Ignition Eatery will soon be opening its doors to customers at 478 Queen St. E. as the latest addition to the Sault’s downtown restaurant scene.
Located in the former home of Tazzi's, the new venture will be a family-owned business operated by Sonny Spina, wife Lindsay Spina, sister Sherry Spina-Dubois and her husband Shawn Dubois.
Why ‘Ignition?’
“It came from our inspiration to launch something new," said Sonny Spina, a city councillor for Ward 1. "We thought it was a very fitting name for this absolutely new journey for each of us. This is the first jump for Lindsay, Sherry and Shawn into owning a restaurant too, and they’re excited. They’re as eager as I am to open the doors for business."
Though already a co-owner of City Meat Market, this is Sonny Spina’s first restaurant venture.
The decision to open a restaurant stems from the four being foodies and a desire to join the diverse group of Queen Street eateries, Spina said.
“We’ll be serving food with our own personal touches to it,” Spina said.
That personal touch even includes having Ignition’s burger buns branded with the restaurant’s logo.
“You’re going to see briskets, burgers, tacos, nachos. We will have traditional pizzas but we’ll make any kind of pizza you want. There’ll be panzos as well. We’ll have salads and ribs,” Spina said.
“We’re looking at a great partnership with a local bakery providing bread for us for fresh deli sandwiches. We’ll be slicing fresh meat and cheese and making your sandwiches for you fresh on site or have them prepped and ready for you to take away.”
“We’ve got a really great, unique smoked macaroni and cheese and we served that at the PUC charity golf tournament a few days ago and people absolutely loved it. It went over really, really well,” Spina said.
Ignition will be able to seat 40 customers and will also be licensed to serve alcoholic beverages.
The owners plan to be open at 10 a.m. Mondays through Saturdays and look forward to welcoming lunch and dinner customers.
The foursome hopes to officially open Ignition later this week.
Each of the four owners already has a busy schedule and another place of employment but Spina said at least one of them will always be on site during business hours.
They’ve enjoyed getting ready for Ignition’s blast off, Spina said, adding that they each appreciate the value of a family-owned and operated business.
“We’ve had a lot of long days here between doing some of the cosmetic renovations and developing our menu but they’re not days that drag. We’re having a great time doing this together. It’s really important to have people you trust and can rely on in these types of ventures and it’s really great to know that we all share the responsibilities and the work.”
