New Store, New Ideas, Same Sense of Community
Mike and Sonya Kelsen are known in the Anaheim area for their outstanding wine bar Colony Wine Merchant. Now making strides forward, they recently opened up Promenade Pub in the same great city of Anaheim this past February. Transitioning from wine to beer, the Kelsen’s pub accommodates an impressive 20 beer tap handles that feature only local OC brewers. With the addition of locally sourced, in-house meals planned by Sonya herself this gives merit to the “Local Beer, Local Fare, Local People” motto. There is fun for everyone of all shapes, sizes, and breeds since the Promenade offers a dog-friendly patio and always welcomes the four-legged friends.
With all this new information being exchanged we asked the owners some questions to fill in a few blanks.
- What’s your Chef’s name or are you just going with a kitchen manager?
- “My husband and I are both working in the kitchen at the Pub and are in the process of training a kitchen manager.”
- Will he/she be creating the dinners for Colony too?
- “The Pub kitchen manager will not be involved with the Colony Menu.”
- Does Colony have a Chef?
- “Daniel Boothe, the chef at Colony, recently moved down from San Francisco, where he worked under great chefs at Epic Steak and 15 Romolo. Daniel also now collaborates on the Pub menu.”
- Where did the dinners at Colony come from previously? Were they catered?
- “When we first started hosting wine dinners at Colony my brother Anthony (owner of Meat Cellar in Claremont) and I would collaborate on the menu. He would also do the cooking. I still buy all of my seafood and meat from my brother.”
- Why did you decide that you need a second place?
- “Why did we open another place? We must be nuts! Just knew that the area needed this concept and just like the wine bar, we felt if we did not do it, someone else would (perhaps not to our standards and that would be a shame).”
