Restaurant to open in former Vega Café spot
Chloe Childres sits inside the former Vega Cafe in Norris, where she plans to open a new restaurant in September (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
Chloe Childres, who has lived in Norris for the past six years, said at the site Friday that she plans to operate the restaurant along with her mother.
She is now doing some remodeling in the building, which is next door to the Norris police and fire station.
“We’ve put a suggestion box on the front door so people can give us ideas about what kinds of food they want, and what days and hours we should be open,” Childres said. “My mom and I both have lots of restaurant experience, and we’re looking for some different things.”
Childres actually is a union welder by trade, but isn’t able to work at that trade right now because she’s expecting her first child in November, she said.
“But I’ve worked in restaurants since I was 16,” she said. Locally, she has worked in the restaurant at the Museum of Appalachia.
She suggested that her new eatery might do only carry-outs at first.
, but she intends it to be a regular dine-in restaurant.
“I’m excited to have a business with my mom,” Childres said.
Some people in Norris and nearby might already know her from her honey business, Dirt Hippie, which she operates on a mobile basis in venues such as farmers’ markets, including the one in Norris, she said.
She knows she has big shoes to fill in replacing the popular Vega Cafe, which closed in March after about five years in business, because of health issues of its owner, John Fletcher.
Fletcher operated Vega four days a week and offered weekly special entrees, soups and desserts, along with a full menu of regular items.
The former Vega location is across West Norris Road from the shopping center that had long been the site of Archer’s Market, which closed earlier this year, and a string of different restaurants, whose space is now vacant.
Although a sign on the door at Archer’s said it was “Closed for renovations,” there has been no apparent work done, and there has been no word from the owner as to when or even whether the store would reopen.