BROOKINGS A local chef hopes to establish an upscale restaurant in Brookings, but he needs your help. Matt Chapman is raising money through a kickstarter campaign to launch Domellies a new destination for downtown diners.
Im trying to raise $10,000 to $12,000, Chapman said. What that does is get my business plan up and running for investors so that I can get a business loan at the bank Then I can do inspections on buildings downtown.
Donors will receive special benefits.
You have these little rewards like if you contribute $100, youll get into one of our food tastings, Chapman said. But you dont have to buy one of those. Every $5 or $10 helps. If I can get this part of it done, the rest of it should come pretty quickly.
He envisions Domellies as a high-end steakhouse focused on local products.
It would have a great happy hour for people getting off work Then wed transition to an upscale American steakhouse atmosphere at night, Chapman said. I think especially downtown theres a market for something that is upscale where people can come in, celebrate a promotion at work or a birthday, just go out with family and friends and have a good meal.
He said Brookings restaurant patrons have high standards.
If you dont have good food and good service especially in this area youre not going to be successful, Chapman said. You get one or maybe two shots with a customer. If they love it, theyll be with you religiously. If they dont like it, theyre just not coming back.
He said top-notch establishments work hard to stand out.
Quality ingredients and freshness are very important, Chapman said. We have a couple great restaurants in town that do a great job and have a great reputation already like Craft and the Pheasant. That would be somewhat of the demographic I would want to be in line with.
He said theres plenty of room for each restaurant to be distinct.
You want to be unique, Chapman said. If youre just using the butter that everybody else is using and the same ingredients that everybody else is using, youre going to just be like everybody else But if you bring in the raw ingredients and make things from scratch, then thats completely your own.
For Chapman, this is a lifelong dream.
I worked at a restaurant in Brookings all the way through high school Country Kitchen, he said. I started there and I rose from dishwasher to kitchen manager I moved to Sioux Falls and a golf club there named Callaways for a couple years. Then I decided to take the plunge to go out to Portland, Ore. and go to culinary school.
He graduated from the Western Culinary Institute, a stateside branch of French cooking academy Le Cordon Bleu.
The program came from France, Chapman said. They had two different programs the full-on program for a novice going into the profession, and then they had the one I took which is almost like an associates degree.
Attendees of other branches of Le Cordon Bleu include celebrity chefs Julia Child, Mario Batali and Giada De Laurentiis. Despite having earned such a prestigious degree, Chapman said most of his culinary skills were acquired on-the-job.
That is where 75 to 85 percent of your knowledge comes from working in kitchens, he said. You have to learn to deal with servers, hostesses, customers, dishwashers and all of that. Now when you go to culinary school, you learn a little bit about that but you learn mostly about the cooking part of it. When you work in restaurants, you have to learn the management side.
If all goes well, Chapman hopes to soon apply those skills in his own establishment.
It could be pretty quick, he said. Im hoping within two years. It really depends on how everything shakes out. I would say if this kickstarter comes together then I can get the ball rolling pretty quickly.
He said he loves both the local community and cooking so this felt like a good fit.
Being from a small area like this when you work with a lot of people who are in your same profession, they might move on to other jobs but you hang on to those friendships, Chapman said. Ive been a chef obviously for a while, and every chef wants to have their own place Working in a kitchen is a thing that I like, and Id like to bring that to downtown. So I decided to put it out there and see what kind of public response I get. So far, its been pretty good.
The kickstarter campaign runs through March 28. Donors can make contributions at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/domellie/domellies
Contact Jay Roe at [email protected].
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