A Deck for Every Decision

Culinary entrepreneur thanks the cards for success

Fourteen-year-old Jesse Roque didn’t know the future when she found a deck of tarot cards in an under-construction house in a Tampa suburb. But that discovery would have an enduring impact on her life. Honestly, she admits, she had no idea what tarot cards even were.

Her family was new in town, and the adjustment was difficult. “I was being bullied by other kids, and I spent a lot of time by myself,” she says. “The subdivision where we moved was still being built, and I used to wander alone through the shells of the houses. I wasn’t afraid, I was just curious. I went into one house and there was a circle on the floor that had been cleared of sawdust, and in the middle of the circle was a deck of cards. I took them out of the box and realized they weren’t regular playing cards. They were beautiful. They were art. 

“I had no idea what they were, but I felt they were meant to be for me.”

In the mid 15th century, tarot was popularized by Italian nobility. The decks included 56 cards: four suits numbered 1-10, plus four face cards in each suit. In the 18th century, decks were expanded with a 21-card trump suit  — the major arcana — plus one card representing The Fool. Early cards were part of group games, but eventually, they entered use as a means of divination, a practice that continues today via personal readings.  

Roque knew none of that, including that her discovery was a Rider-Waite deck, one of the most popular mass-produced decks in the world. (Recently, the name Smith has been added to recognize Pamela Colman Smith, the British-Jamaican illustrator who drew the original deck.) 

“There was no manual with the cards, so I made up games that I played by myself,” recalls Roque. “I have always loved the way cards feel in my hands, and in my own little world, they brought me a sense of comfort. They came to mean things to me just by playing with them.”

She persuaded her father to take her to the local library, where she found a manual on microfilm that explained the tradition of tarot in fortune telling, including the historical meaning of each card. “On my 17th birthday, I bought my first [new] deck of tarot cards at a B. Dalton bookstore and a cup of coffee from Barnie’s. I felt very grown up. It was a big day for me,” she says.

The deck she found at 14, a deck she drew herself when she was 16, and the deck she purchased on her 17th birthday were the start of a collection that now numbers in the hundreds. The cards also launched a passion and practice that informs every part of her life, including the professional path that landed Roque and her husband in Hendersonville in 2006. 

In 2008, the couple and Roque’s mother, a professional artist, opened Never Blue, a coffee shop/bakery/art galley on Main Street. But in order to ride out the recession, the restaurant swiftly transitioned, selling beer, wine, and unique-to-the-area tapas. In 2019, she opened Madame Roqué’s Meat Emporium & Pickled Curiosités — a combined restaurant, tequila bar, tattoo studio, and dedicated space for a rotating residence of tarot-card readers. 

“I had been planning the Madame Roqué’s concept since I lived in Florida,” says Roque. (A classically trained pastry chef, the prolific entrepreneur won the Chef of the Year award in 2017 from the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association.) “A space next door to Never Blue became available sooner than I expected, but my tarot cards help me make decisions every day, so we did it, and the response was unbelievable.” Before the COVID shutdown, “we [had] readers there every day, and they’ve built quite a following.”

Though Roque doesn’t read for others any longer, she consults her own cards from several different decks, and keeps plenty of them close at hand. She figures she has around 50 decks at her office, and adds, “I have a bookshelf in my room at home with probably 60 or 70 decks, several shelves in my kitchen with books dedicated to witchcraft, crystals, herbs, and more tarot cards” — some of them handmade in the UK — “and a case where I keep the ones that are more expensive.” Among those is a French-Egyptian deck from the 1800s that she found on eBay about 20 years ago in “pristine” condition.

Not so that mysterious first deck that drew her into the world of tarot — but however worn, those cards are priceless. 

“A couple of [them] are taped together and missing their corners,” she says fondly. “But I still use it to read for myself. I trust in that deck.”

Jesse Roque, Hendersonville. Roque owns Madame Roqué’s Meat Emporium & Pickled Curiosités, Never Blue, and the Never Blue Food Truck. For information about hours and locations for the food truck, check out daily updates on the Facebook page (Never Blue) and on Instagram: @neverbluerestaurant. Information about the reopening of the other two restaurants will be on those pages and on the website: theneverblue.com.