Jeff Pack
Staff Writer
The Goat & Vine opened its doors, Monday, Feb. 3, this time in a new location, just down the street from the old location in Old Town Temecula.
The restaurant with a stone-hearth kitchen, which crafts gourmet pizzas, rustic breads for sandwiches, salads, appetizers and serves craft beer and wine, moved into the space that had been occupied by another Trevithick restaurant, The Nightingale, which closed and won’t be reopened.
“It’s been a whirlwind of a month,” Brad Trevithick said in a phone interview from Alaska, where the Trevitchick family now lives full time. “We closed down The Nightingale on New Year’s Eve and then Alicia (Trevithick) flew down Jan. 2. She’s basically been there since remodeling The Nightingale to turn it into the new Goat & Vine. Then Feb. 1 was our last day open in the old Goat & Vine space, we closed down Feb. 2 Sunday for Super Bowl Sunday, which is typical for us. We already close down on Super Bowl Sunday anyway, so that was kind of a natural target date for us to close the restaurant, move all the equipment from the old one to the new one, and then we reopened Monday, Feb. 3.”
Trevithick said, all things considered, things are going smoothly.
“There’s no doubt there’s a challenge there, and trying to feel out the new space and especially for the kitchen crew just transferring their systems and everything over to the new space and getting everything to flow right,” he said. “We got smacked right away. I mean, right out of the gate all week we’ve been really busy, and the team has been tested. We certainly haven’t been perfect, but I think considering all that they’ve been going through and considering the volume they’ve already had to put out this week, I think they’re doing pretty good with it.”
By moving into the new space, they increased their capacity level by almost double.
“We’ve needed this change for a long time, and it definitely feels good to have made this move and give that concept a lot more breathing room,” Trevithick said.
While The Nightingale was doing well enough, but the combination of a new lease agreement deadline looming and need for expansion of the Goat & Vine concept, forced their hand.
“We put a lot of heart and soul into that, obviously,” Trevithick said. “I think that concept, it was doing well but just not outstanding right out of the gate, and it just would’ve been a really long build.
“All things combined that seemed to make sense to make that move,” he said. “And it’s kind of a scary thing to do at first, but once we started to go down that road, it each day seemed to be more and more obvious that this was the right thing to do. I think everything’s been really positive at this point, and we definitely feel really good about it and definitely optimistic about the future.”
The Goat & Vine’s new location is 41923 Second Street, Suite 103, in Temecula. For more information, visit www.thegoatandvine.com.
Jeff Pack can be reached by email at jpack@reedermedia.com.
