New restaurants, brewery announced for UK food hall. And one is opening now.
Miyako and Ethereal Brewing will join Rolling Oven pizzeria and A Cup of Common Wealth coffee stop in the new University of Kentucky food hall, UK announced Tuesday.
The new Ethereal Brewing bar going into the soon-to-open seven-stall, all-local campus food hall will be an “inclusive” experience appealing to the student clientele in the area who may or may not be of drinking age, one of the brewery’s founders said.
Andrew Bishop, a UK graduate and Ethereal co-founder, said the brewery was proud to open a bar in the university’s Cornerstone Exchange food hall on South Limestone and be the first brewery to serve alcohol on the UK campus.
As such, Bishop said they’re preparing to offer cocktails, beer and some “outside of the ordinary” non-alcoholic drinks like slushees and seltzers that under-21 customers could legally enjoy.
Miyako will serve sushi, poke and hibachi favorites.
According to a Facebook post from Block + Lot Real Estate, a soft serve and juice spot called Manna Juice and Ice Cream will also come into the space.
The Miyako location will feature sushi and will be a express hibachi restaurant, said Greg Leveridge, a partner with Block + Lot. UK and Signet Real Estate partnered to fill the food hall, while Block + Lot is the space’s leasing agent.
A Cup of Common Wealth is slated to open this week, UK said in a release, while the rest of the locations are expected to open early next year. The Cornerstone Exchange food hall is just a part of the larger Cornerstone building which turned the space where the old Kennedy’s Bookstore used to be into a large parking garage, food hall, innovation space and the 100-seat UK Federal Credit Union Esports Lounge and Theater.
Two spots remain open in the food hall, Leveridge said. They’re in advanced talks with another local restaurant for one of those spots. For the final spot, Leveridge said that they weren’t necessarily looking for a particular type of food concept, but he noted that the space is lacking a sort of burger or sandwich location.
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West Sixth Brewing was originally slated to be in the Cornerstone Exchange, but “ultimately decided not to have a presence” in the space, UK spokesperson Jay Blanton said.
That created an opening for a brewery.
Bishop said moving Ethereal into the campus food hall “was too good to pass up.” The brewery also hopes to somehow get involved with the university’s distillation, wine and brewing studies program. Bishop said they’d love to put a student-brewed beer on tap.
“No matter how bankrupt this may make us, we’ll still be the first brewery to serve on UK’s campus,” Bishop said.