Restaurant Tyler Chef Ty Thames

Starkville — As brunch winds down on any given Sunday in Starkville, diners hug goodbye under the shade of the wrought iron balcony above the entrance to Restaurant Tyler.

It’s because since 2008 when chef Ty Thames and his business partner, Starkville lawyer Brian Kelly, opened Restaurant Tyler, or simply “Tyler,” the eatery has become such a staple that most consider it a must-stop; not only for Sunday brunch but for a fine Saturday evening meal, as well.

It’s fitting that the restaurant has taken on the simple moniker of its owner’s name, as the restaurant is a clear reflection of Ty’s warm personality and eloquence. His menu reflects his thoughtfulness and depth, and its myriad choices reflect his generosity. And despite the differences in their atmospheres and offerings, those qualities transcend all four of his Starkville establishments.

“I always wanted to have my own restaurant,” Ty said. “It was the only thing I ever wanted to do.”

A graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi and the New England Culinary Institute, Ty had a full plate of professional experience before his return to Mississippi. After leaving Vermont, he spent a year interning in Parma, Italy, and later worked in a number of East Coast establishments, including The Ritz Carlton in Washington, D.C.

Restaurant Tyler was not his first foray into the Starkville eatery scene.

In addition to Restaurant Tyler, he has BIN612 and the newly opened Upstairs at Tyler and The Guest Room.

A decade ago, he packed what he could fit into his car and headed south to Starkville, where he and Brian opened their initial venture, BIN 612. It will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year.

“I slept on a mattress on the floor at first,” he said, laughing. But, he quickly settled in.

Instagram feeds from Starkville locals on an early spring afternoon feature idyllic shots of house-made pizza on a patio table with captions exclaiming, “Finally! It’s BIN weather.” Here, a large outdoor seating area overlooks the heart of the city’s dreamy, historic residential neighborhood, the Cotton District.

“It’s like an upscale pizzeria, where we make all our bread and dough,” Ty said. “Coming from Italian roots, I just went with what I liked and what I knew.”

As the afternoons fade into evenings, hearts beat to the tune of live local music and vivacious crowds of Mississippi State University students.

In fact, most Starkville residents would argue “the BIN” is the heart, the vital organ that sparked the District’s 21st century life. It was BIN 612’s success that gave shape and focus to the vivid nightlife that now attracts area visitors to the Cotton District. And as the neighborhood evolved, the restaurant grew to fit the needs of its customers.

“Three years ago we renovated and expanded. It was real small. Now we’ve got a whole big kitchen where we can do a lot more,” Ty said.

For late-night revelers, BIN 612 has a small window for last-minute reinforcements.

“It’s like a cheese fries bonanza,” Ty said, laughing.

On the heels of BIN 612, in 2008, Ty and Brian opened what is now their prime venture, Restaurant Tyler. Even amid a staggering recession, the restaurant found its footing, and by the fall of 2009, it catapulted toward the top of must-visit SEC town eateries with a spotlight by ESPN’s “Taste of the Town.”

The restaurant’s booming popularity has given Ty a lot of pride.

“It’s great to have people recognize that what you’re doing is something abnormal and different from the mean,” he said. “It separates you from other restaurants.”

The restaurant’s cozy booths or corner tables provide the perfect setting to sample one of Ty’s unique, creative and often inventive dishes.

“If you do it right, you can use techniques to make something really flavorful,” Ty said. “Then it gives the customer a different take on something they haven’t normally eaten.”

Especially for longtime patrons, though, that adventure is what makes a trip to Tyler all the more rewarding — and that’s true for Ty as well.

“What you’re serving is a reflection of your personality and yourself,” he said. “It’s really come around now where the customers in the dining room, I’ve kind of gained their trust over the years. They may say, ‘Whatever, I wouldn’t try that, but I’ll try that because Ty is cooking it.’ That means a lot to me.”

Ty’s value of the community stems from his Italian roots, and it spreads beyond the doors of the restaurant. Using fresh, local ingredients, and through support of Starkville’s seasonal farmers’ market, he rewrites the narrative of traditional Southern comfort food.

“You’re getting the freshest ingredients possible. You’re supporting the community because you’re buying from the community and then you’re giving back to the community,” he says. “It’s that cycle of keeping the money in-house and keeping the money in your own community.”

He reels off his local sources as familiarly as if they were family members. It’s one of his favorite parts of his job.

“I love working with the farmers’ market, that interaction and all the different farmers and all the different farms — whether it’s a pork farm in Mathiston or a chicken farm in Beaver Dam Farms in Indianola, sweet potatoes in Vardaman,” he said. “Once people start realizing where your sources are, they know what they’re getting.”

The menu changes with the seasons, highlighting produce thriving at the time.

“It’s all about using the seasons to your advantage, rather than just relying on a truck that’s going to come with tomatoes year-round,” Ty said. “It’s a lot more challenging for the restaurant owner because now you have to be creative on a daily basis rather than, ‘This is our menu year-round.’”

Despite the demands of two wildly successful restaurants, Ty isn’t out of culinary bullets. In 2014, in order to give Restaurant Tyler a more well-rounded bar area, he and Brian renovated the basement of the restaurant to become The Guest Room, an intimate, chic speak-easy drenched in vintage, New Orleans-style décor and offering an array of both traditional and edgy cocktails.

On the first crisp fall nights of October, as MSU’s gridiron success welcomed more national buzz about Starkville than ever before, you’d hear whispered rumors float above the cowbells’ clangor of such famous faces as CBS Sports’ Verne Lundquist and Gary Danielson slipping into the back door of The Guest Room.

“The positive feedback has really been gratifying,” Ty said, adding that it gives Restaurant Tyler itself more depth by giving it a functional meeting room. “Opening up and renovating down here gave us that opportunity to have all those things that I felt Restaurant Tyler was missing.”

He’s also in the process of renovating Upstairs at Tyler, a flight of stairs above the main restaurant, which according to Ty, is his version of a sports bar.

“We have Restaurant Tyler food, but it’s more casual dining,” he says. “With all the TVs we have up there, we play all the different games on HD and the projector.”

He said the current rustic feel will be redecorated to tie in more fluidly with the theme of its mother restaurant downstairs.

And for Ty, at least for the moment, the four establishments are enough. He feels as if he’s hit all his target markets in Starkville and is pleased with his existing ventures. Ty said some of the best advice he received in training was from a French chef who said, “You don’t have to be a jack of all trades. Just be really good at one thing and let other people fill in the rest.”

“Achievement for me is more within my own evolution as a chef. I know who I am and where I want to go and what I want to become,” he says. “But the day-to-day grind is really what it’s all about. To have my team and those guys following me is important. If they can’t follow me, I’m already dead in the water.”

Ty also is actively finding new ways to march forward.

“A big movement right now that I’m starting to get on is the ‘Can you eat what you kill?’ diet. If you don’t either know where it is or you can take it and harvest it yourself, you don’t eat it,” he said. “One thing I’m trying to do now is to get all my beef local, which is challenging.”

He said he’s involved in a West Point farm being developed with heritage pigs.

“Once that gets rolling, I’m going to open up a slaughterhouse and processing plant there that will supply the restaurants with our own packaging,” he said. “That hopefully will be down the road of what my career will branch into — the processing of whole and natural foods.”

In a fast 10 years, Ty has peppered the city of Starkville with dining establishments that suit virtually every mood, taste and budget. What might be most important, however, is his strong belief in the benefits of the local product. That has allowed him to educate even the most knowledgeable in a college town.

“I’m still young and I’m never going to know everything. I’m never going to reach the end of the line. I think the end of the line is going to reach me before I reach it,” he said. “That evolution of always having the drive to learn something new and be open-minded is really what I’m all about.”

STORY Kate Gregory
PHOTOGRAPHY Jeremy Murdock