Bramble On
Local Restauranteur, Jeff Brantley, Returns to His Roots – In the Kitchen and in Life – To Bring Us His Blend of Genuine Southern Food
Jeff Brantley first sampled joy in a jar as a child, on visits to his father’s family in the remote South Alabama town of Thomasville.
“I spent a lot of time there growing up – it was our closest family so we were down there a ton,” Brantley, an accomplished chef and Columbus native, recalls while chatting at his Midtown production facility for Bramble, his pickle/relish food line.
“Because of the way my dad and my grandmother were, food, well, that’s just what you did. I remember they would have everything in jars. I mean, everything. I would see all this stuff, all cut up and weird colored, floating around in these jars and ask, ‘What is that? What do you mean we’re going to eat that?’ It was weird but it was great. I would sit down with a jar of sweet potatoes and eat them until I turned orange.”
Those cherished childhood memories helped inspire Brantley’s career path and continue to inform his incurable culinary curiosity. He uses his grandmother’s recipe for Bramble’s Pickled Green Tomatoes. The business name itself came courtesy of his grandmother. “She had this expression she’d always use about getting caught in the bramble, the prickly bushes and vines that’s all over South Alabama,” he explains. “She translated it to mean getting in trouble. When we decided it was time to start our own thing, we said, ‘We’re going to do it. We’re going to go get caught in the bramble.’”
That ‘we’ is Brantley and his wife Brooke, and that business was a spot in a new, high-concept food hall in Louisville, Kentucky. In its first incarnation, Bramble made “everything but the meat, bread and ketchup” and found instant success with loyal customers hungry for Brantley’s imaginative concoctions, from potato salad to relishes to ice creams made with far-flung ingredients from all over the food pyramid. The venture opened in late 2019, but the COVID shutdown in March 2020 forced the food hall to close. That’s when Bramble found its way onto local grocery store shelves in Louisville – his relishes were ideal for the quarantine’s charcuterie craze, Brantley points out – but a few months into that the call came to come home and help take care of his parents. Home to Columbus — back where it all began.
Brantley’s remarkable, accomplished career as a chef started while in high school at Brookstone, when he got a job washing dishes at the newly-opened Buckhead Grill on Armour Road. “I loved it,” he recalls. “Just took to it immediately. Went from dishwasher to bussing tables to prep cook. Once I got in the kitchen, that was it. I was all in.”
After graduation, Brantley moved to Oxford, Mississippi to attend Ole Miss. “‘I was not quite a year into school when I decided I wanted to be more of a worker and not a student. I wanted to work at as many places as I could,” he says.
His career began cooking under noted chef John Currence, including a 3-year stint at the popular City Grocery on the square in Oxford. Currence gave Brantley the opportunity to create dishes on his menus at just 21 years old. “Eventually I realized I could either work there forever for him or go somewhere else.” Brantley recalls. ”I wanted to try out someplace bigger. I moved to Chicago.”
Brantley confesses he didn’t really know anyone in Chicago or have any job prospects when he arrived. “All I knew was I was gonna be in a kitchen. I did the ol’ circle job openings in the classifieds and hit the streets as we used to do back in the day. I had a job a couple weeks after moving there.” He bounced around restaurants while earning his degree from a Le Cordon Bleu-affiliated culinary school in the city.
His longest stint in Chicago was at a hip, upscale spot called Tizi Melloul, which offered a fusion of French / Moroccan cuisine, where he was ultimately promoted to chef. Perhaps he was homesick or maybe just hungry for the comfort of a fried-chicken plate, but Brantley came to the realization he wanted to go back down South, to a region he learned had the most dynamic culinary culture in the United States.
So he moved to Louisville, once again showing up in town not really knowing anyone or having work lined up, but now with a wife. “I met some great people pretty quickly and they got me plugged in at the right places,” remembers Brantley. “I’ve learned over the years that if you work hard and you’re creative, you will find like-minded people.”
“I’ve been lucky to have worked for some great chefs and owners,” he says. “I’ve learned a lot from them: to be creative with your menu; how to hire and fire; to always treat people with kindness but also not put up with any bullshit. I’ve only worked in small, independent kitchens. Never corporate, much to my financial detriment, but with the attitude of ‘do it your way and do it the right way.’”
Brantley’s way has led him back to Columbus to create Bramble 2.0. Describing it as a ‘great, full-circle type of opportunity,” Bramble now prepares and packs jars with labels declaring ‘Genuine Southern Food” and “Made Proudly in Columbus, Georgia.” There are currently 8 varieties: pickled carrots, pickled okra, dill pickle chips, pickled green tomatoes, bread and butter pickle chips, chow chow mild relish, sliced jalapenos, and Giardiniera Hot Italian Relish. Bramble can be found locally at The Peach Shoppe, The Bottle Shop, The Food Mill, and more that can be found on their website. His membership in the Georgia Grown program has helped Brantley put Bramble in more stores with better marketing while also connecting him to independent farmers such as Jenny Jack Farms and West Georgia Farmers Co-Op, both in Harris County, for his supply of fresh, locally grown produce. “I don’t want to call US Foods,” he says of his inventory, “With Georgia Grown, I’m getting most of my stuff in-state.”
The response in Columbus has been great, Brantley says, noting that The Bottle Shop has managed to create a cocktail with every variety of Bramble except for Chow Chow. “All of them go good on hot dogs, I have found,” he adds with a grin.
After a year and a half of developing and perfecting his recipes, Brantley has established his USDA-approved facility in Midtown – no longer cooking up big batches of vinegar at home, much to wife Brooke’s delight – and built up a solid inventory and customer base.
“There’s a lot that has inspired me in Columbus after coming back; there is so much creativity right now in the city. So the plan is to build Bramble up and hopefully build up some other local folks along the way.”
To get your hands on some Bramble and elevate your meals, visit any of the stores where Bramble is sold. You can also order straight from their website at brambleinajar.com. Follow the Bramble journey on social media @bramblefood on both Instagram and Facebook.
By Frank Etheridge