“How on earth did you decide to start a mustard company?”

Here’s the story from Kelly Davis, founder:

It was kind of an accident.

I love old cookbooks. I also love to play in the kitchen. One day, while diving into an old Victorian cookbook, I saw an old mustard recipe and thought, “well there's an idea,” and started playing with it. I changed it round a bit. Tweaked it. Then I started handing it out as presents, taking it to potlucks. Around the same time, I had a part-time job slinging beer down at one of Asheville's fine taprooms, Green Man Brewery (also known as Dirty Jack's). The only thing we had to snack on there was pretzels. So I started handing out the mustard with the pretzels, and it caught on. The crazy, wonderful Dirty Jack's bar patrons were my cheerleaders, my taste-testers, my first customers.

My boisterous family — who live almost everywhere — got on board, and backed the enterprise (shout out to Brother Scott) and in 2007 Lusty Monk was officially launched in Asheville. The Albuquerque branch of the family (Krissy! Steve!) started making mustard in New Mexico for a while, and racked up tons of Scovie awards at the Fiery Food Festival.

So now, more than a decade later, here we are. I’d like to raise a glass to my family, friends, and every pretzel-dipping beer drinker out there who has helped us along the way. The chefs who put it on their menus, the stores who put it on their shelves, the gift-givers who put it on their holiday list.

— Kelly Davis, Mustard Maker

Lusty Monk is headquartered in Asheville, NC, and now has distribution throughout the Southeast. You can find the mustard in taprooms and restaurants and grocery stores in Western North Carolina and beyond.