By Vicki Prichard
NKyTribune Reporter
When you’re a kid growing up in the country it doesn’t matter how good your mother cooks, going out for dinner is a bit of a celebration, and sometimes it can set a course for your future.
As a child, Nathan Chambers’ family moved from Covington to Grant County, where he grew up on good country cooking. His mother prepared three fine meals a day, but a family night out still stirred excitement, and Chambers took note of how nice it was to feel that kind of enthusiasm over having a meal in a restaurant.
“When we were going out to dinner, aw, man, the kids got real excited, and mom and dad got dressed up real nice,” says Chambers. “It was just a big exciting thing and I always wanted to be the facilitator of that.”
A friend of his father owned a Cincinnati restaurant, a Mediterranean restaurant called Corinthians, and Chambers remembers getting the VIP treatment.
“The works would come out to the table and I was always like, “Wow, I want to be able to do these things for other people,”” he says.
And so it is that Wunderbar is the realization of a little boy’s dream to create a place where people get excited about going out and enjoying a good meal.
Big flavors in a little place on the corner
The casual observer might drive right past Wunderbar and chalk it up to a dive without giving it a second thought; that would be a mistake.
As first-time patron Kit Carson of Independence described it, “Wunderbar is wunderfantastic.”
The pretzels alone are something to marvel.
“Their pretzels are as big as your head,” says Doug Hill of Fort Mitchell.
An otherwise non-descript little building at 1132 Lee Street in Covington, just off of 12th Street, the wall mural of Albert Einstein on the side of the building should be an indication that something brilliant takes place inside.
Whereas both sides of the street in MainStrasse are lined with culinary destinations, Wunderbar is the culinary pioneer in its neighborhood, likely the first on the block for the next wave of revitalization in the city.
“We get people from all different walks in life that come in here and they all find a wonderful way to coexist,” says Chambers.
Being on the “fringe” of Covington, Chambers says one might think they would attract a rough crowd, but they don’t.
“We stay open until 1 a.m. – we have honky-tonk music, we have rock music, we have all kinds of stuff, but there’s never any aggression,” says Chambers. “This building has a wonderful feel to it and so do all the people that I hired.”
Any given Sunday one might find between 30 and 40 local musicians, like Hank Becker with the Rubber Knife Gang, or Pat Kennedy of Hu Town Holler, performing at Wunderbar at the Open Jam from 7 pm to 1 am, playing everything from Bluegrass to indie rock and country.
“They are a lot of solo musicians but they’ve been playing together through this place for so long that it’s become pick up band after pick up band,” says Chambers. “It’s a lot of great, quality people.”
Todd and Marina Eger of Fort Thomas discovered Wunderbar when they stopped in to catch a performance by the band Common Center. Good music and food brought them back.
“The food is incredible, it’s all fresh,” says Todd Eger.
German-inspired country cooking
The youngest of three sons, while his brothers went fishing with their father and grandfather, Chambers kept an eye on what was going on with his mom and grandmother in the kitchen.
“I was never privy to the fact that a lot of the things I was eating growing up were German-inspired, I always thought of it as country cooking because I grew up on a farm and my mom would cook spare ribs, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes,” says Chambers.
As he came to learn German cuisine a little more, he realized that he’d been eating it all his life.
German-country might be a good description for Chambers’ genre of cooking. His Wunderbar menu offers a range of homemade fare such as the aptly named giant pretzels, braised cabbage, sauerkraut from Kaiser’s in Cincinnati, bacon slaw, beer cheese, sausages and pretzel dumplings.
Pretzel dumplings?
“Think Thanksgiving stuffing made with pretzel bread, with a white wine chicken gravy on it,” says Chambers. “It’s actually a dish in Germany, but when I developed that idea I had no knowledge of that dish.”
Chambers says the key is freshness and keeping it simple. Fresh roasted vegetables and savory soups are menu staples that pack stout flavors.
“You come here for a reason and we try to give you good healthy food at a reasonable price,” says Chambers.
A kitchen of his own
Chambers set about to fulfill his childhood dream as a restaurateur, “like everyone else does,” he says.
He never went to culinary college. Instead he studied industrial electricity, then education and, at one point, he says, he wanted to be a nurse. All the while he was waiting tables to make money for college.
“But the whole time, as I was trying to figure things out, I was always in a restaurant and I was always working for people that were very passionate about their jobs,” says Chambers.
Eager to learn anything he could get his hands on, he was willing to learn about management, how to make a new dish or different bartending techniques.
“I was always trying to gain as much knowledge as I could if I was ever to go anywhere else,” says Chambers.
He was working for Hooters in Lexington when the general manager saw something in him and promoted him to management. He moved to Columbus where he married his wife Trudy, whom he had known since middle school and dated in high school and college.
“I ran a couple of different Hooters up there and that’s when I started getting the business side of it,” says Chambers. “Before that, it was always serving, bussing, dishwashing, cooking, prepping and all that. I learned all that stuff and then I started to understand the numbers and the costs, and figure it out on how to make the profit and stay in the black.”
A chance to “right the ship”
In July 2012, Wunderbar opened and Chambers was hired on to manage.
It was a rough start, and though tough times are expected with any new business, things were “pretty bad.”
“There never was much of a crowd, the menu wasn’t appealing and the things that I was trying to do with the menu were being shot down left and right,” says Chambers.
By December 2012, the two original partners had a falling out and decided to go their separate ways. One partner, Joseph Calhoun, retained ownership of the bar, but it was in dire straits, says Chambers.
“He literally told me I had one month to turn things around or we were going to have to close the doors,” says Chambers.
At the time Chambers was left with two people on the staff that, in addition to him, operated the restaurant seven days a week.
“There were a lot of days where I was working 12 to 14 hours a day, and some days I where I was bartending, bussing, cooking the food all the same day,” says Chambers.
From being “on the bottom,” and working his way up, Chambers says he’s had to opportunity to see different styles of management and what works for him treating the people that work for him as if he works for them.
Once a new menu was in place, everything changed, and Wunderbar exuded something that felt authentic. Chambers felt he’d come through for Calhoun.
“He gave me the opportunity to right the ship, and I feel like I did a pretty good job,” says Chambers.
Calhoun, who is from Bethel, OH, and currently living in New Jersey, remains a silent business partner with Chambers. And while Chambers did his part to “right the ship,” he credits Wunderbar’s success to the people who are behind the bars, in the kitchen, and putting the food on the table. He says he might have had a hand in it, but the restaurant grew organically.
“I recognize that other people have things to offer that I don’t and when they begin to do things their way, and kind of venture off and become their own part of what we’re doing here. I let it happen, so that way we become a more attractive place to a different variety of people,” says Chambers.
The way he looks at it, Wunderbar was his shot at his dream.
“I had no capital to invest in it whatsoever but I had all the passion and will and knowledge, and I was going to get it done anyway I had to get it done,” says Chambers. “And here we are four years later and I barely have to walk through the door anymore because the place just hums.”