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BUSINESS
Huntington Prime to open Wednesday
Chef Michael Bowe is the owner of Huntington Prime restaurant located at 910 4th Ave. in Huntington.
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HUNTINGTON -- Michael Bowe has been waiting months to get back to what he loves. He's been designing, overseeing construction, ordering, planning and going through the paperwork of opening a small business.
But this week, when he officially opens his new restaurant downtown, he gets to be a chef again.
Huntington Prime will open to the public on Wednesday, Feb. 3, in the West Virginia Building, in the 900 block of 4th Avenue.
Bowe, the owner and executive chef, describes the restaurant as offering moderately priced local and fine cuisine, and he's thrilled to finally get to serve it up.
"Building (a restaurant) is different than anything else I've done," he said. "Now, I get to be a chef again."
Bowe's focus for the restaurant is to get food from local farmers. The menu will change with the season. This winter, some of the big items include trout from Wilson Mills, W.Va., lamb from Waverly, W.Va., and pork from Mason County. The spring and summer months will focus more on produce, he said.
"I don't think these local farmers have enough business from West Virginia," 29-year-old Bowe said. "Restaurants don't utilize products the way they should. I want them to promote us, and us to promote them."
Food will be fresh, never frozen, he said. The menu at Prime will change frequently, but the signature dish will be prime rib, he said. Right now, the rib is coming from Nebraska, but he has future arrangements to get it from farms in Cabell County and Lewisburg, when those cows go to slaughter, Bowe said.
Other menu items may include pizza from the restaurant's hearth oven, sesame pork ribs, surf and turf, stuffed eggplant, potato and onion ravioli with wild mushroom cream sauce, cast iron chicken and more.
The restaurant, which has 21 employees, also will serve artisan sandwiches, and in the center of the seating area is a self-serve bar for soups and artisan breads, he said -- a good place for the lunch crowd to grab a quick bite.
The Kanawha County native has much experience in the kitchen. Bowe graduated from Marshall University in 2001, and then trained as a sous chef at a hotel in Louisville, Ky. He then worked as an executive chef at a new restaurant in southern Indiana, and then went to work for a casino company based in Miami, Fla., working in casino kitchens throughout the country.
He got certified by the American Culinary Federation as a chef de cuisine after studying at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y.
He recently resigned as a culinary arts professor in the culinary arts program at MCTC.
Huntington is a great place to be, he said.
"I really love this place and thought it would be great to have (a restaurant) in this community," he said. "I want to be community-involved -- have softball teams and bowling teams and everything."
Huntington has a magnetic charm to it, said Bruno Young, who Bowe described as his "right hand man in the kitchen." Young is a Hurricane High School graduate who, like Bowe, has lived in other parts of the country, but wanted to come back here.
"We both have some type of unwavering attraction to Huntington," he said. And West Virginia is a rich source for chefs who want to serve good, fresh food, he said.
"We have wonderful natural resources -- a lot of fertile, well-irrigated farm land," he said.
Young has been instrumental in helping find local food sources and said he's excited about their "farm-to-table" approach to dining. Not everything can come from a local farm, he said, but they'll work to get as much as they can, even though it can get complicated to get the details lined up to meet their needs as a business.
"I think that's the right way to do things. Let's get exactly what we want directly from the source," he said.
"This is something we're extremely passionate about. We've been working really hard to bring this to fruition. I couldn't be more excited, slash nervous, for Wednesday."
Another unique aspect of the restaurant is its look. Sadler & Smith Contracting did the renovation and remodeling work on Huntington Prime, which had been neglected retail space. Some interesting features are a brick hearth oven, the tiger wood on the bar and floors, and some art with wooden planks, designed by Marshall art student Emma Ball, also a maitre d' who has been a big help in getting the restaurant ready. Even the bathroom sinks have an artistic touch, having been designed by concrete artisan Justin Burd of Fayetteville, W.Va.
What you see in the restroom says a lot about an establishment, Bowe said.
For more information about Huntington Prime, call 304-697-1113, or visit www.huntingtonprime.com.
Huntington Prime's hours
Huntington Prime is even creative with the restaurant's hours, which won't be standard. The hours are as follows:
Monday: Lunch only, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Tuesday: Lunch is 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.; dinner is 5 to 10 p.m.
Wednesday: Lunch is 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.; dinner is 5 to 10 p.m.
Thursday: Lunch is 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.; dinner is 5 to 10 p.m.
Friday: Lunch is 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.; dinner is 5 p.m. to midnight.
Saturday: Dinner only, 5 p.m. to 12 a.m.
Sunday: Brunch, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
