Pepper’s Taqueria this month will close its once-popular downtown Vancouver restaurant. It will be replaced by a new bar and grill on the northwest corner of Eighth and Main streets.
The planned Main Event Sports Grill will better capture a new breed of downtown clientele, said Jeff Talamantes, owner of the restaurant space, who dreamed up Pepper’s and its quick-service, to-go model. Pepper’s, the home of the four-foot-long burrito and its sombrero-wearing pepper promoter, opened nearly 17 years ago as one of the only restaurants that catered to the downtown lunch crowd.
Since then, a host of lunch spots and cafes have opened in new and refurbished spaces downtown.
Owners of the site’s newly planned venue see new opportunities to serve happy hour and sports patrons in the emerging downtown.
“I am seeing a younger, more professional crowd that is looking for a great place to eat,” said Mike Llorente, who will manage the bar at the Main Event Sports Grill.
Llorente and partner Michael Schnidrig expect to open the restaurant and bar some time in late September.
“We want to be open for football season,” said Llorente, the former bar manager of Vancouver’s only T.G.I. Friday’s chain restaurant, which closed about a year ago near Westfield Vancouver mall.
Llorente said he and Schnidrig will rely on their chain-concept experience, although the Main Event is not part of a restaurant chain.
Schnidrig also has worked for T.G.I. Friday’s, and for Applebee’s, Red Robin, Stanford’s and Manzana Rotisserie Grill. He also was part owner of Portland Mexican food hot spot Fonda Rosa.
Llorente said he and Schnidrig will invest $100,000 to transform Pepper’s into the Main Event, which they are self-financing. The venue, which will employ 15 to 20 people, will have a horseshoe-shaped bar, new tables, refinished hardwood floors and more than one dozen big-screen television sets.
“We’re bringing a new vibe to the downtown core,” Llorente said.
He expects the concept to stand out from the crowd of neighboring bar-restaurant venues. The sports bar will share a city block with Tommy O’s Pacific Rim Bistro, Fat Tuesdays restaurant and O’Shansky’s Food & Spirits, which opened recently next door to Pepper’s.
“An upscale sports bar is completely different,” Llorente said.
Long business run
Talamantes founded Pepper’s in 1994, nine years after a football scholarship brought him to the Pacific Northwest. From 1985 to 1989, he played for the Oregon State Beavers as an offensive lineman.
Talamantes said Pepper’s business grew steadily over the years, then faltered in 2007, when 150 city workers were moved out of the downtown core and Vancouver closed its former Citizens Service Center at 1313 Main St. due to seismic code issues.
That was the start of a slow decline, Talamantes said.
“There used to be more secretaries and office staff downtown, and that was my market,” he said.
Talamantes owns the 5,000-square-foot Pepper’s building. He will lease the site to owners of the Main Event.
