VERO BEACH — Wild Thyme Catering owners Travis Beckett and Lou Kolbauer are adding chives to their herb mix.
The duo, winners of Vero’s most recent Top Chef competition, are opening Chives, a take-out storefront on Old Dixie Highway downtown. The space will house the catering business in back and out front will sell take-out fresh or frozen hors d’oeuvres as well as choose-your-own-ingredient rice bowls, po’ boys, wraps and salads.
Similar to the Subway and Chipotle chains that let customers make their choices as the attendant assembles the food, the hot food line will include grilled mahi-mahi, wild-caught grilled shrimp, Maine lobster, roast pork and rib eye.
The cold line will include vegetables, plus toppings ranging from mango yogurt to wasabi aioli and chipotle sour cream.
Prices will start at under $8, and that includes a side dish with the sandwiches: red onion and cucumber salad, Thai noodle salad or mac and cheese.
They will also offer made-from-scratch soups — the dolphin chowder is a catering favorite, Kolbauer says.
Hold the fries, though.
“We made the decision to get off the fried food so we’re not going to put a fryer in,” he says.
They’ll offer honey mint tea, but not beer or wine, and there isn’t a dine-in option.
Signage for Chives is already installed near the roadway as the chefs prepare for an opening before the end of September.
The location, on the north end of a small L-shaped plaza called Len-Mar, is across the street from a new wood fired pizza place opening soon under the direction of Michael Lander of Michael’s Table.
In February, Kolbauer and Beckett beat out 11 chefs in Vero’s Top Chef competition benefiting the Homeless Family Shelter, with a dinner of lemon mustard lobster, whiskey pork tenderloin, salad of bibb lettuce and grilled apple pear and gnocchi in a roasted pepper cream sauce.
Kolbauer, 41, and Beckett, 37, had been running their catering business out of a local tavern, then took over the kitchen of a Port St. Lucie breakfast spot in the restaurant’s off-hours.
Kolbauer lives in Vero and wanted to make the most of his clientele from the beachside Farmer’s Market, where he has had considerable success, he says.
The two met years ago while tending bar at TGIFridays.
Kolbauer had graduated from University of Florida, then worked in restaurants from the Keys to the Panhandle before started a remodeling business and was buying, rehabbing and selling houses.
Beckett meanwhile had headed off to Hawaii to help remodel a house for his brother. He came back, got a job right away working with Kolbauer and then the two segued into the catering business.
The shop takes the place of a shortlived Latin fusion restaurant. Years ago, it was home to Runaround Sue, a decorator business.
In the past decade, the stretch of Old Dixie south of State Road 60 has steadily been filling in with interesting interior design and dining spots, expanding the downtown core to east of 14th Avenue.
The most recent additions are Patisserie, a French bakery which opened last fall, and Michael Lander’s Cosmic Pizza, scheduled to open later this fall.
The beachside interior design shop Loggia keeps a large space there; Debbie Daly’s Decorative Arts launched the stretch’s rehab in the early 2000s.
