By Dathan Kazsuk
There are probably easier ways to wind up cooking in Littleton, North Carolina.
You could grow up nearby. You could take a restaurant job around Lake Gaston. You could work your way through kitchens in Raleigh or Durham and eventually decide you wanted something quieter.
Ryan Grimm’s route included California culinary school, Los Angeles traffic, burnout, a one-way ticket to Europe, a dairy farm in Ireland, a winery in Croatia, Warrenton and, eventually, Blue Jay Bistro.
And somehow, when you hear him tell it, the whole thing makes sense.
I talked with Grimm before a recent wine dinner at Blue Jay featuring Carissa Mondavi of Continuum Estate. The dinner itself was impressive, but what interested me just as much was how a chef with Grimm’s background ended up cooking in a town this small—and why he seems perfectly content doing it.
From Los Angeles to Lake Gaston
Before North Carolina, Grimm trained at the California Culinary Academy and built his career on the West Coast. He and his wife were both working in Los Angeles, with Grimm running Eat Drink Americano downtown. The schedule was brutal: 12-hour days, commutes that could stretch from one to three hours each way and, some weeks, barely half a day together.
Eventually, Grimm jokingly asked his wife what she thought about selling everything and moving to Europe.
She said yes.
“So we spent the next year downsizing our lives,” Grimm said. “We let go of everything we had in Los Angeles, and we bought a one-way ticket to Europe.”
What followed sounds like the culinary version of throwing away the itinerary. They ate, drank, and worked their way across Europe, including running a small boutique hotel and restaurant in England, working on an Irish dairy farm whose milk and cream went to Baileys, and spending time on a farm and winery in Croatia.
More importantly, they got to slow down and experience places from the perspective of the people who actually lived there.
When the couple returned to the United States, Grimm’s brother and sister-in-law had relocated to North Carolina. They spent the summer with them near Lake Gaston and found something familiar in the rural lifestyle.
It reminded them of Europe.
So they stayed.
Grimm eventually became a familiar name in the Warrenton and Lake Gaston food scene. He served as co-owner and executive chef at Robinson Ferry Restaurant & Spirits, where his menus leaned heavily on Warren County producers and farmers. He also ran Chilly Chicken Creamery before moving to Littleton.
Finding the Right Fit in Littleton
Blue Jay Bistro had been on his radar for a while.
Grimm said he watched Ed and Deb Fitts build the restaurant while he worked in Warrenton and considered making the jump more than once. But the timing never felt right.
Then it did.
“I watched the Fitts build this absolutely amazing, beautiful restaurant that any chef would be thrilled to work at,” Grimm said. “Every day I walk in that door, and I look at the restaurant, I have the same feeling that I’m just so blessed to be here.”
Blue Jay also offers more than dinner service.
The Fittses have spent years investing in Littleton, restoring buildings and opening businesses as part of a broader effort to breathe life back into the small Halifax County town. Blue Jay is part of that ecosystem, with its net proceeds supporting Littleton Academy and programs for local students.
That matters to Grimm because it aligns with how he already sees restaurants.
“One of my cornerstones is that I believe in restaurants—we’re not just feeding people, but we’re nurturing communities,” he said. “I saw an amazing fit here where I can actively put that into practice.”
Cooking With a Sense of Place
That community connection also shows up on the plate.
Blue Jay describes its food as contemporary American, a phrase broad enough to mean almost anything. Grimm’s definition is more personal. He pulls from everywhere he has lived, worked, and traveled, then filters those ideas through what is growing around him and what tastes best at that moment.
“I draw inspiration from everywhere I’ve been in my past,” he said, “and I kind of filter through what’s available here, what’s in season.”
That means mushrooms from a grower down the road, produce from nearby farms and conversations with farmers about what they might grow in future seasons. For the Continuum dinner, Grimm told me much of the produce was coming from nearby Ridgeway.
It is local sourcing with a purpose: better ingredients, certainly, but also another way for the restaurant to support the surrounding area.
Grimm also understands that “fine dining” can be a loaded phrase, especially in a small town. He doesn’t want Blue Jay to feel like a place where you need to study the menu before ordering.
“We keep our menu wording very simple,” he said. “We don’t use a lot of fancy French or other intimidating culinary terms.”
What he does want diners to notice is the thought behind the food.
Grimm told me a dish is never simply a collection of ingredients placed together because they sound good.
“When I’m designing a dish, it’s never just throwing different things together,” he said. “It’s always something very personal to me.”
A dish might pull from somewhere he worked, something he tasted years ago or a place he visited halfway across the world.
“So every dish I put on the menu,” Grimm said, “it’s a little piece of me.”
That may be the best way to understand what Ryan Grimm is doing at Blue Jay Bistro.
The California training matters. Los Angeles matters. Europe matters. Warrenton matters. The farms down the road matter.
But none of those things stand alone.
They all meet on the plate in Littleton.
For more bites, pours, pairings, and local food-and-drink finds, visit our Sip & Savor page.
