Anzie Blue's Rising Star

Like many healthy beginnings, this story starts with breakfast. Dial back to April of ’21. For certain world historical reasons, it’s a particularly tough time to be in the restaurant biz. Hillsboro Village’s Anzie Blue is throwing spaghetti against the walls trying to see what sticks. Someone’s noodle says ‘breakfast’, as in let’s start serving it. Great idea! Only problem – everyone in the kitchen’s a dinner cook. But someone knows a veteran chef in town – one with twenty years of professional cooking experience in kitchens from Florida to Alaska. This woman has been cooking breakfast since the age of 4 when her grandmother in some teeny-tiny town in Alabama first taught her to stand on a stool and stir grits. 

Her name is Star Maye, and she agrees to come help. Anzie Blue’s owner, Marcie Van Mol, doesn’t take long – two weeks tops – to recognize that a genuine star has entered her building. Not only is her Southern-themed cooking sublime, but her people skills are just as good, her magnetism naturally attracting others’ spirits, lifting them up by her positive presence.    

“Do you think you can run the kitchen, Star?” Marcie asks.  

“Could I run the kitchen?!” Star recently recalls with a deep, warm chuckle about her response to that life-changing question just over a year ago. “Of course, I could run the kitchen!  I’ve been running kitchens for 20 years. I just never got the title.”

So, in a singular act of brilliance, Marcie makes Star the executive chef, and a glass ceiling shatters as Anzie Blue begins to take off. The first order of business is to establish who they are. Chef Star thought things through. “I tell people, if you do something good, make it great. So, I committed to closing at 6 and to owning what we were already doing best: breakfast, lunch, and brunch. We do it all day long, and we do it well.”

But Anzie Blue is more than a café. They now do a monthly drag brunch and gospel brunch. Both Chef Star’s ideas. 

The secret sauce behind Chef Star’s success is that her decisions aren’t strictly business, but are based upon personal relationships. Her executive sous chef, Emily Costa, joined her in May, fulfilling a promise the two women had made to each other in a tough Florida kitchen some fifteen years ago, swearing that if one of them ever made it, she would offer the other a hand up. “The drag and gospel performers are also my friends,” Chef Star points out. 

But Chef Star isn’t content to rest on her well-deserved laurels. In fact, she’s just getting started. Her first cookbook, A Star Among Us: A Chef’s Story, is now out, and she has big plans for both Anzie Blue and for herself. “In three years, I hope to have five Anzie Blues, and bring in more friends to help me run them. I hope to win a James Beard Award. I hope to have my own TV show. Here in Nashville, I am very big in community efforts and work with a nonprofit called Cool Kids Society.”

This Star is certainly shining bright.