Customers shopping for meat at Sunnyside Farms Market, a craft butcher shop in Durango, don’t have to wait to get home to sate their hunger now that the business has expanded into a restaurant.
Sunnyside Farms Market opened this week on the first floor of a three-story building in southern Durango at the intersection of Escalante Drive and River Oaks Drive in a space expected to be its permanent home and to allow for future growth, said owner Holly Zink.
On its opening days, the restaurant served Reubens and a barbecue pulled pork and coleslaw sandwich called a “pitmaster.” However, the menu is expected to change seasonally and will be developed by experienced staff, including the former owner of the Soup Palette and former executive chefs of Seasons of Durango and the Ore House. The chef from The Boathouse at Electra Lake also is helping with the expansion, Zink said.
“We are going to make a lot of new creative, inventive things,” she said.
A draft menu featured items such as a burger, meatball sub, grilled cheese and soups and salads. Sandwiches featuring salami, roast beef, turkey, smoked salmon and bacon also might be on the horizon. Sandwiches are expected to sell for under $12.
The restaurant will have seating for 30 people, and customers may order meals to go.
Zink said she expects the menu will be driven in part by what is available from the market’s sister company, Sunnyside Meats, a meatpacking plant that processes local livestock.
For example, if Sunnyside Meats has an overstock of beef bottom rounds, the menu might feature a roast beef special, she said.
“We wanted to move more, different kinds of cuts in a restaurant setting, so we went ahead and installed the kitchen to be able to use some of the cuts that we don’t have another market for,” she said.
Zink also plans to develop a line of frozen meals that would draw from the market’s locally sourced ingredients.
“We want to move into making down-home Marie Callender’s if you will,” she said.
Sunnyside Farms Market is one of two tenants in the 43,000-square-foot building, which is still under construction. Zink is certain it will be the final home for the business, which has moved four times since opening in 2002.
“This is it; we’re done,” she said.
The new building has room for additional tenants. The floor plan includes a sit-down restaurant and a pharmacy on the first floor, offices for health and wellness businesses on the second floor and six residential condominiums on the third floor.
Whole Health Family Medicine Clinic moved in to the building three weeks ago, and Southwest Women’s Health Associates is expected to move in during January, said building developer Jerry Zink.
mshinn@durangoherald.com