Kiger's Notebook

Historic Third getting a new bar?

Rochester's Historic Third St. S.W. is really hopping these days with The Tap House, The Downtown Kitchen, Sontes, Bilotti's and, of course, John Kruesel (He is as much of an attraction and landmark as any historic building in downtown).

And now the buzz is that a new bar is in the pipeline for the Med City's coolest side street.

A liquor license request is on the agenda for tonight's Rochester City Council meeting.

The name is The Doggery and the address is 18 Third Ave. S.W. That's old Mercentile Exchange building.

The name on the license is Aynsley Michael Jones. He's a high-profile downtown bartender, who I believe was at City Cafe the last I heard of him.

That's all I've got for now. Not sure where it would be in the building or if it would impact Artistic Framers or Nordic Gypsy.

 

 

 

Are Irish eyes eyeing Roch.?

While St. Patrick's Day is many months away, some Rochester folks are wishing that the luck of the Irish will bring their favorite pub to town.

The word is that staff at a well-known pub in a nearby state are telling Rochester customers that their Irish eyes are looking at the Med City for a possible second location.

Could such a Gaelic invasion really be on the way for Rochester or is this just some blarney from a server hoping for a bigger tip to add to his pot of gold?

I have no idea, but I plan on going to the end of the rainbow to find out.

New south Roch bar wants to be talk of the town

A new bar on the way for south Rochester hopes to be the talk of the town.

Following the Rochester City Council giving his liquor license a thumbs up Monday, Gary Wondrow is now starting to work out the details of his new project, the Chatterbox bar at 2650 S. Broadway in the former Quizno's site.

While many aspects of the new bar are still being talked through, there is one core concept that Wondrow plans to build Chatterbox around.

"Often when you go out to a bar, the music and everything is so loud that you can't hear to talk to person next to you," he says. "I want to have a comfortable place where a couple or some friends can go out for a drink and be able to have a quiet conversation, relax and unwind."

However, the Chatterbox won't be a library. It will sport TVs to show the big games, so fans can cheer their teams on.

"Mostly, I just want it to be a low-key place that people can go and enjoy themselves," he says.

If things go as expected, Chatterbox could open in the 1,600-square-foot spot by early December.

Why chose to open a night spot in a strip mall by Kohl's and Walmart?

"It has real good exposure to highway. You can't miss the place," Wondrow says. "There just isn't anything like this in that area now. I hope to draw from the nice neighborhood across the road."

While the Chatterbox won't have its own kitchen, it will have some food options. The plan is to offer a selection of appetizers and dishes from the nearby New China restaurant.

Mike Haley of Braasch Commercial Real Estate handled the deal.

Two new Roch. businesses opened this week

Two new Med City businesses, which have been gearing up this summer, opened their doors this week.

Under new ownership, an expanded Northwest Liquors re-opened by Gander Mountain. Irv Keefe of IK Liquors took over the store in the Northwest Plaza from Apollo Liquors at the end of August.

Hat tip to Emmett Salberg for the pic of Northwest Liquors. Thanks, Emmett.

Rooster's Bar'n and Grill quietly opened up Wednesday night and started serving its early morning breakfast on Thursday morning. Rooster's is located along West Circle Drive in the former Bob's Smokestack Ribs/Catch-22 building.

I got a note from Ross Manahan, a co-owner of Rooster's on Thursday saying the opening went really well.

"… We really believe we delivered what we promised to take a re-energize a stark looking facility into a warm friendly and comfortable neighborhood bar and grill feel where everyone can relax and have fun," he wrote.

 

It is lunch time at Sontes

A downtown Rochester landmark is now cooking in a new time zone — the lunch hour.

Sontes, which previously only served evening meals, opened at 11 a.m. Monday to launch its new lunch offerings.

While it is being served in the same 137-year-old building at Historic Third and South Broadway where it has operated since 2006, the name on the lunch menu is different.

"We're actually treating it like a restaurant within a restaurant. We call it Sontes Too," says owner Tessa Leung. "While it is still our building and it is still our quality food served in our style, the lunches are much more traditional. But they are still from-farm-to-table and made from scratch."

Than means Sontes' younger sibling won't be serving tapas or small plates like its big sister. Expect lunch fare like a buttermilk grilled chicken sandwich, blue cheese wedge salad and carrot cake.

Chef Bryce Lamb is also making soups and fresh bread for lunches. The menu offers gluten-free and vegetarian options.

With its reputation for fine dining, Sontes might not be a place people might think of when debating where to grab a noontime bite or for a lunch meeting. However, the first few lunch hours have started to change that.

"It is going well. I think people are pleasantly surprised that it is very fast and it is a lot of food," says Leung.

The new name is fitting, because the lunch incarnation of the tapas restaurant is like seeing an old friend in a new setting. Compared to Sontes after dark, it is familiar and yet different, she says.

"The restaurant looks completely different during the day. It is much lighter, more open and we don't have the tapas plates on the tables," Leung says.

Sontes Too serves lunch from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday. At 2 p.m., it changes into serving an "in-between menu" of lighter choices. Then the more mature and well-known Sontes takes back over at 4 p.m.

To expand its hours, the restaurant needed to expand its staff. Leung added three employees, to bring her team up to 27 staffers.

Why the decision to start serving lunch after six years of only dinners?

"We've been asked to do lunch quite a bit actually," she says. "Rochester has been really kind to us. They've been asking, so we listened."

New owner to take over, expand Med City liquor store

A Med City liquor store is about to go through the blender, but it's expected to have a familiar flavor when the new version is poured back into the mix.

Apollo Liquors is leaving its store at 3514 55th St. N.W. at the end of the month, when its lease ends.

However, a new owner is stepping into the spot to keep it going as Northwest Liquors, which is what it has been called for the past 10 years in the space next to Gander Mountain.

Irv Keefe plans to take over as the owner and re-open the store under the same name of Northwest Liquors. He has already hired most of the current staff and the manager to stay on there.

"Customers will still see the same faces, when they come in," he says.

Construction is under way to expand the store to 6,200 square feet from its current 4,500 square feet. Look for that work to speed up after Friday, when Apollo leaves.

Keefe hopes to re-open the new version of the store by mid- to late September.

He plans to use the additional space to bring in a 60-foot, state-of-the-art cooler to expand the store's micro beer offerings. He also will add more varieties of other products and a new wine tasting area to the store.

Meanwhile, Ari Kolas has his own project in the works. He is still putting the finishing touches on the deal, so watch this column for more details in the near future.

Once Northwest Liquors closes, Apollo will have four stores in Rochester. It also has a store in Austin, where the chain was originally founded by Nick Kolas.

Keefe says while he has long worked as a distributor in the alcohol business, this is his first step into the retail side of things.

"It is something I've always wanted to do," he says. "It is a challenge. I've always liked a challenge."

With the idea of eventually opening a store somewhere, he acquired an off-sale liquor license from the city of Rochester back in March.

"There were only so many of them," Keefe explains. "So I decided to grab one while I could."

Some buzz has been going around that this new store will be linked to Rochester's Chafoulias family. They own Apollo's prime competitor, Andy's Liquor.

Not so, says Keefe. He explains that he is the owner, not the Chafoulias family.

The only connection to the Chafoulias family is that he does work for their company, Titan Development Group.

Rooster's Barn & Grill to start crowing soon

The sun must be rising in the Med City, because it is almost time for Rooster's to start crowing from its new perch in northwest Rochester.

Work on Rooster's Barn & Grill is rolling along toward the owners' goal of opening at the end of this month.

"We're chomping at the bit to get this open," says co-owner Ross Manahan. "We're trying to give that building the personality that it has never really had. We're giving it a very down home feel. It's going to have a lot of warmth."

Manahan, who also owns Top Shots! in downtown Rochester, is opening the country-style bar and restaurant with Krisse Zabel and Mike Brakke. Rooster's is being created at 2280 Superior Drive N.W., which last housed Bob's Smoke Stack Ribs.

The plan, according to Manahan, is to have a place where people can go for an early-morning breakfast or for lunch and then come back later for a full bar experience to have a drink and play pool or darts.

They say that translates to the six Bs: breakfast, burgers, broasted chicken, billiards, bulls-eyes and a bar.

That means the doors will open at 6 a.m. and they'll stay open until bar closing time. The kitchen will serve food until 10 p.m.

"I think the breakfast is going to be a lot of fun. Everybody is really excited about the breakfast," he says.

Once the remodel is done, Rooster's should seat about 125 people or so. Look for a crew of 25 to 30 employees to staff it.

Much of the kitchen staff has already been hired. Manahan says they are creating a "simple, but fun menu."

To complement Top Shots' popularity with local pool leagues, Rooster's will have six tables for teams as well as casual players to use.

Before all of that can happen, the construction team needs to finish building out Manahan's vision.

The building was constructed in 2006 and first used as Leo's Pizza Palace and then later as Catch-22 Bar & Grill before Bob's moved in. During all of those transitions, there haven't been a lot of changes to the basic feel of the building.

When it is done, Rooster's will definitely have its own look and atmosphere, according to the owners.

"When people first come in here, I want them to say, 'They really put some effort into this,'" says Manahan. "If we can do that, I'll be happy."

A rooftop patio is on tap for downtown Rochester

There's a rooftop patio brewing in downtown Rochester, and it could be on tap yet this fall.

Christine Stahl and Natalie Victoria, the owners of the Tap House On Historic Third, are planning to add a rooftop patio to their coffee shop by day and bar by night in the 124-year-old Kennedy building at 10 Third St. S.W.

They are also working on a fireplace and an outdoor pizza oven on the roof. The patio won't be on the roof of the Tap House proper, but on top of the shorter structure that currently houses Jasper's Alsatian Bistro and Wine Bar.

While their plans to transform the former home of Hight & Randall jewelry shop into an upscale entertainment venue were announced in January, construction has been delayed by some permitting snags. Stahl says they now hope to possibly open sometime in September.

"Things are moving along now. It is starting to take shape," she says.

Rochester artist and well-known muralist Greg Wimmer recently painted the establishment's name high on the side of the brick building in a manner that invokes the style of old-time wall ads.

While work on the site cruises along, the owners are taking on the "tough" job of choosing the beers to will serve from the 50 taps they have planned for the bar. Stahl says The Tap House will only have craft brews on tap, so it is quite a challenge they have set before them to pick which 50 to offer.

Looking ahead toward the opening, Stahl and Victoria are starting to hand out job applications at Victoria's Ristorante & Wine Bar on First Avenue. While the duo manage Victoria's, they own The Tap House, and it is not linked to downtown Italian eatery.

Within the next few weeks, they hope to start interviews to build the the Tap House's staff.

Plans for Roadhouse moving through Rochester chutes

Here's a quick update on the Texas Roadhouse coming to Rochester:

Building plans for the new Texas Roadhouse restaurant have started wandering through official channels like a cow looking for the sweetest patch of grass in the pasture.

The plan calls for a 6,995-square-foot restaurant to be built in the parking lot of Rochester's Northwest Plaza shopping center along 55th Street Northwest.

That's the center that's anchored by Walmart North and Sam's Club. This project first rode into Rochester in February when the Rochester Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously branded the project as "OK."

Now that the plans are trotting through the city's official chutes, it is possible construction could begin before school starts again. I'll ride herd on this to see what other details I can round up.

Roch. auction house handles liquidation of vodka co.

Instead of buying a just bottle of vodka to make cocktails, how about buying a whole vodka company — tanks, patented distillation process, bottle design, trademarked brand plus everything else?

That's exactly what is on the block this week as Shakers Vodka, the "ultra-premium" vodka made in Minnesota from wheat grown here, is being auctioned off.

And a Rochester firm, Maas Cos., is the steady hand running the online auction to sell everything related to Shakers Vodka.

It is a true "liquidation" sale.

The story starts back in 2003, when Shakers launched and soon became kind of a rock star that had the bar crowd buzzing. Its smooth taste and frosted Martini shaker-shaped bottles really shook things up.

It was a creation from the same the guys who brewed up Pete's Wicked Ale, the popular brown ale from the early days of the craft beer revolution. They sold that off in 1998 and moved on to Minnesota vodka.

This time the bar stool fairy tale didn't have a happy ending. (Technically, Pete's Wicked Ale didn't end well either, since its owner stopped making it last year due to low sales.)

In January, Blaine-based Infinite Spirits Inc. filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. That where Rochester's Maas Cos. comes into the tale.

Maas is known as an auction house that can handle out-of-the-ordinary industrial liquidation and real estate sales. The company has sold the assets of manufacturers, university campuses, ethanol plants and more.

The sky's the limit of what the company will auction off. The Rochester auction house even sold off a squadron of vintage biplanes that Minnesota's Schwan Food Corp. owned and flew in air shows to promote its Red Baron Pizza.

The word is that it was Maas' experience with selling ethanol plants, which aren't that much different from alcohol distilleries, that may have helped clinch the bid for this gig.

This auction is up and accepting bids for individual items — like a 16,000-gallon stainless steel tank — at www.shakersvodkaauction.com.

The game will change on Thursday, when the high-rollers are expected to belly up to the bar and lay down their bids to buy the whole kit and ka-bottle.

Bidding is scheduled to end at noon on June 26. That's when Maas will run the numbers to see which method brought the best price — the one-price-for-it-all bids or the sum of all of the bids for the individual items.

If the tally of all of the individual bids tops the biggest "for everything" bid, the big bidder will get a chance to match it. They will need to be $10,000 more than the collective bidders to win and put Shakers on their shelf.