Two local chefs gear up to open a new foodie establishment based in Warner Robins

Two local chefs have teamed up to open a new food establishment based in Warner Robins.

Root 76 Cuisine at 1807 Watson Blvd. will offer a drive-thru commissary serving breakfast and a food truck offering international street foods for lunch as well as catering services.

The two chefs are Jason Delasota, executive chef at the Houston Lake Country Club in Perry for the past five years, and Scott Kiernan, former executive pastry chef at Idle Hour Country Club in Macon for 20 years.

Delasota previously served as executive chef at the Courtyard by Marriott in Warner Robins for seven-and-a-half years, while Kiernan previously had a chocolate and pastry shop, Xocolatl Gourmet, on Second Street in downtown Macon from 2006 to 2009.

The men met about 10 years ago through the American Culinary Foundation and became fast friends.

Root 76 Cuisine

For the past three years, Delasota, who holds an ACF executive chef certification, has been operating a catering business on the side, Root 76 Cuisine.

Kiernan recently joined him in that venture that they are now expanding.

“So Root 76 Cuisine has always been my business name,” Delasota said. “It’s an LLC. But when Scott and I got together, we formed Delasota and Kiernan LLC, and we adopted Root 76 Cuisine as our DBA (doing business as).”

The base of operation for Root 76 Cuisine is their commissary at 1807 Watson Blvd., a 200-square foot building that previously has served as drive-thru coffee shops.

The Root 76 Cuisine food truck, which is parked next to their commissary, will open for lunch on site. The business partners will also take their mobile business to food truck events and other pop-up events and they’ll use the food truck for catering.

They expect to open the commissary and food truck on site in January.

The commissary

“It’s just gonna be a real quick drive thru, kind of grab and go,” Kiernan said. “It’s going to be a very limited menu … but you’ll have breakfast items, coffee, juice or whatever beverage you need.

“We want to make it to where they can come up and be like, I want this, this and this, and we can get it right to them and then they can keep on going.”

Menu offerings likely will include breakfast sandwiches, a scrambled egg bowl for gluten-free options and possibly some pastries.

The commissary is between Wing Town and Twice the Ice.

“We are on the right side of Watson Boulevard for base traffic going towards the base and we’re right before the hospital on Watson Boulevard,” Delasota said. “So, we hope to capture some of that business as well as catering and other Food Truck Friday events.”

Before they open, they plan to paint the driving lanes for the drive-thru for the commissary and repaint the parking spaces for the food truck, Kiernan said.

The food truck is parked at an end of the commissary, with the commissary and the food truck forming an “L” shape.

The building for the adjacent automated ice business creates a third “wall” that creates a semi-enclosed space for food truck customers to get their food. In the future, Delasota and Kiernan may add an outside seating area for food truck guests in the semi-enclosed space.

The food truck

The men purchased the former SoFrito Food Truck, which had its base of operations in Warner Robins for about six years.

Once open, they expect to start with a Pan-Pacific themed menu.

“That will be one of the menus,” Kiernan said. “We’ll actually have various menus that we’ll switch out from time to time.”

On the Pan-Pacific menu, “we’ll do some bao buns … a steamed bun,” Delasota said. “It’s like an Asian street taco. You get the steamed bun with your ingredients on the inside.

“And then we’ll do some Kalbi beef which is a Korean barbecue and crispy pork belly maybe like with a peach jalapeno glaze. You know, kind of keeping it somewhat Georgia Southern fusion with the Pan-Pacific theme.”

They chose the Pan-Pacific theme to start with “just because it’s some of our favorite foods and you don’t see much Hawaiian or Pan-Pacific foods,” Delasota said. “Mostly, everything is going to be based off of international street foods.”

Catering

“The catering is ongoing,” Delasota said. “We do a catering every Wednesday for a church. We’ll go to private events where we’ll cook at a client’s house.

“We’ve done dinner theaters. We’ll do drop offs for events. We do a lot of birthday cakes, wedding cakes and stuff like that.”

All in a name

“It’s a play on words: root, meaning a vegetable root but also because, you know, Route 76 would imply some kind of street, avenue or something like that, and I thought it was a clever way to incorporate both meanings,” Delasota said. “And then ‘76 was the year I was born and then cuisine, obviously, you know, we’re chefs and that’s what we do.”

When the men first met through the ACF, Kiernan was the president of the Middle Georgia chapter at the time and Jason became the vice president.

“When (Jason) was at the Marriott, we used to hold a lot of workshops and meetings with a lot of the students from Houston County to kind of get them interested in the culinary field,” Kiernan said.

Delasota plans to continue serving as executive chef at the Houston Lake Country Club with the Root 76 Cuisine remaining a side hustle for him. Kiernan, who’s working part-time at Houston Lake Country Club, expects to be full-time at their business.

Monday through Thursday, breakfast at the drive-thru commissary will be offered from 6:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and lunch will be served at the food truck from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. On Friday and Saturday, the food truck will available for food truck events and for catering.