LANSING – A new restaurant serving Italian dishes and promising live entertainment opened its doors Tuesday on South Washington Avenue in REO Town.
REO Town Clubhouse, in a nearly 12,000-square-foot building at 1314 S. Washington Ave. that was previously home to Ellison Brewing Co., will begin offering live entertainment with dueling pianos in February or March, said co-owner Bruce Kring.
Kring and his wife, Desirea, announced plans for the restaurant in the fall of 2024, nearly a year after Ellison Brewing Co. closed its location there in December 2023.
When REO Town Clubhouse welcomed customers Tuesday, the space sported an art deco atmosphere, a nod to the Prohibition era.
Bruce Kring, an owner of Gravity Smokehouse & BBQ, said bringing an anchor restaurant and entertainment spot to REO Town has been one of their long-held goals.
“It’s nice to be here and to kind of bring what we’re considering an anchor to the neighborhood, that big place, to hopefully start bringing more businesses and more places like ours here,” he said.
Menu includes Neapolitan-style pizzas, pasta
REO Town Clubhouse’s soft opening during the first weekend of 2025 wasn’t without a few hiccups, Bruce Kring said.
“It was good other than our point of sale system in the kitchen crashed five times each day,” he said. “It was deleting orders. That part was a nightmare. Even with that, though, things still went pretty well. People are loving the food.”
The restaurant, with a 90-seat dining room, offers lunch and dinner menus. The lunch menu features sandwiches, Neapolitan-style pizzas, soups, salads and appetizers. The dinner menu offers a variety of pasta dishes that “have everything from chicken to shrimp to fish to steak in them,” Kring said. “The steak Marsala is fantastic. Our lasagna is huge and delicious.”
He said dinner entrees generally cost $18 to $26. The menu also will feature some higher-priced meals and seasonal choices.
The full-service bar offers specialty cocktails, craft beer and wine.
Live entertainment planned
The Krings plan to make live entertainment a regular highlight at REO Town Clubhouse. That will start with dueling piano players, but for now the restaurant offers a 72-seat pool hall space with several tables for playing pool.
An upstairs event space can seat up to 200 guests and is available to rent.
“We actually already have some weddings booked,” Kring said.
Customers can expect nightly entertainment on weekends to begin in the next month or two, he said. “The plan is going forward, like weeknights during dinner and stuff, we’ll have live jazz, and then we’ll do special nights of different shows, anything in the upstairs area.”
Those may include comedy and burlesque shows, as well as pop-up market events, Kring said,
The restaurant already employs about 30 people in full- and part-time positions. Kring said he expects to hire another 10 to 15 employees.
Learn more about REO Town Clubhouse by visiting the restaurant’s Facebook page at “REO Town Clubhouse” or at its website, www.reotownclubhouse.net .
Contact Reporter Rachel Greco at rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on X @GrecoatLSJ
