Rooted in Hospitality: Thanksgiving with Sara Abernethy

The busy mom and co-founder of Wye Hill Hospitality serves an elevated holiday meal — with a help from her industry friends
by Hampton Williams Hoffer | photography by Forrest Mason

Sara Abernethy and Chris Borreson know good hospitality. At their Boylan Heights gastropub, Wye Hill Kitchen & Brewing, they like to sit in every chair, saddled up to hightop tables Borreson built and welded himself, just to see what each diner sees. Their mutual background in theater no doubt informs their commitment to the whole dining experience. “When you think about it, restaurants are theater,” Abernethy says. “Opening the doors each night is like putting on a performance, where you hope the details of what a guest sees, tastes and hears transport them, even just for two hours, away from whatever burdens they carry.”

A budding sommelier, hospitality queen, mother of two small children and casual opera singer, Abernethy recently launched a podcast, Her Seat At The Table, highlighting female leaders in food and beverage.

Her zone of genius lies in translating vision to reality, and in finding the right people to help her do it. “I have two hands and now two babies. I can’t do it all!” she says. “But anyone should feel permission to delegate.” This is just as true than on her all-time favorite holiday: Thanksgiving.

Every Thanksgiving, Abernethy and Borreson host a robust buffet; some years extra chairs are brought in, and some years it’s more intimate, but one thing that’s sacred is it always starts with bubbles. A self-proclaimed stemware addict, Abernethy believes champagne offers the right enchantment to kick off any celebration — preferably with a saber. As per tradition, someone in the family will sword off the top of a champagne bottle on the back deck. Corks are labeled with dates and kept as keepsakes. Abernethy often whips up three kinds of stuffing, including oyster stuffing from Borreson’s family, cornbread stuffing with sausage (hello, Southern roots) and the good stuff inside the turkey. There will be mushroom gravy from her aunt Betty’s recipe, and Borreson typically smokes a full salmon and roasts some oysters.

The couple is a hospitality match made in heaven: back in 2017, Abernethy and Borreson left San Diego, where La Jolla Playhouse had been the backdrop of their lives, him as a technical director and set creator, and her working in development and on stage. They packed their belongings into a Sprinter van and drove to Abernethy’s hometown of Raleigh, where the plan was to flip a house in Durham and turn it into a wedding venue, utilizing Borreson’s skills with power tools and Abernethy’s proclivity for putting on a good show. But they kept their ears to the ground, and by the time they got married in their home’s front yard, they were already in conversation with the owner of the former Boylan Bridge Brewpub, who was looking for someone to breathe new life into the storied spot.

“We had a lot of heart, free labor and a vision to maintain that local independent Raleigh vibe,” Abernethy says. Friends and family arrived from near and far, most crashing with the couple, to work around the clock flipping the space into what became Wye Hill Kitchen & Brewing. The building was already full of unique industrial elements, so the main work was in removing the facade that had been built over them. They repainted every square inch, built furniture, stained wood and cleaned relentlessly. “We had a lot of people in our lives warning us about restaurant statistics,” Abernethy recalls. But seven years later, they’ve beaten the odds.

Large block letters painted across the brick side of Wye Hill Kitchen & Brewing proclaim: People. Plates. Pours. Inside, chef Bobby McFarland whips up his twist on bar food, like filet mignon skewers and dill pickle pimento cheese. Meanwhile, on a patio that features a panoramic view of downtown, brewmasters serve crisp, modern ales and IPAs. Wye Hill is named for the unique formation of the train tracks beside the building that diverge into a “wye,” which allows locomotives to change direction.

The wye in the tracks is rife with meaning for its owners, “This special place marks a turning point in our personal lives and our careers,” says Abernethy. “And as a Raleigh native, being on this perch watching the evolution of the city has been transformative. The skyline has changed dramatically even since we opened in 2019.”

With the gastropub’s success, the couple formed Wye Hill Hospitality, which opened Glasshouse Kitchen in Research Triangle Park in 2022. That idea came from boots on the ground, too: for the first three years of Wye Hill Kitchen & Brewing, Abernethy was still working a full-time job in the Salesforce ecosystem for a company in RTP. She would often search for places to have business meetings and events, but found the options in RTP to be extremely limited.

“Fifty thousand people working in the park, and where do they eat?” she says. “It seemed like an obvious proposition, and we ran with it. This time, with Glasshouse Kitchen, we went much more contemporary, with an elevated, cosmopolitan dining experience based on the North Carolina agricultural landscape.”
Everything the couple does starts and ends with a talented, dynamic team. At Glasshouse Kitchen, chef de cuisine Kyle Fletcher serves up seasonal offerings like Oysters Rockefeller, NC Wagyu NY Strip, and Fall Vegetable Tagine, accompanied by a rotation of signature cocktails and wines. Abernethy and Borreson also worked with graphic designer Mike Rosado at MRC branding studio in Raleigh to translate their vision into a brand. “Yes, we had grit and courage in this business, but we do not do everything,” Abernethy says. “We definitely believe in asking for help.”

Although she loves to cook and establish eateries, Abernethy does not consider herself a chef. The wines are where she thrives, in her restaurants and when welcoming guests at home. She’s a certified wine slinger and holder of a Level 3 Certification from the Wine, Spirit & Education Trust, as well as a French Wine Scholar award. As their family has grown, Abernethy’s role has shifted away from day-to-day operations toward big-picture planning as co-founder.

It comes as no surprise that Thanksgiving is Abernethy’s favorite holiday: it’s rooted in hospitality, brimming with connection and focused on the life-giving joy of good food and drink. But even so, Abernethy doesn’t believe in doing it all. “So often, people save their most intricate and difficult recipes for Thanksgiving, when there is already so much going on,” she says. “You don’t need to have your hands on every detail of your meal for it to be great and memorable.” That’s why alongside their family recipes, the couple will serve NC sweet potatoes from chef McFarland (made with a chili crisp infused with cranberry and aromatics), produce-forward side dishes from chef Fletcher and a showstopping pumpkin crumb cake from pastry chef Bonnie Cameron.

Looking back on the journey thus far, Abernethy is most proud of their growth — the fact that they opened Wye Hill in the first place, soldiered through the pandemic and are thriving today. “I’m just excited to have a place in the developing culinary land scape of Raleigh,” she says. “As a native, to watch it all unfold… it’s an honor.”