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Supper substitute: dinner. gets a new website

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Photos by Ana Good.

Photos by Ana Good.

Longtime chef Carey Thomasson is bringing her worldwide cooking experience to Crestline Village. 

Thomasson’s new establishment, dinner., opened in May and offers fresh, healthy cooking for the family on the go. Complete meals for two are cooked in house, packed up and ready to be reheated at home, Thomasson said. This week, Thommasson also launched a new website, www.dinnerperiod.com. 

“This is a casserole-free environment,” she said.

Instead, the pick-up-and-go eatery prides itself on serving grilled meats, roasted vegetables, roasted pork, salads and what Thomasson refers to as a “decadent” macaroni and cheese. 

Ahead of its opening, Mountain Brook residents popped inside the still-under-construction space, praising Thomasson for the beautiful restaurant. Future customers said they couldn’t wait for dinner. to officially open. For quite some time now, Thomasson said she has been cooking for several families in the area, preparing weekly meals they can keep in the refrigerator and heat up when needed.

Besides cooking for families, Thomasson said she stays active in the community, hosting a variety of cooking workshops. She also is involved at St. Luke’s and is raising her two children, 8-year-old Hollis and 9-year-old Flynn. Thomasson moved to Mountain Brook after meeting her husband, Dan, who grew up in Crestline. The two married in 2004. 

“Everyone kept telling me, ‘I wish you would make me dinner,’” she said.

Last year at Sloss Fest, Thomasson said, she made up her mind the time had come to open up a space of her own. 

“My whole thing is there’s nothing I love more than sitting around a table with family and friends, eating good food and talking,” she said. “People don’t do that anymore. They don’t have time to.”

Dinner.’s motto, “We made it for you,” will help make those reunions around the table possible again, Thomasson said.

“I love being able to provide that for people,” she said. 

Thomasson has been a private chef for 30 years. She has worked in Los Angeles, New York and everywhere in between. The Connecticut native has cooked up meals fit for celebrities such as Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith.

“Being a chef wasn’t exactly my life plan. I moved to LA to be a movie star, but when that didn’t work, I started cooking for them,” Thomasson said with a laugh. 

Yet cooking is something she’s always done, she said. Since she was a little girl, Thomasson said you could find her in the kitchen with her mother. It was a natural fit. 

Self-taught, Thomasson earned her first job as a private chef when she was a teenager after a wealthy elderly woman asked her to cook for her ailing husband.  

“I’ve learned over the years,” Thomasson said. “I read just about every kind of cookbook out there.” 

Dinner.’s à la carte offerings are low-fat, low-sugar, never frozen and allergy-conscious. Thomasson said the kitchen will not cook with any nuts, fish or shellfish. Prices range from $8 to $15.

dinner.

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