“Tamminga wanted the kitchen to be light, airy and highly functional," explains Eddings. The quartz Silestone countertops paired with articulating pendant lights from Visual Comfort and bright white Clay Imports tile create dimension, without any one item dominating the space.
P
atricia Tamminga has a way of putting everyone around her at ease — children, adults, animals. She asks the right kinds of questions and makes the kind of eye contact that, in the middle of a chaotic day, creates focus and connection. Even a brief conversation with the former chef, teacher and cooking-class instructor is centering. This is ironic, given that Tamminga has what some might call a “full plate” (pun intended). The Lufkin native, who studied finance at Ole Miss and culinary arts at Johnson & Wales, in Charlotte, North Carolina, began her food career at Brennan’s in Houston. After quickly realizing that the line cook life wasn’t for her, she moved to Austin in 2008 to pursue another passion: teaching elementary-age children. Teaching led to in-home cooking classes, where she guided children to “cook from scratch and become confident in the kitchen,” she says. These classes emboldened the instructor to renovate and convert a bungalow on 35th Street into Patricia’s Table, where from 2014 to 2018 Tamminga and her staff offered hands-on cooking classes to thousands of children. My own children were lucky enough to have been on the receiving end of these camps and classes, and I was always amazed at Tamminga’s ability to juggle the food work, the people work and the business work of running a cooking school. After years of teaching in her home and at
Patricia’s Table, Tamminga was ready for a pivot, and Beeline Market was born. Housed in the same sunny 35th Street bungalow, Tamminga and her new business partners, Jennah Granger and CiCi Steward, now serve Austin children through their grab-and-go meals and school lunch-delivery program. “Closing Patricia’s Table was bittersweet,” Tamminga says. “Not only did I make incredible relationships with families, I also learned so much along the way. The relationships I developed with Texas farmers and local purveyors have served as a great foundation for Beeline Market. We are seeking to change the landscape for convenient, nutritious kid meals. Our bento-style ‘buzz box’ meals ensure that kids have the fuel they need to keep their bodies and brains energized and focused.” In the midst of all this — teaching, cooking, managing, closing and opening (I’m tired just typing) — Tamminga realized it was time for her own home kitchen to get a much-needed overhaul. Enter Shannon Eddings. The local designer, who tends toward clean lines with traveled and textural inf luences, specializes in creating spaces that manage to straddle the accessible and aspirational. Eddings helped bring Tamminga’s classic and airy vision to life, and now the light-filled and highly functional space provides the perfect counterpoint to Beeline Market’s commercial kitchen, where Tamminga spends most of her days. Come on in. tribeza.com
| MAY 2019
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