Restaurateur Hopes To Inspire ClienteleChristen Couture wants to change the world one bar at a time.
She’s beginning as the general manager/concept designer/interior designer with Side House Grill at 2604 Sheldon St., Warsaw, where the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday. The restaurant/bar is expected to open next week.
She said the small business is a Cinderella story.
“I was actually down on my luck, working at a diner in Wakarusa ... and (the owner Petey Velazquez) originally wanted me to just redesign or revamp the bar menu because I’ve got a good background in that,” Couture said.
The bar menu became the entire bar, which turned into the entire restaurant, and then Velazquez decided to back Couture with a business of her own.
Her design for Side House Grill changed four or five times. “And then I felt something that settled well with my soul, and that was the concept that I landed on, which was I am a small business and I want local community to support other local community small business,” she said.
She’d like her clientele to be “the square pegs in round holes. ... The ones that don’t really fit in, but they kind of do. I want them to walk in and feel home. We don’t care what you look like when you walk in, what kind of attitude you have, what kind of day you’ve had. We want you to come in and leave inspired. To be the change that you want to see in the world because the kindness, the cruelty, the adversity between the two sucks right now.”
Couture said she spent “every hour of every (day)” at the business, pouring her heart and soul into it.
“If all I do is inspire one person to walk out these doors and be kind to somebody else for 5 minutes, then this restaurant has done its job,” she said.
In deciding on the location of the restaurant, Couture said she was living in Nappanee, which is between Wakarusa and Warsaw. She also grew up on Dewart Lake.
Couture said the restaurant has an American grill-style menu.
“We are offering 7-minute lunches around here. From the time you sit down and the server takes your order, 7 minutes until you get your plate. And even if you want to order a cocktail, we’re going to go ahead and make sure you get that cocktail, too,” she said. The kicker is that it only applies to the lunch special, not the full menu.
Chef Daniel Hernandez, of North Webster, said there will be items on the menu that you can’t find anywhere else in Kosciusko County. He’s taken his 22 years of experience from different establishments and brought that to Side House Grill.
“People will find unique things here, things that are not available anywhere else around here,” he said.
Hernandez said menu items like sauces, dressings and tenderloins will be homemade. There will be cod and fried walleyed.
“We want people to come back,” he said “It’s all about flavor profiling. All the meat is certified Angus beef. You’re going to be able to taste our hard work we put into it.”
Couture said the menu will be like a downhome barbecue with a sidehouse kick and she “lucked” into finding Hernandez after her first chef quit.
“He saved the day, and his ideas are awesome and they cater to mine and we just work really well together,” she said.
The Warsaw restaurant isn’t going to be the last one, she said.
“I don’t want to do like a franchise per se or a chain of sorts, but I want to create an enterprise and I want it to be light, love and happiness enterprises and I want to spread over the world and change the world one bar at a time. The change has to start somewhere,” she said.
