Mix New American Diner, Chaska, MN
Mix New American Diner is scheduled to open next month, and frankly we couldn’t be happier about it. The dream of award-winning Chef John Pullis and wife Joan Howe-Pullis, it’s the culmination of years of hard work and planning behind the scenes.
It takes enormous effort and lots of talent to organize a small independent restaurant. Creating the concept, finding an architect, finding a builder, dealing with the bank, the city, the state, hiring staff and training them. And that’s if things go smoothly.
Walsh Bishop Design Leader Ed Wilms started conversations with John and Joan in 2005 about another concept that was also an outgrowth of their northeastern roots, but as fate would have it, that concept never came to fruition. In 2007 the duo found us again and we started planning Mix New American Diner. Our first meeting was filled with sketches, plans and concepts from an owner that had already put a tremendous amount of consideration into the look, feel and charm of the restaurant they wanted to create.
So far so good.
Start Construction and open up an almost 100 year old building and it’s full of surprises. Three original store front buildings were combined to create Mix, and of course not one floor level was the same. Open up the walls? Rot from bad additions and remodels that had happened over they years - water being funneled down from the ice dams on the roof creating mold problems, and walls that were quite frankly, barley standing up.
Working with longtime collaborators Zeman Construction, Walsh Bishop was able to help the owners navigate their way through the unexpected twists and turns of a very difficult construction. Hard decisions needed to be made because the pot isn’t full of money. Structural deficiencies need to be addressed, floors leveled, leaking roofs repaired and freezers refrozen. These hidden conditions of course weren’t accounted for in the original budget.
But, that’s behind us, and the end is in sight. Mix New American Diner is scheduled to open in just a few weeks, and as we’ve said before, we couldn’t be happier.
Mix New American Diner offers a menu full of unique twist on classic diner fare along with new additions that you can’t find anywhere else. A full bar complements the inviting atmosphere.
UPDATE: Check out Mix in the Star Tribune!
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/taste/20398854.html?page=3&c=y
