The last few years have been challenging for many Downtown Dayton eateries, but a popular restaurant and food truck has just opened up its new location in the city’s tallest building.
Lumpia Queen, whose brick and mortar was previously located in the West Social Tap and Table food hall in Wright-Dunbar, opened in the lobby of the Stratacache Tower on September 15th.
The restaurant is owned by Catherine and Damon Roberts and serves up a variety of traditional Filipino dishes including chicken adobo, chicken pancit and its signature lumpia.
Past Restaurants in the Tower: King Cole, Carmen’s Deli
There is a long history of different restaurants in the tower, which itself has changed its name over the years, originally the Winters Bank Tower, and then Kettering Tower before adopting its current name.
The current restaurant space is connected to the main lobby but is actually under the parking garage. That space brings the benefit of a dedicated entrance and increased opportunities for signage.
Many years ago, the King Cole Restaurant, long considered Dayton’s finest and once named to Esquire magazine’s list of the nation’s 25 best restaurants, was located in the tower’s lobby. Just a few years after the opening of the Winters Bank Tower in 1972, King Cole moved over from just about a block west on Second Street after its building was demolished for the Courthouse Square redevelopment.
But it was located in a different interior space which was described as “hidden from street view, accessible only through a sterile bank lobby.” Newspaper reviews during the restaurant’s later years were much less glowing than a couple of decades earlier, and it eventually closed in 1998.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/dayton-daily-news/206673393/
Article from May 15, 1998 Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio)
In the current Lumpia Queen space, the popular Carmen’s Deli owned by Haitham Imam operated for about a decade before closing in spring 2023.
Downtown Restaurants Face Pandemic-Related Foot Traffic Declines
Imam was vocal about the fact that the decline of foot traffic stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent increase in remote and hybrid work had made his business untenable.
After that, Troni’s Pizza and Pasta had a very brief run in the same space before quietly closing its doors in late 2024.
And Damon Roberts told the Dayton Daily News that they are “very curious to see how much downtown is shaping up after COVID (considering those) who are working from home and a lot of office buildings starting to come back to normalcy.”
The hope is that the following they have built from both the food truck and the food hall location will help generate momentum for the new space. And a new popular destination right in the heart of the Central Business District could have a broader positive impact on downtown as well.
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