SYRACUSE – A chat in a laundromat led to a 30-year career in cooking for Jason Traycoff, who runs Westmain Tavern, 201 W. Main St., Syracuse, with wife Emily. The couple opened the small dinner-only establishment last May, about a year after the former café and office two blocks from their home became available. They passed by it often while walking their dogs and always took note. “We thought it was cute and that it would make a good restaurant,” said Jason, who cooks in back while Emily, the owner and host, is the first face customers see. The 30-seat restaurant, open Tuesday to Saturday from 5 to 9 p.m., serves “Indiana food with a Mediterranean flair,” such as steak, chicken, pasta, fish and brick oven pizza. It gets up to 95 percent of its produce locally, and locally sources as much of its craft beer as possible, too. They called it a “tavern” in honor of grandparents in the tavern business in Fort Wayne. “It’s a place where the local neighborhood came to have good drinks and food,” he said. Westmain was Jason’s return to restaurant ownership after a stint representing a cooking equipment manufacturer in the midwest. Before that, he opened a restaurant in Columbia City and worked at Oyster Bar and Nine Mile in Fort Wayne. Before all that, he was a college student reading Bon Appétit Magazine in a laundromat in 1995, when the owner struck up a conversation about cooking. Jason learned about a newly hired chef at a country club and soon came to work for him. More than a job, Jason said, it turned into a traditional apprenticeship, where he was shown exactly how to cook. Up to then, he had taught himself and learned from cooking shows on PBS. They recently added a small front patio with a couple of seats to Westmain, but other than that have no changes planned. “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing,” he said, also noting that their first year has been “overwhelmingly positive.” “It’s been overwhelming how Syracuse and the local community have responded to us,” he remarked. “The locals are really what’s been keeping this place in business ... . They like how small it is, the feel – everybody thinks they’re walking into my home.”
