Diners can feast on items ranging from the Homestyle Hashbrown Casserole with sausage, toast, and peach jalapeño jam to the Hernando Italian sandwich made with ham and three types of cheese at Leslie King’s cozy restaurant in Hernando, Mississippi.
But everything is gluten-free, says Leslie, owner of The Baker’s Corner Gluten-Free Cafe & Coffeehouse at 39 West Commerce Street.
A lot of people don’t understand what “gluten-free” means, says her husband Charles, who works with her. “I tell everybody when it comes to food, when you say ‘blank-free’ and fill in ‘low-fat’ or ‘sugar-free,’ everyone has this misconception: ‘Oh, it tastes bad.’”
He adds, “Sometimes it’s true.”
Even though everything in Baker’s Corner is gluten-free, Leslie and Charles assure you, it all tastes good.
It’s “the only dedicated gluten-free” restaurant in the “whole Mid-South Memphis area,” Charles says.
He says, “[People] with celiac disease have no worries about coming in here for cross contamination.”
Gluten-free food means “no wheat, barley, or rye in that product,” Leslie says. “And it has not come in contact with it.”
Leslie discovered she was gluten intolerant when she was 31. “I had some testing done. I had migraines as far back as when I was in kindergarten. And I had gone to neurologists and they put me on medicine. It didn’t help.”
She finally went to an allergy wellness doctor.
Cooking gluten-free is “not hard. I guess I’ve been doing it so long it just comes naturally to me. But I guess there is a misconception that it is hard, but it’s really not if you just put a little effort into it. “
Adds Charles: “When she found out there were no recipes or anything out there to be had, she developed these recipes in a book.”
He told Leslie, “You need to offer this to the world.”
Leslie’s love of cooking began when she was 11 years old growing up in the bootheel of Missouri. “I guess my daddy was my inspiration because he loved desserts, and I started making things for him. The first thing was chocolate no-bake oatmeal cookies.”
The recipe came from her mom. “They were drop cookies. I was just surprised that they turned out right.”
Life went on. “I grew up, got married, had kids. Stayed at home with the kids for a little while. Went to college off and on.”
Then she decided to go to culinary school — the now-closed Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in St. Louis, Missouri. “It was fun. I enjoyed it, but I honestly don’t recommend it. I think it’s like a lot of school. There’s no real-life training in school. It was just a general program, but I knew it would get my foot in the door.”
The first door was at Mike Shannon’s restaurant in Downtown St. Louis, where she worked as a pastry chef. “I just worked there for a summer.”
But she learned “the flow of how to keep up and maintain inventory.”
She also learned “the savory side” of cooking while she was at Mike Shannon’s.
Leslie went on to work at P.F. Chang’s in St. Louis, where she learned to make spring rolls and egg rolls. “All the detailed things.”
She also made a name for herself in St. Louis. She supplied high-end Downtown restaurants with her Gooey Butter Cake. “That’s a St. Louis thing,” she says.
That paid off. “I could pretty much walk into any restaurant and people knew who I was.”
She got into gluten-free baking after she moved. “I left St. Louis for a few months and helped a lady in Jonesboro, Arkansas, open a gluten-free bakery. So I did have a bit of experience with her.”
Leslie returned to St. Louis and worked for Planter’s House restaurant for six years before moving to Cochran, Mississippi, near Hernando in 2019.
Charles, who she married after she and her first husband were divorced, encouraged her to open a business using her gluten-free recipes.
“I opened a small business in January of 2021,” Leslie says. “I was just in the corner of a boutique here in town. I was there four years. On 51 just north of the courthouse. Same name. But it was a bakery. A true bakery.”
The owner of Coffee Central was downsizing, so she asked Leslie if she was interested in moving into her building. “Which is a coveted location. It’s in the middle of town right across from the post office. We have our own parking. It’s a hundred-year-old house.”
Leslie, who moved into the new location last January, went from 400 square feet to 2,000 square feet. “It’s a whole house,” Leslie says.
They also went from four seats to 70. The restaurant includes two dining rooms in the rear, a hearth room in front, and a conference room upstairs.
She and Charles changed the concept shortly after moving, Leslie says. “Well, we tried to be a bakery when we opened earlier this year, but I don’t have the capacity to do birthday cakes, wedding cakes, or decorate cakes anymore. We do have a lot of baked goods, but now we offer a full breakfast and lunch menu.”
They also offer a “full coffee bar,” Leslie adds. They feature RoZark Hills coffee from RoZark Hills Coffee Roasterie in Rose Bud, Arkansas. “It’s a well-known coffee shop on the campus of Harding University,” Charles says.
“Probably the second month we decided we had to, I guess, change the image because people were expecting us to keep doing cakes and stuff like that,” Leslie says.
Now, she says, they make their own gluten-free white bread, frozen casseroles, and other items.
They offer three different types of quiche: Garden, which includes spinach, tomato, and feta cheese; Farmhouse, with bacon and cheddar cheese; and Blueberry, which includes maple, blueberries, and sausage in a “fresh blueberry feta cheese and maple syrup.”
Their avocado toasts range from the “more simple cream avocado and progress to a cold one that is smoked salmon, avocado, cream cheese, house-made hot honey, and red pepper flakes.”
Non-avocado toasts include The Jailhouse, which is made of banana, honey, peanut butter, and, for an extra dollar, Nutella.
They also feature sandwiches; açaí bowls, which are pureed fruit and house-made granola; and Southern Staples: chicken salad, pimento cheese, potato salad, and spinach dip.
The Oatmeal Cream Pie is the most popular item, Charles says. It’s made with certified gluten-free rolled oats, molasses, and a marshmallow filling. And it has no preservatives, Leslie says.
She describes The Baker’s Corner Gluten-Free Cafe & Coffeehouse as “cozy, inviting. Lots of people come in to study, come in to work.”
Someone has already approached them about franchising the business, Leslie says. She’s “not opposed to it. We have talked about it.”
But, she says, “I’m just not ready for that yet. Maybe one day.”