North Texas Daily

The team behind At The Table designed the space to radiate peace and coziness upon entering the front doors. Walk through the spacious dining hall and foyer toward the back patio and witness a wide-open backyard, covered with overarching trees and a small residential area behind the back fence. Pretty soon, the smell of fresh Southern cooking will fill the air.

At The Table is an upcoming catering business in Argyle that hopes to revive traditional elements in the art of cuisine and the intimacy that comes with it, all while providing fresh, homemade cooking for events and outside orders. The space is designed to host events ranging from graduation parties to rehearsal dinners and more.

“We feel like sitting around the table and talking and listening to one another face-to-face has become a lost art,” marketing associate Pamela Hamilton said. “We really want to welcome the community to come in and be able to do that.”

At The Table’s location sits on the grounds of an old residential home that was carved out and remodeled as a family event space with a professional-grade kitchen and a back room with a bar for extra events.

“We actually started in a remodeled shed on my mother’s property,” co-owner Katie Willis said. “As an only child, I hung out with the adults growing up and they were always throwing parties. It was normal to have people in the house every week, and that remodeled shed is where my parents would host all these parties.”

The foundation of the business is comprised of the mother-daughter team of Katie and her mother, Deanie Willis. While Katie runs the company from the business side, Deanie is the primary chef.

“I used to take my hairdresser cookies many, many years ago,” Deanie said. “And one day she said, ‘Deanie, you should be doing something with all these cookies. These cookies are so good.’ I didn’t end up doing a lot with the cookies, but my hairdresser bought a restaurant and hired me to do their desserts, so I did that for about four years.”

In 2016, the duo talked about going into business with each other, which they said was due to their love for people. This stems from the open house style of parties they hosted in their remodeled shed.

“I wasn’t living at home anymore, but I came to visit, and we were just hanging out when we had the vision of turning this shed into a small venue,” Katie said. “I mean, it was a shed that we stored our tractor in — black dirt everywhere. It was not pretty at all, and then to watch what it turned into was insane.”

This played into the heart and vision of their company. The pair said they wanted to establish themselves as a home for people who didn’t really have one or a safe haven for people who wanted to have a great time. People would always be welcomed, they said, with genuine hospitality and good food.

“We wanted to bring people in and know their names,” Katie said. “We didn’t want to be this run-of-the-mill company where you’re just funneling people through. We wanted it to be personal.”

Anyone is welcome to At The Table’s events. They intend to hold several wine tastings before their grand opening, along with trying to plan a crawfish boil and other miscellaneous events.

One of At The Table’s main pull factors, Hamilton said, is flexibility. The possibilities for events seem staggering when looking at the location of the venue and the teams’ willingness to adapt the space.

“We could maybe just have a dinner party for 12 people and serve them wine of their preference or we could do something up to as many as 100 people for a wedding,” Hamilton said. “That way, they could have their rehearsal dinner here, they can have their ceremony and they can even have their reception afterwards.”

The two-woman team of At The Table, along with the marketing strategies of Hamilton, is driven by a passion for food and a commitment to personal relationships. The facility got power last week, and though they said At The Table has a ways to go, they are taking the small victories one step at a time.

At The Table is currently taking bookings for early 2020 and will be holding an open house on Saturday, April 4 from 1 to 4 p.m.

Featured Image: At The Table, a new venue in Denton, on Feb. 21, 2020. Image by Grant Beardslee