South and Vine Public House opened for lunch on Monday afternoon and will stay open during lunch hours for the rest of this week.

SVPH lunch hours are between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. The grand opening will be Monday, Feb. 4 with the same lunch hours, adding dinner hours from 5 to 11 p.m.

The owner wanted to do a ‘soft opening,’ where the restaurant is only open during lunch hours for a week. This is to help the new employees get used to the menu and how everything operates, Sarah Roehm, bartender at South and Vine, said.

“We wanted to be prepared with enough food,” Reohm said.

Publicity for SVPH’s ‘soft opening’ was publicized on its Facebook page, which has 550 likes, and by word-of-mouth, Seni Alabi-Isama, owner of SVPH, said.

The restaurant saw a large crowd on Monday afternoon that Alabi-Isama did not expect.

“It’s literally like I’m opening my home to the public. If you came to my house, this is exactly how I would feed you,” Alabi-Isama said. “We almost did two full turns.”

The most popular dish of the day was Shrimp Po-boys, Alabi-Isama said.

Soup, salad and sandwiches are available on the lunch menu and all are made with local ingredients so the lunch menu in the coming months will be different, Albi-Isama said.

SVPH does its best to use local products from distributors for all the ingredients, from chicken to condiments, as long as the quality is there and the price is right in line with the menu prices, Albi-Isama.

The dinner that will be introduced next week will include entrees with steak, seafood and chicken, as well as the regular lunch items, Karissa Phelps, senior exercise science major and bartender at South and Vine, said.

“I’m looking forward to dinner because there will be an even bigger crowd,” Phelps said.

Alabi-Isama said, “We are really big on value. We want to give people more than they expect. In the days of eight dollar combos from fast-food places, if we can put high-quality scratch-made food on the plate for a comparable price, I just don’t see why people won’t be interested.”