"We don't need to change much from the old place," developer Chuck Mauszycki Sr. said about the Chef Louie's steakhouse he's rebuilding on Mitchell's northwest side. It's a strange thing to say about a brand-new 13,000-square-foot building, but it captures something true about how Mitchell eats right now. Walk down the list of restaurants opening, reopening, or under construction in town this year and you'll notice a pattern that has nothing to do with trends or chains: almost none of them are new ideas. They're second acts. Old names, old buildings, old recipes, run by people who weren't restaurant people to begin with.
That's worth sitting with if you live here, because it changes how you read the town's food scene. This isn't a wave of startups betting on Mitchell. It's a handful of people buying into things the community already loved and deciding not to mess with the formula.
The Bakery That Used to Be a Real Estate Office
Jeff and Denise Del Favero met while working as commercial real estate agents in Connecticut. In July 2020 they sold nearly everything, bought a Tiffin motorhome, and set out to travel the country full time under the name Turtle Express RV Life. A dinner invitation from friends they met at Daytona Bike Week brought them through Mitchell in August 2020 for what was supposed to be one night. It turned into the Pre-Sturgis Party, a trip to Sturgis with their new friends, and years of returning to South Dakota between stretches of travel.
By late 2023 they heard that Koinonia Kafe, a longtime café on Main Street, was for sale. They made an offer, the Waldner family accepted it, and after closing on the building that spring, they reopened the space as Bread & Vine Bistro that April. Denise runs the front of the café. Jeff runs a bakery out of the back, turning out sourdough loaves, pizza dough, granola, muffins, and cookies, a hobby that started after he took a sourdough class at Havens Farm.
Neither of the Del Faveros had run a restaurant before. What they had was a building on Main Street that already belonged to the neighborhood, and enough real estate background to know what to do with it.
The Insurance Agent Who Bought the Bar She Used to Work At
Josie Lemer bought the property at 2700 North Main Street in 2022 with no plan for what to do with it. The site had a history: it was The Lake House from 2016 to 2022, and before that, The Brig Steakhouse and Lounge, a fixture on Mitchell's north side for years. Lemer had worked part time at The Lake House. When it closed, she decided to make the fun job her full-time one.
She tore the existing building down and put up a modern two-story structure, opening CJ's Bar and Casino on August 1, 2024. The name combines her initials with those of her silent partner, Cully Evers. The menu skips the expected bar food in favor of paninis, flatbreads, and salads, but it doesn't skip the neighborhood's memory. One sandwich, The Lueken, pays homage to the beloved Lueken Bakery. An appetizer called The Brig nods to the building's former life as a steakhouse. Lemer, whose day job is running a Farmers Insurance agency on East 3rd Avenue, built a bar and casino that spends as much energy honoring what used to be there as building something new.
Two More Names Coming Back
The pattern holds even where the story is mostly about buildings rather than owners.
On Main Street, the Back 40 building at 511 North Main is being torn down and rebuilt by Israel Espinosa, who bought the five-lot property in January for $300,000. Espinosa already owns El Columpio, Corona Village, and Mya's Teriyaki, three restaurants Mitchell diners already know. The new building will put a restaurant serving breakfast through dinner, with a full bar, on the second floor, and retail space on the ground floor. It's a new concept in one sense, but it's coming from a family whose name is already on three menus around town, not from an outsider testing the market.
On the northwest side, Chef Louie's is attempting something more literal. The original steakhouse, built in 1946 and run by Louie Russell, closed in January 2022 at its longtime home on East Havens Avenue, a site now occupied by Plains Commerce Bank. Rather than let the name die, Mauszycki spent eight months calling Cary Fredericksen, whose family had long owned the restaurant, until Fredericksen agreed to partner on a revival. The two broke ground on May 20 at 1600 North Commerce Street, near the Highway 37 bypass and West 15th Street, on a roughly 13,000-square-foot building with seating for 319, a lounge, a banquet hall, a board room, and a casino area. Mauszycki's grandson digitally recreated the original Chef Louie's logo, the drawing of Russell in his chef's hat, so it would look the way longtime Mitchell diners remember it. The county approved the liquor license in November 2024, and the target opening is late 2026 or early 2027.
Four projects, four different owners, and not one of them is introducing Mitchell to something it hasn't tasted before.
What This Means for Dinner Plans This Fall
If you're trying to figure out where to actually eat between now and the new year, here's where things stand as of late August 2026:
- Open now: Bread & Vine Bistro on Main Street, for bakery items and café dining. CJ's Bar and Casino at 2700 North Main Street, for paninis, flatbreads, and its homage menu.
- Under construction, no firm date: The Back 40's rebuild at 511 North Main, approved for a liquor license transfer at the August 17 city council meeting, with blueprints in final development according to Josh Espinosa.
- Under construction, targeting late 2026 or early 2027: Chef Louie's Steakhouse and Lounge at 1600 North Commerce Street, which broke ground in May and is still working through staffing before it opens.
None of this is coincidence. Mitchell isn't short on entrepreneurs willing to gamble on a brand-new restaurant concept. It's that the town keeps handing its most visible commercial spaces, and its most recognizable restaurant names, to people willing to carry them forward instead of starting over. A real estate couple bought a café instead of flipping it. An insurance agent bought a bar building and kept its old menu items alive as jokes on her own menu. A family that already runs three restaurants is building a fourth under their own name rather than someone else's franchise. And an 82-year-old developer is rebuilding a restaurant that closed before some of its future customers were born, because he thinks the town still wants it.
If you've lived in Mitchell for a while, you already knew about the Back 40's new owner or Chef Louie's comeback individually. What's easy to miss is that they're not separate stories. They're the same story happening four times: nobody here is betting on brand new. Everybody's betting on what Mitchell already loved.
If you're weighing a move or a sale in Mitchell and want a read on the town that goes past the headline numbers, Chris Foster grew up here and keeps a closer eye on what's changing than most portal listings will ever show you. Let's Connect.
