Growing Spirits
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on December 29, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Ed Cogdell, left, and Alvin Grant will host a New Year's Eve party in the new addition to Ed's Southern Food and Spirits, which saw the restaurant expand into the old Goldsboro Drug Company building at 101 N. Center St. A special menu was created for Thursday night's celebration, which will serve everything from filet mignon to bourbon vanilla creme brulee.
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Owners of the building that houses Ed's Southern Food and Spirits, Daniels & Daniels Construction, plan to build two apartments on the second floor.
After four months of renovations, Ed's Southern Food and Spirits will open its dining room expansion on New Year's Eve and serve a special menu to mark the occasion.
Daniels and Daniels construction company remodeled the old Goldsboro Drug Company building at 101 N. Center St., which will serve as a dining and private event room and become the main entrance for the restaurant.
"Myself, Ed (Cogdell) and Rob (Waldron) decided this would be a great addition to what we already had because we need more space," said part owner Alvin Grant. "I mean, look right here (in the corner at the windows). You have the best seat in the house right here."
The New Year's Eve party will serve as a bit of an open house to allow people to see what the expansion is all about, Grant said.
Only pre-selected options will be on the menu for the evening, and patrons will pay a set price that will entitle them to one appetizer, one salad, one entree and one dessert.
"We'll serve dinner, then we'll have some music and champagne," Grant said. "We're going to celebrate throughout the entire restaurant and have a bit of an open house to let people see everything."
Once the expansion is opened, the format of the restaurant will consist of two dining areas and one bar area, with the bar area remaining where the main entrance to the restaurant is currently.
"We're going to keep tweaking it after we open it, because we have a few other things we'd like to do in here," Cogdell said. "This (expansion) will be the main dining area, and we'll be looking at adding signage to the new entrance. I want to have the name of the restaurant etched into the glass in the front and really direct people into here where they can go to the bar if they want, or stay in here and eat."
Grant and Cogdell plan to add to the expansion. They plan to use a touch of local history in the furnishing and finishing of the remodel.
One of those additions will be the original booths from Central Lunch Cafe when the old restaurant first opened in the 1920s.
"That part can't be rushed," Grant said. "There's years of lacquer and wear on them. They have hooks for coats on them, and when they were being refurbished one of the hooks came off and revealed this very rich cherry wood that the booths are made out of."
The Wayne Opportunity Center is refurbishing the original Central Lunch booths, and there's another nostalgic element to the new expansion -- the back half of the floor is made of the original tiles of Goldsboro Drug Co. when it first opened with the front half of the expansion's floor crafted to match the original tiling.
Grant said the speed and quality of work on the restaurant's addition would not have been possible without Daniels and Daniels.
"Daniels and Daniels has been the best to work with on this project," Grant said. "The way we wanted it was the way we got it. I won't give you the specifics of the back room deal, but they easily could have gotten 'X' amount of dollars from another cafe or business moving in here, but they brought it to our attention, and it really seemed like they approached us at the same time we were approaching them. We would sit down together and say, 'What are you thinking?' And we went back and forth and developed this project like that."
The construction company worked throughout the day, from early morning until the restaurant would open for business at 5 p.m., working six days a week, Monday through Saturday to get everything done.
Grant said Daniels and Daniels is also planning on putting two apartments above the old Goldsboro Drug Co. building, though he is not sure when they will be complete.
He also said the restaurant's investment in downtown is far from complete.
"We are not finished with our invested interest in downtown," Grant said. "There are other projects downtown we feel we truly have a vested interest in. They won't take place in the next one or two months, but we already have the ball rolling on a few other things."