The Ironstone Room's First Post

Hello, everyone!

This is Chef Kevin and I'm busy doing a million things to get The Ironstone Room at Willett's Winery & Cellar up and running. And one of those things is setting up a blog/webpage to keep all of those interested up to date with the "going ons" at the restaurant. There could be some (and probably a lot) of changes to the blog page to get it to look, feel and react to the frequent changes that will happen here.

The main, but not the only, purpose is to post our daily/weekly specials here. While lunch specials could change frequently, we are planning to run several specials for the dinner hour and run those specials several days to a week.

We are currently projecting our opening day to be Wednesday, March 10, 2010. At the present, it looks like we will make it barring any unforeseen setbacks. And hey, if we open sooner, that would be great, too.

A little recent history, if you will. In mid December of 2009, Dan and Cris Willett were given the opportunity to purchase the Liz Marie's Recipes building adjacent to the courtyard that separates the two buildings. One of Dan and Cris's visions was to one day have their own food service for the winery. The Willett's (along with a little help from me and a large entourage of construction people) are currently renovating this building to house a 30 seat restaurant. However, when warmer weather becomes us, further interior renovations, plus some outdoor seating, will expand the Ironstone Room to approximately 50 seats. Along with renovations to the Ironstone Room, the winery itself will be the recipient of an approximate 150 seat banquet area and a new, larger outdoor garden area for outdoor enjoyment of Willett's wines and Friday night concerts by some of Central Illinois' most well-known musicians.

Why the Ironstone Room. Well, first we had the name Ironstone (more about that later) but we didn't like how "restaurant", "cafe", "eatery", "bistro" sounded with the word Ironstone, so the suggestion to use "Room" popped up and it stuck. Ironstone comes from Ironstone China which is a type of stoneware introduced in England in the early 1800's by potters using the country's ironstone to develop a porcelain-like china that could be mass-produced. Eventually, Ironstone China was exported primarily to the United States between about 1840 and 1890. Dan's mother, Elsie Willett, has been a collector of Ironstone China for many years. Her collection will be displayed in the Ironstone Room of Willett's Winery & Cellar.

So, bookmark this page and visit us frequently to see what we are up to at The Ironstone Room at Willett's Winery & Cellar.