New seafood restaurant and private bar owners in Thomasville don't let special orders upset them - Lexington Dispatch

-

Fiancés Crystal McWilliams and Kelvin Thorne have opened up a seafood restaurant like no other in Thomasville, called Cosmos Cuisine & Cocktails.

It's not just the menu offerings — such as shrimp and grits, seafood boils and homemade flavored sauces for the boils — that make it unique, but also their business model that sets this restaurant apart from others in the Chair City. Their business at 615 E. Main St., is really a private bar with a restaurant attached.

"We are a private bar that happens to have a restaurant beside it," said McWilliams, a Michigan native who is engaged to Thomasville native Thorne.  "You have to have a membership to come in, but it's only $1 a year. It just made sense businesswise to set it up this way as a private bar with a restaurant instead of as a restaurant with a bar with how the ratio is of how we have to sell food to drinks and other things."

Cosmos Cuisine & Cocktails, which opened with a ribbon-cutting on May 15 with Thomasville City and chamber of commerce officials, is under one roof in the former Down Home Cooking and Catering by Doe's location, a soul food restaurant that closed on Dec. 31, 2020.

Crystal Bell McWilliams and Kelvin Thorne have opened Cosmos Cuisine & Cocktails in Thomasville. The business is a private bar that has a connected restaurant specializing in seafood.

Last call for soul food: Thomasville restaurant will close on Dec. 31

"I wanted to have soul food, but we didn't want to come back in here with the same thing," Thorne said.

Thorne, who is a voracious foodie and loves to cook, handles the kitchen and back end of the restaurant. McWilliams handles the front end and also tends bar.

The menu features seafood boils with four different seasonings or homemade sauces, such as Cajun and lemon pepper, and combination plates with salmon, whiting, ocean perch, catfish, shrimp, lobster tails, chicken tenders and chicken wings. The combo entrees can be prepared grilled, fried, broiled or boiled and include homemade cole slaw, fries, hush puppies and a soft drink or tea.

In addition, the chicken wings are roasted and come with a choice of six homemade sauces or simply tossed in Old Bay seasoning. Special orders and requests are not an issue for McWilliams and Thorne, who also said they believe in making everything homemade instead of warming or cooking restaurant-quality packaged food. They are working toward making in-house the few items they do not make now, such as the hush puppies and clam chowder. 

"Our Buffalo sauce for the chicken wings is a family recipe," Thorne said. "My mom taught me how to make it. Some people call it dip chicken sauce. It's Buffalo sauce with our special touch."

In the short time they have been open, they said they have taken feedback and already modified the menu. For example, they learned not everyone wants cheese in the grits for their shrimp and grits dish. Also, they found out some do not want beef kilebasa sausage in it, and others want the grits as a side dish with other seafood or chicken offerings.

More: New Lexington restaurant will highlight low-country seafood boil

So now, they serve the shrimp and grits in a disassembled manner with the grits in their own bowl, with our without cheese, and the other requested ingredients along with the shrimp in its own bowl. Customers can choose to mix it or eat separately their custom-made dish. You can also get grits as a side with meal.

The other available menu sides feature asparagus, steamed rice, corn on the cob, potato wedges and homemade macaroni and cheese. McWilliams would share that there are three kinds of cheeses in the mac and cheese, including mild and extra sharp cheddar cheese, but she wouldn't share the third cheese, which she said is a secret. Finely diced onion and bell peppers also make an appearance in her mac and cheese.

Cosmos Cuisine & Cocktails in Thomasville is one of two Davidson County restaurants that have seafood boils on its menu regularly. Customers pick out the seafood they want, a sauce or seasoning, most of which are homemade, and your spice or heat level.

Seafood was an obvious choice for the couple's restaurant menu because not only is Thomasville a seafood restaurant desert except for a couple of restaurants that have a handful of seafood dishes on their menus, but McWilliams grew up in the seafood business.

Her parents, Edith and David Bell, opened Dexter Fish Market in Detroit, Michigan, where she grew up, for several years until her father's death. She stood on boxes at age 4 to wait on customers. She pulled the fish out of cases for the customers, weighed them and rang them up. The family eventually added equipment at the market to sell cooked seafood for pick up too.

#ListenFirst: New virtual event kicks off annual National Week of Conversation

"I was an entrepreneur at age 4," she said. "My dad got the whole family together when they decided to do this and said if anyone in the family did not want to do this, we would not. It was all hands on deck and we all had to want to do this. My brother pointed out that I was only 4 and asked his dad if she said no, would the family really not do this. He said, 'Yes. We all have to be in on this ... My dad really empowered me at that moment. I had a choice."

Even after attending the University of Michigan where she graduated with degrees in chemistry and engineering, McWilliams returned home on breaks and weekends to work the family business.

More restaurant news: New Dairi-O restaurant coming to Thomasville

She worked for many years in a variety of positions, from chemist to business consultant and salesperson for two major agricultural and medical pharmaceutical companies before moving to North Carolina to be near her then in-laws when her children were young.

In fact, she met Thorne, an Army veteran, when he sought her out for business development advice. He didn't take her advice and the company he was trying to create did not get open. They did work on another business venture together and their relationship turned romantic.

A pool table and jukebox are part of the private bar side of Cosmos Cuisine & Cocktails in Thomasville. The private bar has a seafood restaurant attached to it. Business owner Crystal Bell McWilliams painted the windows with an ocean theme so when inside it appears you are dining and drinking under the ocean.

At Cosmos Cuisine & Cocktails the wine, beer, and mixed drink are growing weekly as McWilliams hears from customers what they want and has time to find a vendor to stock that beer and time to learn to make new cocktails. The wine served is a brand not available for the public to purchase in retail locations.

More restaurant news: Fried pork tenderloin, breakfast all day draw customers to new Southmont area restaurant

She plans to add smoothies and protein drinks sold through the bar for daytime customers and a wide variety of energy drinks to be paired with liquor for a mixed drink.

The bar and restaurant are open late from 11 a.m.- 2 a.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 11 a.m. to midnight on Sundays. As the late night sets in, the menu becomes more limited and shifts more to an a la carte concept. People can order a piece of fish, fries or chicken, while the seafood boils and crab legs will not be available late. The a la cart menu is available all day and night, however. 

In addition, the new private bar and restaurant, the pair owns a telecommunications company they operated out of their High Point home

Menu items can be ordered for take-out and you pick it up or through DoorDash delivery.

"We know now after the year we've had with the pandemic that people need a place to come together and relax," McWilliams said. "We want Cosmos Cuisine & Cocktails to be that place. We want this to be a place where people come together from diverse backgrounds."

- Jill Doss-Raines is The Dispatch trending topics and personality profiles senior reporter and is always looking for tips about businesses and entertainment events, secret and new menu items, and interesting people in Davidson County. Contact me at jill.doss-raines@the-dispatch.com and subscribe to us at the-dispatch.com.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All In The Family: Maine Mother & Son Charged in Massive Drug Bust

-
Image
corso dog :: Article Creator Woman Hospitalized After Attack By 2 Dogs At Same Edmonton Home Where Boy Died: Lawyer UPDATE: On April 15, 2024, the City of Edmonton provided an update on the fatal attack. It said that prior to the deadly incident on April 1, "the city had no lawful basis to remove the dogs from the home." The city added that "all prior complaints about the dogs involved in this incident were investigated thoroughly and appropriate action was taken in accordance with the applicable legislation." The city also said a review found that its staff "acted appropriately in accordance with our standard practices and in compliance with the relevant legal constraints given the nature of past complaints and reports." A woman was hospitalized after being attacked in February by two large Cane Corso dogs at the same home where an 11-year-old boy was killed last week, the woman's lawyer told Global News. "I...
Read more

Rare Frogs And Illegal Drugs - Palisades Hudson Financial Group

-
Image
Colombian conservationist Ivan Lozano has hit on a brilliantly promising strategy to protect his country’s rare and endangered amphibians. His plan: Flood the market with them. Lozano is not hunting rare frogs in Colombia’s Andean forests. He is raising them himself and selling them at prices designed to undercut poachers and smugglers. If he can raise the frogs cheaply enough, and in large enough numbers, he might manage to drive down the market price to the point that poachers no longer find it worthwhile to harvest and smuggle the creatures onto the black markets. Lozano told The Associated Press that his company also encourages collectors to breed their own frogs. Picture yourself as a poacher. If the government toughens the legal penalties and steps up enforcement, you will shrug your shoulders; legal risks are a basic cost of doing business. Since the demand for your product already exists among foreign collectors and other buyers, tougher enforcement merely reduces supply a...
Read more

Burn scars, winter storms threaten rare and endangered species in San Gabriel Mountains - The Bakersfield Californian

-
Image
LOS ANGELES — Up until a few weeks ago, the West Fork of the San Gabriel River was one of the most abundant wildlife habitats in Los Angeles County, a secluded and rugged area defined by its steep peaks, lush canyons and mixture of rare and endangered species. Recently however, a team of federal biologists and forest rangers was aghast when it visited the stream following the Bobcat fire, which has burned more than 115,000 acres in the heart of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. Terrain that once resembled a High Sierra granite gorge now looked like ground zero after a nuclear explosion, and the usually clean mountain air was sharp with the stench of smoke. Particularly unsettling were the bare and ashen slopes that were now primed to dissolve under pounding winter storms. A heavy mudslide, experts said, could reverse decades of conservation efforts by inundating the last outposts for such federally protected species as the Santa Ana sucker fish and Southern California m...
Read more