A new restaurant-lounge with a speakeasy currently built-in is coming to Rockwall’s downtown square: Named the Converse Lounge, it’ll open up at 104 N. San Jacinto St., replacing a bakery named Sloane’s Sweet Treats.
The Lounge will come from spouse-and-spouse Tommy and Tamara Kolleck, who were motivated by the runaway success of Talk, a speakeasy they opened in the exact same house. They’ll open up the new lounge in mid- to late-October.
The pair initial opened Sloane’s Sweet Treats in 2021, serving espresso, ice cream, and fountain drinks, and breakfast. But meanwhile, they were creating a speakeasy in the again, which they opened in June 2023.
“When we started with the bakery, the strategy was for the speakeasy all along,” Tommy states.
At Talk, they went whole-on Prohibition: reservations and a password, dwell jazz, and time period have on for the employees, with feminine servers in flapper costumes and male bartenders in bowties and suspenders.
Encouraged by the milieu, buyers adopted match, displaying up in 1920s attire. Tommy claims that at minimum fifty percent, occasionally 70 percent of patrons go entire Gatsby, dressing in the threads of the era.
“There’s no real eating encounters in Rockwall however and individuals like to gown up and go out,” he claims. “It’s superior to continue to keep the element a small great.”
Building on the speakeasy’s viewers and achievement seemed like a no-brainer, and so they are going to renovate the bakery into a lounge and dessert bar, where people today can occur and get tapas-fashion bites, rapid dessert, and a consume.
It can be a small bit upside-down given that usually the speakeasy is the put you go for the drinks and bites, but Converse is the exceptional speakeasy that also serves a full menu of foods with an emphasis on wagyu beef, in dishes these as roasted Wagyu marrow bruschetta and Wagyu deviled eggs, as effectively as craft cocktails and a modest wine listing.
Communicate was founded on a complete sensory experience to recreate a Prohibition-period speakeasy, but with a modern day gastropub aspect as very well,” Tommy suggests. “Folks make it a whole evening.”
Talk Lounge will have some of the speakeasy dishes but will actually be its possess issue with its have tapas-design and style menu.
“We see the Lounge as a lot more stress-free, having beverages and hanging out, although the speakeasy is a complete on experience,” he claims.
The few aren’t from the food business Tamara is a nurse, whilst Tommy earlier worked in trades and instrument distribution. But they have a track file of diving in and executing it their way, starting off with opening a ramen restaurant Ramen Head in Rockwall in December 2019, which is four doors down from Communicate.
“We moved right here from California, and love Asian meals – my wife is half-Russian 50 percent-Filipino – we could not locate ramen in Rockwall and received weary of driving to Dallas or Plano,” he claims.
We’re business owners – I guess we’re great at figuring items out,” he states. “Our frame of mind is always, ‘What’s lacking here and what can we do to provide a lot more food stuff alternatives to Rockwall?'”