It was on First Friday in August 2012 that a downtown Canton standby, George’s Lounge, reopened with three new owners. “We’re all from Canton. We saw what was happening downtown, and we thought the location was perfect,” said Ryan McMichael, who partnered with his twin brother, Aaron, with whom he has a chiropractic business, and John Degenhardt, a friend of theirs since elementary school.
When Canal Fulton’s popular lunch spot, the Dragonfly Tea Room, relocated last fall to larger quarters formerly occupied by Canal Fulton Glassworks, it allowed for the launching of a second business. In the building behind the tea room’s new location at 215 Market Street W, where glass once was blown, is The Dragonfly Winery.
Vincent Cessna typically arrives at his Italian restaurant, Vincent’s Pastaria, around 5:30 a.m. “My day starts with (making) 4 gallons of sauce every morning. It’s the lifeblood here. It goes in the lasagna, the meatballs, the pasta dishes,” Cessna said. “My anxiety goes down when the sauce is done, right around 8:30.”
Faced with months of crippling road-closing construction outside her five-year-old bakery in downtown Massillon last year, Jamie Anania decided to take a big plunge.
Mike Cammel had plenty of experience with Italian-style food before he opened his own business, Camellone Italian American Cuisine, in December 2016.
Joe Sigler has a lot of history with the building at 216 Fourth Street NW in downtown Canton. At age 20, he started working there at his uncle Sylvester Premier’s Italian restaurant called Premier’s. Later, he and his uncle remodeled the place and renamed it Primo’s. Setting out on his own in 2008, Sigler ran the AMVETS eatery nearby (in the space now occupied by Fronimo’s Downtown), then in 2012 returned to 216 Fourth Street, bought the building and opened Triple Nickel/Amvets 555 there.
It’s no exaggeration to call Damascus Mediterranean Cuisine a family operation. Sanaa Aboulaban, a Syrian woman who’d been cooking professionally in Brooklyn, New York, had yearned to have her own restaurant for 30 years and found it at Damascus, which opened in July at 4469 Hills and Dales Road NW in Jackson Township.
Retired NFL defensive end Kenny Peterson enjoyed overnight success when he opened a Nothing Bundt Cakes in his hometown a year ago. “It was shocking. It makes me feel good the amount of support that the city has given us,” Peterson said about the instant popularity of his bakery at 4468 Belden Village Street NW in Jackson Township, which is a franchise of a Texas-based company and employs 20 people.
Rudy Diotale had a specific atmosphere in mind when he opened Eadies Fish House in Plain Township in 2006. “I had traveled to a lot of islands, the Caribbean and up and down the East Coast and been to a lot of these dives that always have good food,” he said. “I wanted to remind people of places they’ve been to when they’re on vacation. We have lots of tchotchkes hanging up everywhere. I think of it as my big man cave.”
About 10 years ago, Andrew (Drew) Koehn bought a home espresso machine, and his future found a new direction. In November 2017, Andrew and his younger brother, Kirby, opened Esso Coffee in Alliance, a shop located at 1686 S Union Avenue, directly across from the University of Mount Union campus.
