A landmark opening: Rock Hill native chef opens restaurant at historic site on Main
It’s isn’t pandemic that has chef Rob Masone working from home. It’s the opportunity to transform an historic Rock Hill property into an eatery unlike any in the area.
”This is coming home for me,” said the Rock Hill native, who will officially open new Main Street restaurant Kounter on Tuesday.
Through mother company Kre8 Xperiences, Masone has a variety of restaurants from a Charlotte gastropub and food trucks to Florida eateries including a Cuban place and French creperie. He plans the same fun and unique offerings at Kounter.
“You can’t go anywhere within many miles and get the same thing you’re getting here,” Masone said.
Call it American with a twist, or twisted American. Masone said the lunch menu will have fun sandwiches and salads, plenty of sharables.
“Our smoking tuna poke will be a hit,” he said. “Our chicken and waffle sushi will be very popular. Our sliders will be fun.”
Diners, he said, will want to share.
“This is not a family style restaurant, but we will have smaller plates, bigger plates,” Masone said. “We will encourage sharing.”
While the restaurant and menu are new, Kounter also took steps to preserve a deep history at the site.
The 135 E. Main St. address downtown is best known as the location of the 1961 Friendship Nine sit-in. Black students from Friendship College were denied service and arrested after they refused to leave.
The 1901 Rock Hill Supply Company building has been a mix of retail, restaurant and other uses for more than a century. For 60 years, which includes the Friendship 9 protest, it was McCrory’s Five and Dime. More recently the space was Five & Dine restaurant, which closed in late 2018.
The lunch counter at the center of protest decades ago also will be prominent at Kounter.
“We’ve exposed that to its original form,” Masone said. “It’s front and center.”
Between the restaurant space and a newly done Palmetto Room, Masone has about 10,000 square feet of space. He’s been working 16 months on the downtown Rock Hill project. Kounter predates what could prove its biggest early challenge — the pandemic.
Bars and restaurants closed, some for good, in 2020 as social distance measures took hold to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Masone had hoped to open Kounter earlier, but is glad it didn’t happen. Pandemic and social distancing are still concerns, but Masone also sees a community of people ready to get back to some sense of typical daily life.
Which, he hopes, will include a bite to eat and something to drink.
“It’s still not awesome on restaurants,” he said of the pandemic, “but we were already in. We weren’t turning back at that point.”
Kounter encourages reservations. The restaurant will be closed Mondays but open at 11 a.m. the rest of the week. It shares parking with several other downtown restaurants, in a food scene Masone hopes to grow in a way that will help them all.
“There’s plenty to go around,” he said. “Hopefully this will be for everybody.”
This story was originally published December 14, 2020 at 10:38 AM with the headline "A landmark opening: Rock Hill native chef opens restaurant at historic site on Main."
