After a decade in the industry, Chad Esmeier and Michael Villareal are at the helm of their new pop-up, Dunch, a nomadic dining concept where they put nostalgia at the forefront.
The name is a joke. No, really — it started out as a saying between them. “Like brunch, but dinner and lunch,” Esmeier says. “It has devolved into…just any good meal at this point,” It’s a microcosm of their concept, proving that two things can be true.
It’s the marriage of lunch and dinner, two meals with varying degrees of formality and lightness. The concept is mostly inspired by their respective childhoods — Esmeier growing up in an Italian family and Villareal having Filipino heritage. The menus are at once playful and deliberate, using top-shelf, as-local-as-possible ingredients to make a menu full of dishes inspired by their childhoods, or a trio of cocktails cheekily named Gaslight, Girlboss and Gatekeep.
Though this is their first time at the helm of a food program, Esmeier and Villareal are veterans of the service industry. They both have spent years honing their bartending skills. Villareal started out at Coppin’s at Hotel Covington, Esmeier at Sundry & Vice.
Esmeier currently works at Juniper’s in Covington, where Dunch pops up most Mondays. “They were gracious enough to give us the floor on Mondays,” says Villareal.
Juniper’s was coming up short staff-wise on Monday evenings, which presented a prime opportunity for Dunch. They started out making small plates and snacks alongside a concise menu of specialty cocktails. “And then it just turned into a whole other thing,” Villareal says.
One of the fun challenges of pop-ups is having to adapt to the environment and work with the space and tools available. Dunch’s larger pop-ups have a prep-intensive menu and a fleshed-out concept that mirrors the vibe of the host. During their pop-up at Saeso in late April, they opted for an Italian menu. “It’s more of a casual place; it’s not super uptight,” Villareal says.
Italian food dovetails beautifully with Saeso’s aesthetic, which is both foreign and familiar. But that wasn’t their only logic for choosing Italian.
Esmeier comes from an Italian family, and both he and Villareal lean on nostalgia for inspiration in their menus. Pulling from Esmeier’s upbringing meant upscaling some of his childhood favorites.
“The focaccia sandwiches, specifically, are definitely an Italian-style sandwich,” he says. “Just elevating those flavors that are familiar from childhood.”
Subbing in smoked mortadella for ham or bologna and upgrading giardiniera with a pesto version takes the sandwich from a fond memory to a modern classic.
Dunch functions much like an amoeba, shaping itself to fit the environment while maintaining its core values. An Italian menu just made sense, “but if we do something somewhere else, we want to make sure it works there too,” Villareal says. “It’s not going to be the same thing we’ve done at Juniper’s. It’s not going to be the same thing we’ve done at Saeso. We just want to keep pushing what we can do with what we’re given.”
There will always be at least one zero-proof cocktail on the menu. Same goes for the food menu. Vegetarian dishes are a must-have and they’re certainly not playing second fiddle to the omnivorous options. On a Monday night at Juniper’s, Dunch served up jackfruit musubi as a playful contrast to the classic spam musubi, both unique in their own right and equally delicious.
They’re always searching for the balance between allowing themselves plenty of creative freedom and being inclusive to as many groups as possible. “We want to bring as many people along for the ride as we can,” Villareal says. “We also don’t want to compromise on what we’re putting out. We try to do as much as we can.”
Walking into a space that isn’t their own and creating an environment where they can put their ideas at the forefront is no small feat. Esmeier and Villareal have had Dunch on their minds for no less than six months prior to popping up. The mental labor that goes into executing a creative concept usually goes unseen, even by the most heartfelt supporters. On top of their full-time jobs, Esmeier says they sink in up to 30 extra hours into planning, procuring, prepping and designing for Dunch. Ahead of their pop-up at Saeso last month, they pulled their first all-nighter prepping. “It was fun. A learning experience for sure,” says Esmeier.
Their connections in the industry landed them strong relationships with purveyors and possible hosts for their pop-ups. Dunch features quite the all-star lineup of products — mushrooms from Rich Life Farm, bread from Allez Bakery, seafood from Sen, pastries from Chako Bakery Cafe and plenty of odds and ends from ETC Produce & Provisions as well as Madison’s in Findlay Market.
While they keep the menu items rather light on Mondays, there is no shortage of creativity on the plates. One Monday evening they hosted a Filipino night at Juniper’s, which gave Villareal the spotlight. He’s perfectly positioned to knock the dessert menus out of the park. Not only did he grow up baking with his grandmother, his first job was at Cold Stone Creamery, where he mastered mix-ins over a nine-year tenure.
“Sweets are a really big thing in Filipino cuisine,” he says, specifically nodding to halo-halo and leche flan, two classic desserts he featured during Dunch’s Filipino night. Halo-halo is a mixed parfait with shaved ice, red bean, fruit jellies and sweetened condensed milk, among a variety of other possible ingredients. It’s the unofficial dessert of the Philippines and a dessert that’s near and dear to Villareal. “Taking something that I really enjoy and have really resonated with a lot of my life and being able to present it in a way that’s different…that, I was happy about,” he says.
With their cultures as a touch point, Esmeier and Villareal are cooking from a multilayered place, drawing from their heritage, life experience and a spectrum of emotions. “It’s not soul food, it’s our souls’ food,” Villareal says. “The idea of what food would be like to our soul, that’s what this is really about.”Typically, Dunch has pop-ups every Monday from 4-9 p.m. at Juniper’s, 409 W. 6th St., Covington. For more information about Dunch, visit their Instagram page @dunchprovisions.
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