![]() ![]() He helps out as a junior bookkeeper and wants to be a sports statistician when he grows up. (She loves to bake and has her own set of chef’s knives.) Jake also works in the kitchen, but his real love is math. Andie is always in the kitchen with her dad. Megan likes to hostess in a borrowed waitress apron. If Lauren and Blake are at the restaurant, the kids (unless they’re in school) are there, too. “When we opened here,” Lauren recalled, “I said that children would always be welcome.” That includes their own children – daughters Megan, 9, and Andie, 11, and son Jake, 13. The toy boxes in the Fireside’s dining room are a reminder of that time. I was constantly shushing them or handing them my cellphone to keep them quiet.” “The only way the children could see their dad was to go to the restaurant. “Blake was cooking seven days a week in a restaurant that served lunch and dinner,” Lauren said. It was a wonderful opportunity, but the family, that now included three very young children, was never together. The start-up, the Woodfire Grill, became Blake’s responsibility. ![]() While that didn’t work out, Blake became acquainted with the president of the chain, who introduced him to a man in the Quad Cities who owned a small restaurant in Peoria and planned to open a larger one. He posted his resume online and was interviewed by a national restaurant chain. They both had good jobs there, but were homesick for the Midwest. When Blake graduated with a degree in criminal justice, they moved to Arizona, so he could attend the Scottsdale Culinary Institute. He never expected it to become a career, but by the time he got to college at Michigan State – cooking in a sports bar and the dorm kitchen where Lauren Pannucci lived – he had fallen in love with both the job and Lauren, who was studying child development. Three years later, they think it was the best decision they ever made.īlake had years of experience running kitchens for other restaurant owners, starting in high school, when he had a summer job cooking in a bar owned by the parents of a friend. When Blake and Lauren Schar were offered the chance to lease the Fireside Restaurant in Ellison Bay, they jumped at the opportunity. ![]()
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