WILMINGTON — The city’s newest food truck is more of a tiny restaurant on wheels, featuring local produce and seafood catches you won’t find in many restaurants around town.
The Kitchen at Palate, run by former Rx sous chef and fifth generation Wilmingtonian Carson Jewell, is up and running behind the Palate Bottle Shop and Reserve (1007 N. Fourth Street). A grand opening is set for Saturday, April 27.
To understand the type of food you can expect here — like the grilled whole trout and smoked fish salad now on the menu — it’s best to understand a culinary career founded on Jewell’s childhood spent fishing and crabbing with his grandfather.
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“I’m into lots of wild food, weird seafood; foraging things. This is what I was born into,” Jewell said. “There is a lot of tradition in cooking here for me.”
His education grew from there. He spent a decade working for the iconic downtown restaurant Caffe Phoneix before it closed in 2012, half a year at a small organic restaurant in Peru, then five years at Rx where he worked his way up to chef de cuisine.
After jobs with James Beard award winners Ashley Christensen in Raleigh and Vivian Howard back in Wilmington, Jewell said it was his time at Drifter’s Wife in Portland, Maine — named America’s ninth-best new restaurant in 2018 by Bon Appétit magazine — that clarified his cooking style.
“That’s what gave me focus on what I want to do: A lot of hard work, minimal staffing, and really fresh, really good food,” Jewell said.
Keeping it simple — and weird
Jim Walker, who had just finished eating a plate of smoked fish salad, said he had been following Jewell’s culinary work the past two years.
“It was delicious. The potatoes were special, the fish salad was really good. There’s a lot of flavors in there; you gotta slow down and taste them all,” Walker said.
Jewell uses local fishermen and farmers to supply food that he says can “speak for itself,” using fresh herbs and simple sauces to bring out natural flavors. He tells his supplier to keep an eye out for weird catches brought in on the boats each day — things like finger mullet, octopus, and trout — because he sees a niche in a local seafood scene dominated by the “calabash, fried style.”

“I think people have an idea of what they want to eat — like tuna, mahi, grouper, things like that,” Jewell said. “And that’s what all the seafood places sell. But we’re going to be selling things like finger mullet — salting in and putting it on salad or potatoes — and more delicate things like salads and smoked fish. We’ll try to give Wilmington what it needs.”
Jeremy Malanka mans the bar inside, focusing on educating the staff on what beer and wine pairs well with Jewell’s dishes.
“I’ve always said a good manager is a good agent for a chef,” Malanka said. “What Carson is doing — and our whole concept here of providing something for everyone’s palate — is perfect for Wilmington and what it needs. It kind of gets away from that stuffy, sit-down type place.”
In the future, Jewell wants to open his own brick-and-mortar, but for now he’s content cooking “honest, thoughtful food with the help of local farmers and fishermen.” And he doesn’t forget why he does it in the first place.
“For me, food is about togetherness,” Jewell said. “People solve problems over food. They get together and celebrate each other over food.”
Mark Darrough can be reached at Mark@Localvoicemedia.com