“@keeppushingchef” couldn’t be a more appropriate social media handle for Urban Wren executive chef Taylor Montgomery.
“I fell into cooking as a means of keeping a roof over my head,” he says. “I wasn’t half-bad and put myself through culinary school and I just kept pushing.”
Montgomery started at the bottom and worked his way through several country club kitchens. His last position before Urban Wren was at Mountain Air Country Club in Burnsville, North Carolina, where he spent seven years honing his craft and developing a style that incorporated global flavors — gleaned from his travels — using local ingredients.
Speaking of his travels, pre-2020, Montgomery and his wife, Fran, were frequent flyers to Europe and Asia where he discovered some of his favorite culinary inspirations.
“We want to change the way Greenville eats and sees food and get [diners] to be a little more adventurous,” he says. “We want it to be an experience.”
The names and presentations of many of the menu items at Urban Wren are whimsical, and designed to delight diners, Montgomery says.
“I love looking out and seeing smiles,” he says.
Having a staff as excited about the dishes as the guests is part of that plan. Both front- and back-of-house teams gather daily for a meal to go over what’s new on the menu, wine pairings, and what produce is fresh from Montgomery Sky Farm — a circa-1910 dairy farm in Leicester, North Carolina — that Montgomery and his wife run in partnership with Urban Wren.
“My farm partnering with Urban Wren is awesome,” he says. “I can really get my hands in the dirt from seed to plate.”
Fun Facts
Taylor and Fran just kayaked The Grand Canyon and are headed to Portugal and Morocco in October.
Taylor grew up in a home of nine people, including his grandmother and his older siblings who had children.
Due to his busy schedule, Taylor hired Fran to help in the kitchen so they could spend time together, and she’s become so good, she’s now an asset.
Part of Montgomery Sky Farm is an animal rescue and rehabilitation center that includes 36 chickens, seven Scottish Highland cows (three are pregnant), five dogs, five goats, three sheep, two mini horses, and two horses. All of them have food names, such as dogs Gravy and Burrata, and Pumpernickel, a new horse.
Taylor drives 90 minutes each way from the farm to work each day and on his rare days off you’ll find him working on the farm.
