Local bar comes to restaurant’s rescue after temporary closing

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) — DaShawn Lewis had been living his dream for a year and a half. For the most part, it was smooth sailing.

Ten years after moving to Sioux Falls to work for BNSF in 2013, the Chicago native teamed up with his wife Samantha to buy space for a restaurant on Indiana Avenue near downtown's "8th and Railroad" district.

DaShawn had gone from working for the railroad company and impressing friends with his cooking at backyard barbecues, to buying and running a food truck, to crushing that enough to open a brick-and-mortar business.

He proudly reached his goal of carrying on the family tradition of owning a Chicago-style restaurant with the opening of "Windy City Bites" on Super Bowl Sunday 2023.

Two of his elders owned similar eateries in or near downtown Chicago for decades, and after a decade of living in his new hometown in South Dakota, DaShawn had made it.

But last Wednesday, 18 months later, Windy City Bites hit a brick wall.

A malfunction in the walk-in cooler meant he couldn't prepare his food and had to shut things down until the mechanical parts he needed arrived from afar.

"It's a huge impact," DeShawn said. "When you're talking roughly half of the month and then basically going into a whole month of revenue for the month of October we could potentially lose."

So he thought. Within 24 hours of DaShawn's post on the Windy City Bites Facebook page announcing the closure, Jon Oppold, a big fan of DeShawn's food, saw the post and gave him a call.

"I just know what a big hit that is — to have to close down for a couple weeks," Jon said. "These mom-and-pop places that are run by the owners, I've got a special place in my heart for these places because that's kind of my story, too."

Five years ago, Jon, a lifelong Sioux Falls area resident, bought a small corner lot building that had occupied a laundry mat across 26th Street from the University of Sioux Falls.

He turned it into a 41-seat central Sioux Falls neighborhood eatery that serves local beer called Sunny's Pizzeria — named after his French bulldog, who has since passed.

Within a few months of the grand opening of Jon's first restaurant venture, the coronavirus pandemic forced Sunny's to close for a few weeks, then offer only take-out orders for several months before completely reopening for dine-in.

Sunny's not only survived the pandemic but thrived enough the next few years for Jon to sub-lease a second Sunny's location downtown (it has since moved out of a business that was sold) and then partner with long-time local bartender and musician Thomas Hentges to open The Orion Pub in a coveted downtown location on 10th Street, a half-block west of Phillips Avenue.

In the case of both Sunny's and The Orion Pub, Jon's vision was bringing to Sioux Falls a neighborhood feel that felt different from other restaurants and bars in the city. So, he appreciated how DaShawn and Samantha had brought new, unique, original flavors from another part of the country to the growing and diversifying local city food scene.

And, he appreciated how they did it.

"They're very similar to me in the way I run Sunny's," Jon said of DaShawn and Samantha. "Very involved owners and operators, not just someone who gets up and lets someone else do it all. He's involved day-to-day, him and Samantha."

Jon had dined several times at both the Windy City Bites restaurant and food truck, which DeShawn and Samantha still utilize at local events like the Juneteenth celebration and "Food Truck Tuesdays" outside Golf Addiction.

So, when Jon saw the Facebook post about the Windy City Bites restaurant having to close because of something out of DeShawn's control, Jon didn't just feel empathy. He felt urgency and a little creativity.

"I reached out to him, wanted to offer up our space here at Orion Pub," Jon said. "I said, 'If you want, you can post up (your foot truck) outside and try to kind of re-coop some of that money you're losing being for those two weeks.' And, they obliged."

Windy City Bites will be outside The Orion Pub on Thursday and Friday from 5:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., and Saturday from 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.

The two owners agreed to repeat that partnership on the same days at the same times next week (Oct. 24-27). DaShawn hopes to have his brick-and-mortar re-opened by Nov. 6.

DaShawn's eyes lit up on Wednesday when Dakota News Now asked him about that call from Jon last week. He was stunned.

"It was amazing he wanted to give us this chance," DaShawn said. "We didn't really know each other at all."

Now, they are pop-up business partners bonded by a chance to give each other a boost.

"We're at a place downtown where there's a lot of foot traffic," Jon said. "We're just kind of happy to help them, and it helps us, too."

DaShawn, talking to DNN from the window of the food truck where it will be stationed, called this shotgun partnership "thinking outside the box — literally."

"Coming over here and coming into this box, and serving outside of that box," DaShawn said as he pointed to The Orion Pub, which, outside of heating up frozen Sunny's pizzas, doesn't serve hot food."

"Being able to pretty much share customer bases," he continued. "Hopefully, our customer base that didn't know about Orion can come try out Orion and figure out what they have going on, and vice versa. Orion's customers can have a little bit of joy of Windy City Bites that we carry, as well."

While the food truck likely won't roll in the revenue that his restaurant would, DaShawn is excited about reeling in potentially new clients at not just a prime location, but a prime time of the calendar year — the collision of Halloween revelers, barhoppers, and Christmas shoppers in temperatures still warm or mild enough to walk around comfortably.

Jon admits part of his extending his hand to DaShawn and Samantha is the opportunity to bolster his bottom line, too, knowing that on weekends, so many people who go downtown are in the mood for food to go with their libations.

So, for at least eight nights, some of Jon's customers will be enticed by the aroma of Italian hot beef sandwiches, Chicago dogs, Polish sausage, burgers, and gyros. And, they might just stay at The Orion to buy more drinks while they eat Windy City Bites cuisine instead of sauntering to one of the several restaurants in short walking distance.

"It feels great to help out," Jon said. "I know they're probably not going to see as much revenue as they're used to in their original spot, but if we can help out — float them, anyway — by having them out front, it's kind of one of those things that feels pretty good to help another business out because a lot of that stuff kind of comes back around. Eventually, you help enough people and, if we ever had a point where something happened to us, other people would do the same."

Jon said every time he has reached out to a fellow local restaurant owner for advice, they have been receptive. It is an aspect of the Sioux Falls restaurant industry that both Jon and DaShawn call a "community."

Yes, they compete for taste buds, but they have each other's back.

"It's amazing," DaShawn said. "It meant a lot that a community of business owners, to see somebody down — instead of kicking them, everybody's reaching out."