Sept. 8, 2020

Chef Lance White opens his downtown restaurant today.

For the first few days, diners will need to make reservations to eat at Chef Lance’s on Phillips. That soft-opening approach with limited seating will be used to train the staff. The restaurant’s grand opening is at 11 a.m. Friday.

White and his wife, Jenny, are transforming their business, giving up the cafe at Joe Foss Field to open a full-service restaurant for lunch and dinner on the west side of the historic Falls Center at Phillips Avenue and Fifth Street. They’ll continue to offer catering and prepared meals, the portion of the business that kept them increasingly busy during the pandemic.

“As a chef, 2020 has been the goofiest year ever, and restaurants really weren’t anything that were on my radar, but when you see what’s happening in the world with everything, I really wanted to kind of spark and give that enthusiasm back to people, saying, ‘Hey there’s a way to do it,’ ” he said of opening a restaurant in the midst of COVID-19. “We’ve got to be smart; we’ve got to be wise. So we’re really going to encourage reservations, so that we can serve everybody well so they’re not all, you know, ‘cattled’ together at the front door. We know who they are; we have their table ready. Come on in.”

While the room could hold more tables, the Whites are keeping them spread far apart. The dining room can seat 60 customers, and a private space that has to be reserved will hold up to 40 diners. Servers will wear masks.

“We want everyone to have this be a very safe, comfortable place for all walks of life,” White said.

The lunch menu will be “geared towards burgers, sandwiches, wraps, salads,” he said. The cheese curd burger was a popular item on the menu at Chef Lance’s Cafe, and White revamped it for the new restaurant, topping it with Stensland Family Farms cheese curds,  shoulder bacon and garlic mayonnaise.

Dinner will include pastas, chicken, steaks, shrimp and more. Both menus will include gluten-free and keto-friendly items.

Chef April Austin will provide desserts.

“I do some desserts, but she does way better than I do,” White said.

Lunch will be served from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Dinner will be offered from 5 to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

The restaurant will be open in between lunch and dinner for customers to pick up family meals, which need to be ordered in advance, or for anyone who wants to grab a glass of beer or wine at the bar.

Four beers will be offered on tap, and they’ll rotate frequently, White said. He’s working with Remedy Brewing Co. to create a beer just for the restaurant.

“We plan on having a little retail wine section in here and then grow it,” White said. “Now when they come to pick up their family meals, they can grab a bottle of wine and take it home with them.”

The building’s owner will redo the patio area on the west side of the building, White said, so that’s not expected to open until next spring.

Inside, the restaurant space is rustic, with exposed quartzite walls, rough-hewn timber and a well-worn wooden floor.

The east side of the first floor will hold Rehfeld’s Art & Framing. Diners in the private room will be able to watch work going on in the gallery and framing studio.

The Whites painted one wall of the restaurant with a “Tree of Hope.” Customers can write “hopes, dreams, prayers, anything they want” on sticky note “leaves,” which will be attached to the branches of the tree, Jenny White said.

“We’re super excited about not only just serving people good, quality food but providing a beautiful atmosphere for them to do it,” White said. “We always get super excited when we are getting asked to be a part of other people’s special days. So that’s really kind of what we envision this place is. This is going to be a place where people really celebrate the things that are important in life —  family, birthdays and Christmas. That’s really our vision behind it. But not everybody can afford to go to some of these other places for those kinds of things, and we want to be.”

Reservations

If you’d like to be among the first diners to try Chef Lance’s on Phillips, you can make reservations online. Groups of more than six should call 605-271-7800.

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