A new restaurant at a familiar location in Clovis has opened, offering a vastly different atmosphere than before that’s highlighted by an upscale cocktail lounge and bar.
Dosan Social Eatery is the latest restaurant to occupy the 8,129 square-foot building at 80 W. Shaw Ave. between Villa and Minnewawa where the old Straw Hat Pizza Bar & Grill once operated.
Dosan, which held a grand opening earlier this month, combines concepts of popular restaurants from the past, with a fresh and fancier twist.
Think Sweet Tomatoes with their all-you-can eat salad bar that provides plenty of vegetarian and vegan options.
But with a meat carving station found at the Silver Dollar Hofbrau, serving items such as tri tip and turkey.
Plus, there’s a bar and lounge equipped with three big screen TVs to show sporting events, and separate a fancy seating area to converse and relax in a more intimate but fun setting.
All while enjoying a variety of draft beers, or colorful cocktails that are meticulously made — like a Bloom Vail or Lavender Margarita.
This all-encompassing concept is the latest idea of owner and operations manager Aman Singh, along with her co-owner husband Gill Singh and co-owner brother Junior Dosanjh.
“The idea really started off with analyzing what was the community missing,” Aman Singh said. “We did a lot of social media research, a lot of listening to feedback of what people felt was missing and were wishing for.
“The community has said they wanted Sweet Tomatoes again. They’ve said they missed Silver Dollar Hofbrau. Those places are gone. We wanted to create something that the community wanted.”
Is it the building?
This is the third different restaurant concept that Singh and her family are trying out — at the same location.
Public records show the family purchased the building, which is located in proximity to the new Vallarta Supermarket and the Village Square Shopping Center, in February 2014.
Before Dosan, the location was a Straw Hat Pizza franchise from 2020 until recently, and offered a large family pizza parlor area with a selection of video and claw games inside, with a sports bar and big screen TVs all around.
And before Straw Hat, the original concept of the place under the Singh family for the first six years was the Elephant Lounge, an Indian restaurant that provided an elevated experience.
Junior Dosanjh spearheaded the move, moving from the Bay Area and buying the restaurant location. Prior to the Singh family’s ownership, the location operated as the Haveli Indian Bistro & Banquet.
Aman Singh believes the Clovis community wasn’t quite ready to embrace a higher-end Indian restaurant at the time, which prompted the change.
But the timing of the change turned out to be challenging with the COVID-19 pandemic occurring just a couple of months after Straw Hat opened.
As fears from the pandemic started to dwindle and people began to eat out more, the Singh family doubled down on the Straw Hat Pizza concept and spent additional money to expand the place just from a pizza parlor but also adding a full bar and a sports arcade area.
Five years after giving the Straw Hat concept a try, though, the Singh family ultimately decided it needed to make a decision: Sell the building or try a different restaurant concept again.
“It’s tough, but when (Straw Hat) wasn’t working the way we wanted, we wanted to look at our options,” Aman Singh said. “It’s not the building itself. The building has a rich history to it. You can host a party of 200 inside easily.
“So we did not want to let go of the building. We just needed to figure out a way for our restaurant to connect with the community.”
Reinventing a restaurant
Aside from the three large TVs in the bar area, Dosan looks nothing like it did before as a Straw Hat Pizza place.
Gone are the video games and neon lights, and TVs galore, which always had at least TV blaring from the speakers.
In place now is a more elegant and tranquil atmosphere, with luxurious decor. And the TVs displayed at the bar area aren’t operating at full volume.
Dosan still remains a family friendly environment. But the owners hope to appeal to a broader audience, too.
“You can’t have a calm feeling when you have 50 TVs and kids running around,” Aman Singh said. “We enjoyed the time and those are good memories. But it was time to move on.”
The Dosan restaurant name comes from combining two Indian words to create the English expression of “two things coming together.”
“‘Do’ means two; ‘san’ means coming together,” Aman Singh said.
Aman Singh acknowledges that reinventing a restaurant — like reinventing one’s self — requires self awareness and takes courage.
Both of which can be tough to do.
And in the business world, reinvention also requires money.
But Aman Singh believes change can be good.
And though the opportunity to try something new has been a lot of hard work and planning and required more money in investing into the restaurant and building, she said it’s been exciting.
“The times have shown that in the food service business, you cannot run the same concept for 20 years and hope it maintains,” Aman Singh said. “We had a chance to work with this blank canvas and create something fresh.
“Dosan is inspired by restaurants that people wanted but are no longer here. But also, we wanted to give Clovis something special, something new to see and that’s unique.”