Something new is coming to Fort Wright. Billy Grise and Mitch Arens, the co-owners of Carmelo's Italian restaurant, in Covington, are opening an American chophouse in the Northern Kentucky neighborhood this winter, according to a press release shared exclusively with The Enquirer.
Grise and Arens are still developing the name and design of the restaurant, which will honor the stretch of Dixie Highway that runs through Fort Wright. It was once famously known as the Gourmet Strip for the restaurants that lined it, most of which are long gone.
The new restaurant will be located at 20 Kyles Lane, formerly home to a Frisch's Big Boy that relocated to Orphanage Road in August. It will seat 160, with an outdoor patio, and will operate under Grise and Arens'
Something Underground Hospitality group, which also includes Carmelo's.
Chophouses differ from modern-day steakhouses. The former refers to the restaurants British people, mostly men, would visit for a quick meal of roasted and grilled meats (aka chops) after work, according to Sandra Song, who wrote a story on chophouse history for the food website Tasting Table.
"These establishments then made their way to the United States in the early 19th century, feeding working-class men in New York City and eventually the American West," Song wrote. "Out there, chophouses would become popular meeting places, where ranchers, cowboys, settlers, and miners would eat and conduct business."
While chophouses were the forebearers of the steakhouses we know today, Arens told me this will not be a high-end, Jeff Ruby-style joint. Instead, he and Grise want to recreate a slightly more upscale version of the affordable family-friendly restaurants they grew up with (think Ponderosa or, more recently, Texas Roadhouse). "With Carmelo's, we wanted to be an elevated Olive Garden," he told me. That said, perhaps this new concept will be more like an elevated Texas Roadhouse.
While the menu is still being developed, Arens says it will also draw on the comfort foods he loved when while growing up.
"I grew up in a large family in Northern Kentucky," Arens said. "For me, dinner was a table full of food and a room filled with everyone I love. That's what we want to re-create here. Comfort food you recognize before you taste it (and) hopefully brings back memories of the potlucks, the cookouts and family celebrations so many of us experience during our childhood."
He and Grise also hope the new restaurant will foster a renewed sense of community in Fort Wright. Going so far as to meet with long-time residents to ask about the restaurants and dishes they miss most from the old days and which ones they'd like to see make a comeback.
"Building restaurants for the people and community around us is what we love doing," Grise said in the release. "We're channeling old-school hospitality in a historic building, and giving the people of Fort Wright a place to escape to again."
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Carmelo's owners to open new restaurant in former Frisch's Big Boy
