When the Wooden Paddle restaurant opens in its new home at 23 W. Calendar Avenue, La Grange will not only be getting a new addition to its already thriving restaurant scene, but will be gaining the only banquet facility in town.
The La Grange Board of Trustees last week unanimously approved an A-2 liquor license for the restaurant and added a new A-4 liquor license for the upstairs banquet facility.
“I learned about two years into this project that it’s a really ambitious project and I didn’t really know that when we started it,” Jonathon Cowan, who founded the original Wooden Paddle in Orland Park with his wife and partner Brianna, told the board before the vote.
While the Cowans first bought the building that formerly housed Pillars Community Health in 2022 with the intention of opening in 2023, the construction challenges inherent in refurbishing and transforming it into a three-story facility for a restaurant/banquet establishment proved to be more involved than they previously thought.
“Now we’re saying “soonish,” which means early March,” he said of the restaurant’s opening.
Cowan explained how the idea for the new upstairs banquet facility, named “Remi,” grew out of Wooden Paddle’s catering business.
“We’ve catered over 500 weddings since we started catering as Wooden Paddle,” he said, noting that their time catering in different wedding halls around Chicagoland had provided valuable knowledge on what makes a good wedding venue. “We’ve really invested in what would make an awesome wedding space for downtown La Grange. We’ll be able to seat 200 people with a dance floor.”
Cowan stressed that while 90% of their catering business involves weddings, they were open to other events, and were particularly interested in bringing the annual State of La Grange lunch back to the village. In recent years, it has been held in Plymouth Place Senior Living in La Grange Park.
“That sounds fantastic,” village President Mark Kuchler said.
After the vote, the Cowans discussed their journey from being high school sweethearts in McHenry, to “two college dropouts with almost no restaurant knowledge and even less money,” to owners of a thriving business that’s investing about $4 million in downtown La Grange.
They started out in 2008 operating a four-seat, Chicago-style pizzeria in Orland Park at 179th Street and Wolf Road. In 2013 they decided to open up a full service restaurant at the same location. They completely overhauled the location in a 10-day effort that Jonathon described as “the hardest 10 days of my life,” that produced the original Wooden Paddle restaurant.
The Cowans left the Orland Park location in 2017 and opened the Lemont location in 2018.
Jonathon described Wooden Paddle’s ambiance as “upscale casual” with an emphasis on wood-fired pizza — making up close to half of their business—artsy cocktails and shareable dishes.
“We have this Ube Mai Tai that’s really just a tasty drink,” he said.
Wooden Paddle has already booked three events for the upstairs banquet hall and, in keeping with their specialty, all three of them are weddings.
“But we’re open to any event, I see a lot of people asking for baby showers and things like that as well,” he said. “But we’re definitely wedding-focused.”
Wooden Paddle’s restaurant seating capacity will accommodate 150 guests; upstairs banquets will be able to handle 200 guests with dancing, and 250 without a dance floor.
The Cowans estimate that staffing for both facilities to be about 60 people.
Jonathon Cowan said he concentrated more on the public relations aspect of Wooden Paddle, while Brianna was “more the brains.”
“She’s the reason we have grown as a company,” he said.
Brianna acknowledged the scope of their investment.
“I would say it’s definitely aggressive,” she said of Wooden Paddle La Grange. “We knew it was a big undertaking and it’s still being revealed how big of an undertaking it is.
“The excitement is building and I really feel like there is a lot of pressure. … But I feel we’ve worked so hard in every aspect of this, from the layout of the restaurant to the finished details, to the lighting, and comfortable seating. We’ve really almost hit on every touch point in a restaurant that a guest would see, touch, and taste. I feel very proud of what we are bringing to La Grange.”
Brianna also stressed that Wooden Paddle will stand out as a unique dining experience in the La Grange restaurant scene.
“I definitely think people are expecting one thing and they will get another,” she said.
The next Village of La Grange Board meeting will be 7:30 p.m., Monday, Feb. 24 at the La Grange Village Hall, 53 S. La Grange Rd.
