodletter’s visit to Fran’s, we selected the fried catfish and bacon-wrapped meatloaf for our proteins. (The cornmeal crust on the fish was perfectly crisp and salty.) We got to choose six sides, so we went with butter beans (the rotating bean of the day), collard greens with smoked turkey, mac ’n’ cheese, deviled egg potato salad, honey butter cornbread and even cornbread dressing, which I never see outside of Thanksgiving in Nashville. There wasn't a weak link among the dishes we tried. And, yes, I still need to try the candied yams and mains like fried shrimp and confit turkey leg.
Be sure to save room. Fran’s offers three types of banana pudding for $7, and it’s a very generous portion. In addition to classic banana pudding, Christianna plans to rotate in two variations. On the day we visited, she had Biscoff cookie and Nutter Butter banana puddings, the latter of which was a revelation for me.
Though Fran’s is just getting started in Columbus, the Berrys already have designs on expanding and possibly growing the desserts side of the business to include pound cakes, cobblers and more.
In the meantime, I’ll try any banana pudding Fran’s can dream up.
Find It:
Inside East Market, 212 Kelton Ave., Franklin Park
Dive Deeper:
Notes
Around the Columbus Food & Drink Scene
Roys Ave Supper Club chef Andrew Smith (whose forthcoming restaurant, Isla, is under construction) is teaming up with beverage guru Joshua Gandee for an N/A dinner on Wednesday, Feb. 12, at The Lox Bagel Shop. The 3-course dinner will feature non-alcoholic pairings and will have two seatings at 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Snag your seats here, and be sure to check out Gandee’s “No Proof” podcast.
Several local businesses are gearing up to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Three Bites Bakery is offering a special Lunar New Year box, featuring a “variety of cookies, rice-based desserts and some pineapple cakes” available for pickup Jan. 29-Feb. 2. Meanwhile, Cobra is planning a Year of the Snake celebration on Friday, Feb. 7, featuring menu specials, a traditional lion dance and DJ. In addition, The Kitchen in German Village is holding a Lunar New Year participatory dinner on Saturday, Feb. 1.
One of our go-to Mexican spots, Tacos Don Deme, is adding a second location—this one in Pickaway County at 9121 US-62 in Orient. The taqueria’s original location is located at 75 S. Murray Hill Road on Columbus’ Far West Side. The new restaurant in Orient opens this Wednesday, Jan. 29.
I loved their biscoff banana pudding! I think it's the best store bought banana pudding in Columbus, and I've had most of them. (I do need to specify "store bought" because my partner's homemade banana pudding is exceptional 😉)
You’ll have to try the other variations too!