Tonya Council grew up surrounded by the smells of pecan pie and barbecue chicken in Chapel Hill’s renowned Mama Dip’s Kitchen. Now, she runs her own bakery and culinary store.
Her newest venture is Tonya’s Cafe, a restaurant specializing in Southern cooking located on 400 S. Elliott Road, next to Tonya’s Cookies & Bakeshop. The cafe will be open to the public on March 19.
Tonya Council is the granddaughter of the late Mildred Council, better known as Mama Dip, who was nationally recognized for her hearty Southern cooking.
Tonya Council said she caught the cooking bug as a child, and her grandmother was happy to indulge her and the other eager grandchildren.
“[Mildred Council would] tie aprons around us, and we’d stand up on the chair and help mix stuff in the bowl and crack eggs,” Council said.
Throughout her life, Council continued to work alongside her grandmother at Mama Dip’s Kitchen, but it was her experiment with a pecan cookie recipe that cemented her future in the culinary world.
She attempted to perfect her pecan cookie recipe countless times, but, unsatisfied, threw out multiple batches in the process. One day, on the verge of discarding another batch, her mother stopped her and encouraged her to put them in the dessert case at Mama Dip’s Kitchen. On the spot, she named them pecan crisps and the cookies quickly became a hit with both patrons and Mama Dip herself.
“[Mildred Council] had to be the one that said it was okay to go in the case,” Council said. “So, she liked it, and you knew you had a good product.”
The pecan crisp cookies quickly grew beyond the dessert case at Mama Dip’s Kitchen. Council sold them at local pop-ups and eventually opened her own brick-and-mortar bakery — Tonya's Cookies & Bakeshop — in 2018. In 2021, Council gained national recognition for her pecan crisps when Oprah Winfrey named them as one of her favorite things.
