Fenton Fire Hall closes, reopening as Honcho Fuego with Latin menu
The Fenton Fire Hall has closed its doors as its owners prepare to reopen the restaurant with a new name, menu, and concept.
FENTON, MI – The Fenton Fire Hall has closed its doors as its owners prepare to reopen the restaurant with a new name, menu, and concept.
“The beauty of the restaurant business is that it’s important that you just keep evolving, keep learning, and keep having fun with it,” Curt Catallo, one of the restaurant’s owners said. “That’s exactly what we’re doing with the former Fenton Fire Hall.”
“The Fenton Fire Hall is such a special building, and we’re just excited to give it the attention it deserves.”
Located at 201 S. Leroy St. in Fenton, the restaurant officially closed on Sunday, March 30, and will reopen under the same ownership at its existing location on Monday, April 7, as Honcho Fuego.
“There’s a great enthusiasm about the change, too, from the crew that’s in there, so they’re looking forward to it,” Ann Stevenson, another owner of the Fenton Fire Hall, said.
The new restaurant will be reminiscent of Honcho, a Latin food restaurant in Clarkston that opened in 2016.
Honcho and the Fenton Fire Hall are owned by Union Joints, an independent restaurant group owned by Catallo and Stevenson, who are married.
Union Joints owns a total of 13 eateries across Michigan, including the Union Wood Shop in Clarkston and its “biggest joint,” Union Assembly in Detroit, includes rapper Eminem’s Mom’s Spaghetti restaurant, Catallo said.
The decision to reopen the restaurant was inspired by the success of Clarkston’s Honcho and the popularity of items like the Korean pork taco at the Fenton Fire Hall.
“It just took us this long to kind of listen to the menu,” Catallo said.
The restaurant will open with a new menu that’ll expand over time, bringing in more items from Honcho’s menu approximately two weeks later and eventually introduce a burrito menu.
“Barbecue has become kind of cost prohibitive and people are leaning into tequilas and Mezcals and it’s such a great margarita setting,” Catallo said.
Unlike Clarkston’s Honcho, Honcho Fuego will have a pizza oven which will enable it to serve Latin-inspired pizzas.
The couple clarified no significant changes will be made to the Fenton Fire Hall building itself which, as the restaurant’s name suggests, used to be a fire station.
Honcho in Clarkston is also located in an old fire station.
“There’s some sort of kismet with taking over the space and sort of capturing the liveliness of Honcho,” Stevenson said. “There’ll be some new paint, new wallpaper. It really is about sort of working with what’s there already.
Catallo and Stevenson noted Leroy’s Lounge, which is located in the Fenton Fire Hall building, will not be impacted by the redesigning and reopening of the restaurant.
Throughout this week, the Fenton Fire Hall will be redesigned and new lighting as well as music will be added to the space to better reflect the restaurant’s new menu and create a festive atmosphere, Stevenson said.
Additionally, there are plans to open the restaurant’s rooftop area this summer.
“For the design team and the kitchen crew, it really is a lot of prep,” Stevenson said.
The restaurant is currently hiring, and existing staff will continue to work at Honcho Fuego.
“They have a great crew,” Catallo said. “What’s nice is that we’re using this week to bring our servers and our kitchen crew to Honcho, just to kind of use that as a test kitchen and a learning experience.”
Applications for positions at Honcho Fuego can be submitted at unionjoints.com, and the restaurant’s website will soon be available online.
Honcho Fuego will have the same hours of operation as the Fenton Fire Hall.
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