Matthew Burnette, Staff Writer

When you look around the dining room of Binninger-Schwartz Steakhouse, set to open on Sept. 3, amongst the upscale décor you can find glimpses of the building’s past, a key selling point of the location.

The old 24-hour drop-off chute from the structure’s tenure as Rymer’s Dry Cleaning and Laundry is still present on one of the exterior walls, and the sewing tables and heat press are part of the interior décor.

A pair of large garage doors on the Irwin Street side of the building are reminiscent of the Plymouth Chrysler dealership that opened back in the 1930s. The bar is in the same location as the former parts counter and pictures from the auto retailer will be displayed on the walls.

While Brett Binninger-Schwartz, who will serve as chef and renovated the space with Beech Grove developer Eric Dill, emphasizes the history in the space, it wasn’t something he sought out.

But when Dill tried his food at a nonprofit in Christiana, he offered to show the chef the storefront.

“He already had the building and invited me to come out and see it, so from that point I didn’t think much of it,” recalled Binninger-Schwartz. “I came out to see the space, and pulled up off of 41, and as soon I saw it I couldn’t believe it honestly. It was insane. It’s so perfect.”

Binninger-Schwartz says that he quickly started to develop a vision of what the space could be transformed into from basically just a shell with some old dry-cleaning equipment in it.

“If you’re on that grassy patch outside looking in in the early evening when it starts to get a little darker out, and you have this orange glow coming from inside of the building,” he explained. “You can see the full view from the end of the kitchen all the way to the end of the bar with everything happening, I’ve just had this vision since first stepping foot on the property.”

The “New American” steakhouse, as Binninger-Schwartz describes it, will offer steakhouse fare with a twist. He says the restaurant will check the steakhouse box but then allow diners to make of the experience what they want.

“You don’t have to come in here and eat super heavy or get a giant cut of steak,” Binninger-Schwartz noted. “We have those options there, but we have a lot more fun and exciting things that we want to bring to people. We’re creating a fresh and exciting idea of what a steakhouse is using as much locally sourced product as possible.”

Though now settled on the steakhouse concept, Binninger-Schwartz explained that they didn’t start the venture with the mentality that they were going to open a particular style of restaurant but instead focused on what people were travelling out of the county, sometimes over 45 minutes, to go eat.

“It was more that we know we want to open a restaurant, what type of restaurant needs to go here?” he said. “That was when we started to really look at the market and kind of compare ourselves to local restaurants, but more so, what people are leaving town to go eat, and it was steakhouse.”

Binninger-Schwartz already has plans to work with a lot of vegetable-forward dishes using seasonal and locally grown produce which he says pairs well with the concept they’ve laid out.

“It’s easy to get in a bunch of different cuts of beef and cook them, but  a lot of times when I go to those places, the steak is great but everything else is kind of lacking, so for us to be able to do, whether it’s our mashed potatoes, baked potato, sauteed green beans, asparagus, whatever it might be, we can get good product in and take good care of it and not treat it like an afterthought, then we’ll be doing better than a lot of places that are doing the same thing,” he explained.

Despite expectations of having to adapt and change aspects of the layout and design to fit the space, very few major changes had to be made to the plan other than having to downsize one of the bathrooms for coding purposes.

The steakhouse will open for a handful of limited-seating friends and family services before moving to its regular hours of 4:30-10 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.

“That’ll be our opportunity to work out some of the kinks and see what kind of issues we have,” said Binninger-Schwartz. “We’ll do, over the course of three days, probably 300 people or less, but we’ll have our full staff in here. We’ll do that and have a few days to reset and reevaluate before we open on the 3rd.”

While there will be some seating set aside for walk-ins and at the bar, if the restaurant is as busy as all involved hope, the best way to make sure you have a table is through the restaurant’s reservation system either by phone or online.

Though Binninger-Schwartz insists he’ll never turn anyone away.

He also noted that the community has been the most reassuring part of the venture.

Being at the restaurant more frequently to get ready for opening, he says upwards of 30 or 40 people have stopped to introduce themselves and let him know how excited they are to try the restaurant out.

“I think there’s a lot of anxiety I had about getting people into the space when we open to make sure they know about it. I think between the social media stuff and just meeting people in the space, that fear is now gone,” Binninger-Schwartz explained. “I know we’re going to be busy when we open, and that anxiety has transitioned now into making a good first impression and making sure that people want to come back.”

“That’s an easier thing to deal with than getting people to come in the building,” he added.

After years of the big city life, Binninger-Schwartz says he’s ready to have a restaurant that’s familiar where everybody knows each other.

“I want to have a real connection with the guests that I’m serving and get to know them and get to know the city and give this community a place to not only celebrate special occasions, but to go and just hang out at any given time, somewhere you can be and be comfortable and have a good experience,” he said.

The chef is also excited to finally get to work with the crew that he’s hired which he hasn’t gotten to do up to this point.

“I’ve hired a great team, but we haven’t gotten to work together yet,” he explained. “So getting to know my crew and getting us all on the same page and then getting to know the community after that. This restaurant’s going to change overtime, and it’s going to change based on the wants and needs of the people that come to eat here.”

Binninger-Schwartz further explained that the restaurant is in “Mach 1” at this point but will be an ever-evolving project depending on customer’s wants and needs.

“We’ll have our starting point, but it’ll be completely different in six to eight months,” he said. “The core of things will stay, but the goal and plan is to just adapt to the people that come in. If there’s anything that we could be doing that people want us to do, I’ll make sure we do everything we can to do it. It’s all just about serving the community.”