MIDDLETOWN — Hope Lopez and her team at Jackson House in Middletown have a dream of being the next hot spot for celebrations in southern New Castle County.
Formerly known as 1857 Jackson House in Dover, the restaurant features homemade “elevated comfort food” and recently moved to Middletown in a hunt for more space to accommodate the special celebrations they continued to see in increasing numbers from customers. Their Dover location came in at about 3,000 square feet and could seat 66 customers.
“We really did need the extra space. Dover was great and beautiful; the building was just too small for Jackson House. We kept seeing more and more people want to come back for those special occasions like anniversaries and birthdays and they even wanted to rent out the space. That was amazing, but then we couldn’t also have regular customers during that time. So this new space will accommodate both,” Lopez told the Delaware Business Times.
She and her business partner, Heidy Cantoran, designed their new 7,000 square feet of space to include a room in the restaurant just for events or larger parties with those occasions in mind; it can accommodate up to 90 people, not including patio seating. They also work closely with Chef Chamaigne Stone and Lopez’s daughters, including COO and mixologist Selena Alvarez.
“It’s really special for us to be a part of somebody’s big day and we want to continue that,” she added. “More often than not, a successful restaurant is about the experience and we want to encourage that and Middletown is a great place for us to be for those experiences because it’s growing so quickly.”
Jackson House, which features the restaurant’s original name minus the 1857 which had been in place in honor of the year their previous building in Dover was built, is set to open at the former Metro Pub and Grill site at 17 Wood St. in the first week of November barring any delays from preparing the restaurant.
“We did make that change since we’re not in that building anymore, but we felt like everybody who knows us is familiar with Jackson House and removing the year won’t confuse our regular customers,” she said.
Meanwhile, business partners Lopez and Cantoran also own four El Azteca’s in Delaware, including one in Middletown, but they hope the Jackson House move offers a change of pace.
“I need to do something different. I get bored of doing the same thing and opening more El Azteca’s became ‘copy-paste, copy-paste.’ I needed a challenge,” Lopez said. “Rebranding the El Azteca’s will be much like what we’re doing here – focusing on aesthetics and social media. Nowadays, when people sit down to eat their meal, they often take a picture of it first for social media, so we’re going to be looking at the presentation of all of our dishes and all of that to make it more aesthetically pleasing.”
While the Jackson House restaurant moved towns over, Lopez said the business partners do still have the lease to their original location in Dover and have plans “brewing” for something new there, too.