Alexandria’s Garden District will soon have an intimate, high-end neighborhood restaurant, Oliver’s Fine Dining, like the kind that can be found in New Orleans once the old building that used to be Owl Fine Foods at 1121 Chester Street is restored.
John Callis fell in love with this building the first time he saw it. The structure was a neighborhood market started by Jesse Joseph "Jay" Mertens in the early 1930s. It closed in the 1990s.
“When I moved here, I was telling everybody that it would be a great neighborhood restaurant,” said Callis. “Neighborhood restaurants work, especially family ones. They work in New Orleans. They work in Savannah. They're going to work here."
And he’s 100 percent convinced that it will be a big deal here.
Before moving to Alexandria in 2006, Callis lived in Dallas where he loved to walk from his house to local family-owned restaurants in the neighborhood.
“People will love walking in the neighborhood to a restaurant,” said Callis.
The restaurant is called Oliver’s Fine Dining because Oliver is Callis’ middle name, and it was his grandfather’s first name.
“He was a French immigrant from Calais, France,” he said, adding that it isn’t related to his last name.
Oliver’s will have a chalkboard menu that will rotate out each week once he comes up with a base menu. Desserts will include bread pudding and creme brulee. He plans to use locally grown products.
“The best restaurants I have ever been to, in neighborhoods, that are family-owned, you walk in and see the chalkboard,” he said.
He would like to model it after New Orleans restaurants like Brennan’s, Commanders Palace or Luke.
“One of my favorite restaurants is Luke. It’s like French Bohemian, German Bohemian,” he said.
But he doesn’t plan for Oliver’s to have a specific style.
“It’ll really be just high-end, quality Louisiana cuisine. It’ not Cajun. It’s not – people think of the bistro - it’s none of that. We’re just going to do food really, really good,” he said.
The restaurant is also wine-centric.
“When you have good food, you need to have good wine,” he pointed out.
Callis said Oliver’s clientele would likely be those who like to dine at the Diamond Grill in downtown Alexandria or Cafe Josephine in Sunset. Or even those who liked Janohn’s in Boyce before it closed in 2018.
“It’s really people who are looking for really, really good food. This town’s full of fried food. I’m not that at all,” said Callis.
Oliver’s will only be open from 4-9 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. Then he plans to include Wednesday nights.
“It’s a neighborhood. I don’t want to be open past that,” he said. “It’s not a bar. It’s a restaurant. Most people in this town, to be honest with you, are done eating by 9 o’clock.”
The restaurant will be on the smaller side, seating only about 50 people.
He hopes the restaurant will be ready by the fall. Seating will be limited as they start out and it will be by reservation only because he needs to make sure the kitchen is ready.
“The worst thing a restaurant can do is open up and not be ready,” he said. “It sends a ripple.”
He said once things start tightening up, they’ll open to more people every night.
“We’ll have a bar, obviously for drinks, liquor, all that stuff,” he said, but it can only seat around 12-13 people. “The idea is to get them from here to a table.”
Callis, who owns a software company, is doing the restoration work himself.
“How I got into it is, it’s hard to find good labor in Louisiana,” he said. “If you find good labor, the cost is through the roof.”
He taught himself how to do carpentry, electrical work and plumbing - all by reading books.
“That’s what I did. I just really taught myself how to do it. I’ve done that over the last 20 years,” he said.
It was the late author Larry McMurtry, whom he met while pursuing his master’s degree in English, who told him that if he wanted to learn how to do something, there is a book about it.
“He’s right. Carpentry. Electrical. Plumbing. It’s all in a book,” said Callis.
Callis built the bar and oak ceiling coffers. He plans to install chandeliers. But he does have help from some high school students who also help on the weekends. He plans to be done with the inside in the next couple of months.
When he first moved to Alexandria, he had a lot of spare time so he would buy old houses in the Garden District and restore them to their original condition.
The thought of tearing down the old Owl Fine Foods structure and building a new restaurant from the ground up never crossed his mind.
“They don’t build buildings like this anymore,” he said about the nearly 100-year-old structure. It’s solid with original outer brick that’s 13 inches thick and has the original floor.
The only new addition will be the kitchen. There will be a window between the kitchen and the old structure where the cook will prepare the entree and pass it through to other staff where it is dressed and served.
“It’s typical French style where the cook is an assembler. All they’re doing is taking the protein from the back and then assembling it upfront,” he said.
People have wanted this building restored for years, he said.
“And then when I bought it, I immediately started working on it. Then COVID hit. It kind of delayed everything,” he said. Then, he was in litigation with the former owners. “But that resolved itself in June of last year and I’ve been working on it ever since.”
Eating at Oliver's will be an experience that diners can’t get from eating at a steakhouse or similar kind of restaurant.
“That’s why people love it so much in New Orleans. I treat a restaurant as a form of love. You’re cooking for somebody, you’re inviting them into your home, you’re cooking for them, you’re making sure that they’re taken care of,” he said.
Most Popular
Comments / 0