With quirky art adorning every vibrantly colored wall, Caroline Morrison and Siobhan Southern, co-owners of Raleigh’s new Fiction Kitchen, welcome customers into their imaginary world.

Fiction Kitchen opened its doors Jan. 16 to a community eagerly awaiting its arrival. Community members played a large part in the creation of Fiction Kitchen through their support of Morrison and Southern’s Kickstarter campaign.

“With the community’s help we raised a little over $36,000 and were able to buy all new equipment. The range and everything in there that the food touches is all new, even the exhaust system,” Morrison said.

Fiction Kitchen’s diverse clientele surprised Morrison.

“We were thinking it was going to be people in or around their 30s, but it’s been across the board,” Morrison said. “I’m very happy about it.”

Another surprise is that there’s more to their name then its obvious irony.

“It’s part of the whole Fiction Kitchen,” Morrison said. “Not only fiction meaning we’re giving you food that you might not be eating or maybe you’re becoming vegetarian in a new way … it’s a whole dining experience. We want to take you away somewhere imaginary and have it be fun and interesting.”

Morrison and Southern agreed that business has been anything but slow since opening their doors.

“It’s been really busy,” Southern said. “Part of that is it’s that honeymoon period where we’re the new restaurant. I think the key for us is two months from now trying to stay this busy, when no one’s coming along to just check it out anymore.”

Originally the duo spent their Sundays serving brunch out of the kitchen where Morrison used to work, Mez in Durham. The two vegetarians explained they simply wanted a place to eat.

“We wanted a good restaurant,” Southern said. “We felt that the kind of food we liked was lacking around here. You can get it in Asheville, D.C. and New York but there wasn’t anything in Raleigh that we were looking for.”

With Southern’s artistic eye and Morrison’s dream, their idea was born.

Fiction Kitchen is located at 428 S. Dawson Street, just around the corner from Ashley Christensen’s Poole’s.

“Ashley is a good friend of ours,” Southern said. “She’s been really supportive and even helped us raise money … She’s awesome. By and large, all the restaurant owners downtown have been so welcoming to us and so supportive. It’s like they don’t see anyone as competition, but as a group trying to bring good food to Raleigh.”

The pair explained that because a majority of their menu is made from local produce, the menu will change along with the seasonal foods. Keeping the staples, the vegetables will rotate along with a few of the other items.

“Right now there seems to be three favorite dishes,” Morrison said. “People like the barbecue pulled ‘pork’ with potatoes and seasonal vegetables, crispy fried ‘chicken’ and waffles, and braised tempeh with pesto grits.”

Southern stressed that while they serve only vegetarian and vegan dishes, they are by no means strictly a health food restaurant.

“Of course we’re going to have healthy food but we have the fried chicken and waffle on the menu too,” Southern said. “Part of what we want to do is not just have vegans and vegetarians come here but people who are open-minded. We want people that are carnivores and omnivores, maybe someone who has never had a meal without meat in it. We want them to find something they can relate to and walk out saying, ‘Wow, I just ate my first vegetarian meal and it was awesome.’”

According to the co-owners, their main goal is to make good food that is locally sourced. The fact that it happens to be vegetarian, in their opinion, is just a plus.

“We have great agriculture in North Carolina and to not support and celebrate that would be a mistake for any restaurant,” Morrison said.

With some “constructive criticism,” as Southern calls it, Fiction Kitchen can only continue to grow.

“We’ve been in the service industry long enough, we know we’re not going to fit everyone’s categories of what they expect us to be,” Southern said.“We only hope to fit the categories of those who didn’t expect us to.”

Looking at the journey of Fiction Kitchen so far, the two summed up the restaurant in one word.

“Local,” Southern said.

“Different,” Morrison said. “That sounds good to me: locally different.”