RALEIGH, N.C. — A popular restaurant on the edge of downtown Raleigh recently just celebrated a milestone. With its lively colors and fresh ingredients, Fiction Kitchen has been serving diners for a decade now.

“Ten years in restaurant life is like 100 years being open in any business, you know,” chef Caroline Morrison said.

What started off as a vegetarian restaurant in 2013 is now an all-vegan kitchen.

“We had a lot stacked up against us. Being a female entrepreneur, a queer female entrepreneur, opening Raleigh’s first vegetarian restaurant was a little unheard of 10 years ago,” Morrison said.

Fiction Kitchen sources their produce locally, as much as they can. Taking trips to the farmers market three times a week, as well as getting deliveries from farmers, helps to make their dishes come to life.

“We have a lot of hydroponic lettuce available, and different tomatoes as well, so playing with the different kinds of squashes and lettuces that people maybe haven’t heard of before,” Morrison said.

Morrison said one of their signature meals is a noodle bowl.

“Our food is very — it's plant-based, it’s very fresh. We do offer some alternative meat proteins. We also offer 100% plant-based entrees, such as a risotto or a curry bowl, a noodle bowl,” Morrison said.

Other staples you’ll find on the menu is their eastern-style barbecue or their chicken and waffles made from faux-fried chicken.

“For me, I grew up in North Carolina, and that’s the whole reason we came up with the eastern-style pulled pork. It was something I missed, and I wanted the satisfaction of having that product without harming that animal,” Morrison said.

While Morrison is proving that a vegan kitchen can draw people in, she didn’t realize that being a chef was an option.

“When I was growing up, we didn’t have the Food Network, celebrity chefs, it just wasn’t a thing, so being a chef and being a cook, I didn’t even realize [it] was an option. I did, however, start in high school — my first job was at a Chick-fil-A,” Morrison said.

But after years of working at food places, getting a social work degree and landing a job at IBM, Morrison decided to pursue a different avenue.

“I went to culinary school at Wake Tech while still working at IBM, and the chefs and the instructors of Wake Tech were like 'you’re in the right place, you made the right decision,'” Morrison said.

Now, Morrison is grateful to everyone who has supported Fiction Kitchen during these past 10 years and to those who will continue to do so as they embark on a new journey at their new location in Gateway Plaza.

“What I’m hoping for the future is to concentrate on this small move, to make sure we keep the vibrancy of Fiction Kitchen, the color, the flavor, the freshness that we bring, to make sure that that vision still shines through with that move. And also to keep employing and energizing the food culture in Raleigh,” Morrison said.

Morrison said they are going through getting construction bids right now for the new space. She adds that their lease on Dawson Street doesn’t run out until November, so they are hoping to be moved in by late summer of this year.