Greenville's new Sunflower restaurant serves up scratch-made goods (2024)

GREENVILLE— On a recent weekday afternoon, even on a cloudy day, one of Greenville's newest restaurants is bright with natural light.

Fresh plants decorate window sills, and a new white tile backsplash punctuates a back counter and bakery area in the space that most recently housed Tipsy Taco's catering kitchen.

It's the light that drew Robert Hodges when he found the building at 728 Wade Hampton Boulevard six months ago. It was the perfect complement to the restaurant and bakery he wanted to create within.

This Friday, May 25, Hodges will open Sunflower Breakfast, Lunch, and Bakery and usher in what he hopes will be a new neighborhood spot for fresh sandwiches, salads, bowls and baked goods.

Sunflower is a second iteration, a distinct one, of Hodges’ first concept, Sunflower Eatery, which he opened in June 2018 in Greenville at 4 Independence Point. But the new place is an evolution of sorts, showcasing Hodges’ evolving ideas and skills. Both changed during the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Located in a business park with suddenly no clientele, sales collapsed. It gave Hodges a chance to think hard about what he wanted for the future. It also gave him a chance to bake. And he did. He baked nearly every day for two years.

“My initial passion has always been hospitality,” Hodges said of the draw to restaurants. “I like people coming into my space and creating an experience for them. That was the driving force from the get-go, and then I learned how awesome food is and have become obsessed with baking.”

The perfected techniques will be on display at Sunflower. In addition to serving breakfast and lunch, the café will feature a bakery side as well, where patrons will find biscuits, muffins and cinnamon buns made from scratch daily.

The rest of the menu will focus on sandwiches and salads, rice bowls, grits bowls and breakfast sandwiches at breakfast time. The menu is small, Hodges said, because everything is made from scratch— from the mayonnaise to the sriracha for the honey sriracha aioli.

And all bread.

“We wanted to keep the menu concise and simple,” Hodges said. “I think some of the best food is from restaurants that have like four things on the menu. You know they have perfected those items.”

Hodges found his path to restaurants not through food initially, but through a passion for hospitality. He studied business management at the University of Georgia and thought he’d one day start a business, perhaps a restaurant.

It was a one-year internship in Portland, Ore., working for a restaurant and learning the ins and outs of running the business and kitchen that Hodges found a passion for restaurants.

He found his way to Greenville when he was heading home to the Atlanta suburbs and stopped to visit a friend. The friend convinced him to stay.

Hodges moved in with his grandparents in Anderson and set out to find a restaurant job. He landed at Greenville's Table 301, working in various capacities from assistant general manager at The Lazy Goat to manager of Table 301 Catering and Soby’s on the Side, to running the Highway 301 food truck.

It was 2018 when Hodges decided to change, not industries, but his course within it. By then, he’d met his future wife, Liz.

He wanted more balance in his life. That need for balance has only grown with the addition of the Hodges’ sons, Findley, 4, and Caleb, 2.

A baby daughter is due in September.

“I don’t’ want to do night times anymore,” he said.

He opened Sunflower Eatery in June 2018, naming the place for Liz’s favorite flower.

The restaurant serves a menu of breakfast and lunch items, along with take-away family meals.

But with the new place, the focus is on creative scratch cooking. Not fancy, but familiar with a touch of something a little different.

While Sunflower Breakfast, Lunch, and Bakery will also feature salads, rice bowls, grit bowls and a daily soup, the idea for the restaurant began with sandwiches. Why sandwiches?

“It’s a multitude of flavors in every bite,” Hodges said. “If the sandwich is made properly – I’m geeking out really hard – if it is made properly, then every bite has an even distribution.”

Sunflower will offer five sandwiches, along with a burger and a feature sandwich that will change daily. The sandwich menu is a mix of familiar standards like the Italian, as well as ones that are a little bit different, like the BLAT, with bacon lettuce, tomato and avocado with garlic herb aioli and balsamic reduction.

The tropical turkey sandwich is inspired by one Hodges had in Miami and combines turkey, cucumbers, pineapple and a garlic herb mayo, while the Broccolini is a burst of flavor, combining broccolini, soppressata, ricotta, shredded parmesan, spicy garlic confit spread on homemade ciabatta.

Vegetarians can leave off the soppressata and the bacon in the BLAT.

Plans call for featuring rotating specials as well, which will span from vegan to meatful.

“If you did the sandwich correctly, you have crunch, you have acidity, you have potentially a little sweetness, you have fat and salt,” he said. “You can have all of that all compacted in one.”

Looking to the future, Hodges has plans to grow his Sunflower concept, but for now he is content to focus on his two restaurants.

Plans call for adding outdoor seating and adding loaves of bread in the bakery, along with catering in the future.

Sunflower Breakfast, Lunch, and Bakery at 728 Wade Hampton Blvd. is open Monday-Friday, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

For more, visit sunflowergvl.com.