Lloyds say goodbye to South Market Bistro, now open as Oak Grove Eatery

Lloyds say goodbye to South Market Bistro, now open as Oak Grove Eatery
                        
The Oak Grove Eatery on South Market Street is closed on Monday, but that doesn't mean people aren't stopping by.

Eric Lloyd, who owns the restaurant with his wife, Liz, attempts to enjoy a cup of coffee at the newly installed bar, but he jumps up occasionally to answer the door.

People are curious.

What happened to the South Market Bistro, a fixture in downtown Wooster for the past dozen years?

Lloyd is familiar with the Bistro. He started work there six years ago as a sous chef before being promoted to chef de cuisine when former chef Michael Ollier left. His wife worked there, too, eventually rising to front-of-house manager.

Fast forward a few years. Lloyd left the Bistro to run the production kitchen at Akron City Hospital. The couple had four children and started their own coffee roasting business.

And now they've come back and bought the restaurant where it all began. They ran the restaurant under its original name through the summer Ohio Light Opera season, then closed, remodeled, reorganized and rebranded. The Oak Grove Eatery opened earlier this month.

It almost didn't happen, Lloyd said. The original idea was for the couple to open a restaurant in Akron and the city was assisting them in securing a place next to the Akron Art Museum. “Then, I don't know,” Lloyd said. “It felt like we needed to come back here to Wooster. ... It's very comfortable. I know the people in town. I love the people in town. ”

The Oak Grove Eatery goes hand in glove with the Oak Grove Coffee Co. that the Lloyds began in 2012. The name itself pays homage in part to the Oak Grove at The College of Wooster, where Liz Lloyd earned a degree in history and minored in education.

The coffee business came about, he said, because “we love coffee. We started roasting in a popcorn popper and it was the best coffee we ever had.” The air-roasted product caught on and soon popped up on the shelves at Local Roots Market & Cafe, at Spoon Market & Deli and at Hartzler Family Dairy. While his wife handles most of the roasting and the two of them bag the product, Lloyd handles sales and has seen the product added to the inventory of Akron's West Point Market.

If it seems like a lot to own two businesses while raising four children under the age of five, it is.

Lloyd doesn't mind. He loves all of it. “There's nothing like it,” he said. “Some people are just made to work in the food industry and I'm one of them.”

Bistro fans will still find plenty to like at Oak Grove, where Lloyd said the focus will still be on local foods. There's a version of the Bistro's popular goat cheese salad, plus seasonable vegetables and handmade raviolis. Some of the desserts also may look familiar.

The biggest change, Lloyd said, is the addition of breakfast and lunch. The Bistro was a dinner-only eatery, but Lloyd said he believes the breakfast and lunch menus will bring in both familiar faces as well as new ones. Both breakfast and lunch start at 7 in the morning, when the coffee bar will be ready and waiting. There are meals, but Lloyd said much of the menu consists of a la carte items. “So, if you're not real hungry, you can come in and get an egg and a bowl of fruit,” he said.

Or a hamburger.

The most obvious physical change is the realignment of the entrance and the addition of a bar, the top of which Lloyd sanded, finished and installed himself. A television will broadcast news and educational programming, but will go off promptly at 4 p.m. as the business shifts into dinner mode. Its not so much a bar where patrons drink, as it is a place for solo diners to enjoy themselves. It offers not only the TV, but also a dozen outlets for electronic devices. And “no one will have to sit (alone) facing the wall at a table,” Lloyd said.

Since the Lloyds already are familiar with the other food service professionals who dot the downtown, he hopes to be able to easily fit into the restaurant community. Some of Oak Grove's baked goods will come from the neighboring Spoon Market and Spoon Market butcher Adam Nussbaum will provide meat for some of the dishes.

Adding two meal cycles has meant adding more staff, though plenty of Bistro veterans remain, including sous chef Jeremy Crossmon and Donna Hock in the front of the house. Liz Lloyd will serve as general manager, while Eric Lloyd will run the kitchen. Colin Brown, formerly of the Greenhouse Tavern in Cleveland, has been added as the chef de cuisine.

Already, Lloyd said, it feels like home. “The north end (of Wooster) will never be what downtown is,” he said. “We don't have chains. It's so special.”


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