Beech Tree News Network

There’s a new restaurant in town: The Restaurant has filled the vacated store front most recently occupied by Little Tokyo, which moved to Bowling Green: “It’s a nice burger place," said customer Nicholas Johnson, who had just finished his first meal at The Restaurant, and seemed positive about the new diner.  “The food was good,” added Johnson.  The waitress recommended the smoked pork chop.
For Josh Henderson, owner of The Restaurant, restaurant running runs in the family: “My family has been in the restaurant owning business on and off for a while. I have aunts that have owned restaurants, and I owned a restaurant in Caneyville and I always said that if a space became available in Morgantown that I’d come here. [The name] came from whenever my aunts owned a restaurant in town… [When] we would say ‘let’s go eat’ we would say ‘let’s go to the restaurant.’ Whenever people come in here and eat, I want them to feel like family, so they can call it The Restaurant too.”

The Restaurant is going for a ‘make yourself at home’ ambiance: from the seat yourself dining rooms, to the chatty banter between the hostess and chef, the restaurant has no pretense, and little in the way of gimmicks, as Josh explains: “People have asked me if I would be putting TVs and things in [The Restaurant], I told them no… I want people to actually talk to each other while they’re in there without [the distraction]… I want it to be more family oriented.”
According to Henderson, the Restaurant is still getting in the swing of things: “Our first Sunday we had the front and back dining room full [but] in the first week we got off to a pretty rocky start. Things seem to be doing a lot better now… we want people that tried us that first week to try us again, and if they haven’t tried us yet, we want people to come in and give us a try.”

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Story and photo by J. Harris, Beech Tree News