We all thought that Levon Wallace, the former chef at Cochon Butcher, Gray & Dudley and Strategic Hospitality had returned to Louisville, Ky., for his next gig working with the team behind The Silver Dollar and El Camino, but we were wrong. Thanks to the pandemic, that opportunity fell through, and the talented chef found himself doing what a whole lot of people were doing: looking for a job.
“I had been going back and forth between my family in Hendersonville, and I was thinking ‘What am I doing?’ I realized I can’t be in two places at one time,” he recalls. “We had made the decision to move, and the house was already packed when the folks in Louisville made the decision to lay everyone off.”
Wallace continues, “I thought long and hard about what to do, and my No. 1 priority is and always will be my family. I decided to stay home, and everything always happens exactly as it’s supposed to.” The chef was excited to get to spend more time with his family and concentrate on some new projects. (“I always wanted to learn how to make soap, and now I do,” he jokes.)
Wallace has always been a very positive person, but the pandemic started to weigh on him. “I’m usually able to find a little bit of sunshine in most situations, and I was trying to stay positive while I knew people were dealing with personal tragedies. I was starting to get a little depressed until a couple of weeks ago when I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself. I was getting tired of hanging out with me, so I figured who doesn’t love a hot, fresh pretzel? I started to make pretzels for the kids, and they were so stoked and so happy. I remembered how making people happy feels so good!”
The result of his pretzel experiments has morphed into Wallace’s latest venture, FatBelly Pretzel. He explains, “I had played around with making pretzels at the Downtown Sporting Club, and now I’m totally obsessed with pretzels. I came up with sort of a hybrid Bavarian-style pretzel, with crispy arms and a nice chewy fat belly. Every single person who has received one so far has a story associated with a pretzel, a trip to a ballpark, a pretzel in a beer garden somewhere or the perfect late-night treat; there’s never a bummer story. Especially right now, we all need the love and the smiles, and I have a passion for making people happy.”
Working with his wife Kim, whom he met while working in a kitchen together, has been another blessing. “She’s just as obsessed as I am,” Wallace says with a chuckle. Starting small, FatBelly Pretzel was spread by word of mouth on social media. Wallace took orders via Instagram and arranged pickups for friends, but now the business is growing into a real enterprise. “We’re working really hard to expand our capacity, and friends have offered us space in their commercial kitchens,” explains Wallace. “I just want more people to get to eat this product!”
Availability is still tight, and customers need to plan ahead to place orders on the FatBelly website a couple days in advance so that Wallace can have their product available for pickup at sites like East Nashville or Hendersonville. Order forms open up online on Monday mornings and are usually sold out by that afternoon. With no permanent storefront yet, customers need to check the site for specific pickup locations, but that’s part of the fun. Currently selling more than 500 pretzels a week, the Wallace family stays busy rolling the dough.
FatBelly currently offers three pretzel options: a traditional salted version, which necessitated Wallace learning that there is a specific salt just for pretzels; an “everything spice” pretzel made using Wallace’s own special flavor blend; and a Kim Wallace creation of a pretzel brushed with butter and dusted with cinnamon sugar. Along with your pretzel, you can choose from a variety of dips including a 100 percent from-scratch sharp cheddar cheese sauce or whipped cream cheese frosting made with real vanilla beans. Wallace is currently working on new concepts like beer cheese and a hazelnut/chocolate spread — which he will absolutely not say will be like Nutella, but c’mon … you know.
"Look to the cookie!"
His latest addition to the product line has also got Wallace really excited. It’s a custom creation of a chocolate-chip-pretzel-crunch cookie, loaded with both dark and semisweet chocolate chips and topped with chewy and crunchy malty pretzel bits. Just typing that gets my juices flowing!
If you're worried about how they’ll travel if you order a half-dozen for $25, fear not! “They travel great, and they reheat beautifully,” promises Wallace, “They also freeze just fine and will last about a week in your fridge. But good luck trying to make them last that long,” Wallace jokes.
Wallace believes the time is right for a treat like FatBelly Pretzel. “Where do you normally eat pretzels? The ballpark, the mall and in bars. Well, they’re all closed, so get one of these. Plus, because they’re so huge, they have that ‘turkey leg’ vibe when you carry one around. I just want to make the best-tasting snacks that make you feel good inside! I feel so damned blessed and excited to have started this. It just feels good and right, so why not?”
Why not, indeed. Check out the FatBelly Pretzel website and find out what’s got the chef so chuffed.
