Underground foodie opens new Myrtle Beach restaurant with mother’s name, family recipes
Jess Sagun knows that when her mother died about 18 months ago, she passed with a lot of regrets — some because of the things she did and some because of the things she didn’t do in her life.
Sagun vowed to not have that same remorse as her life progressed, and a restaurant with a benevolent mission in her mother’s name is a result.
Winna’s Kitchen on Main Street in Myrtle Beach opened this past week featuring family recipes served for breakfast, lunch and weekend dinners by reservation, and an objective to benefit not only the owners but the community at large, in particular the rebounding downtown area.
“We were just really inspired. This is kind of a passion project our family has always talked about,” Sagun said. “You’re only going to live one time. So we just set our minds to it.”
Sagun has arrived at her unique restaurant concept after a wealth of experiences that include leading an adventurous lifestyle, being homeless, becoming a church leader and operating an underground pop-up dinner club.
A family endeavor
Sagun owns Winna’s with her husband Walt and daughter Kinsey Muller. The restaurant is open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
All of the owners have a number of other responsibilities that made opening an eatery seem irrational, but they forged ahead.
Sagun is the managing partner of The Joint Chiropractic clinic in North Myrtle Beach and manages five others regionally. She travels to those on Mondays. The clinics offer affordable routine wellness chiropractic care.
Muller has a husband and five children who are homeschooled, and Walt now assists with the homeschooling.
“I told my husband, ‘Yes, I know we are in the middle of a pandemic, I know most restaurants fail within the first year, I know we really can’t afford to do this, and I know I have another job. I know all of those things, but let’s do it anyway,’ ” Sagun said. “So he and my daughter, we all said let’s do it.”
Identifying the right location
A friend purchased the building that houses Winna’s to assist the family. It is just a couple blocks from Sagun’s home of the past 2 ½ years.
“It’s kind of a project we’re working on together to add value to the community,” Sagun said. “We got in this particular spot to create and add value to the downtown community and to build relationships in our community.”
Sagun wants her restaurant to be a social meeting place where people of all levels of society meet each other and converse.
“We’re trying to create community,” Sagun said. “We’re trying to build relationships and help people find common ground. Our lives intersect with literally the wealthiest people in our community and people who just got out of prison, so learning to build bridges and create relationships is what we feel like Jesus would do.”
A representative from Door Dash visited recently, offering to help Winna’s increase sales, but Sagun said she turned them away.
“We want people to come here. I don’t want our food delivered to a hotel,” she said. “I want to know our community, I want to know people, I want them to know each other, I want to introduce people to each other. I want to be the common place where people can come share a meal, share some stories and enjoy the space.”
At the top of the menu is a No. 1 meal, which is $5 and will be donated to the needy in Myrtle Beach. The recipient will be fed the meal at the restaurant. “Giving back is who we are,” Sagun said.
Finding faith and food
Sagun said she hopes to eventually make the restaurant completely employee-owned, with potentially some of her relatives being among the employees who receive a partnership opportunity.
Sagun is a Cheraw native who has lived in Myrtle Beach for 33 years. She said she was once living a wild lifestyle and following a divorce from her first husband she spiraled from the failed relationship and found herself homeless at the downtown Myrtle Beach Greyhound bus station after getting dropped off from what she calls “Stupidville.”
“Twenty-five years ago I was homeless at the bus station and I met a lot of people along the way who just haven’t had the opportunities for that experience, and in reality God has been very gracious and generous toward us and I feel we have a responsibility to give back and create opportunities in the community for people to work together,” Sagun said.
“We are looking for people who fit our culture to hire. We try to work with people who have not had a lot of opportunities and have struggled. They just don’t have the education or the opportunities that a lot of other people have had, and I was the same way.”
Sagun found Christianity after her homeless experience and spent more than a decade as a worship leader at Christ United church. She has been holding services at her home for a small group of worshipers since the arrival of the coronavirus.
From underground to above ground
The family has been operating an underground pop-up secret supper club on the Grand Strand for about a decade called the Roaming Table Society.
They have word-of-mouth followers — with a waiting list — who about once a month decipher several clues and guidance in order to find the location of an undisclosed meal, which has been served at places such as a dock, rooftop, park and tobacco field. The food is cooked on-site on a gas grill.
Those meals will continue. “We’ll always do it, they will just be more limited and more exclusive,” Sagun said.
The mobile restaurant concept is being incorporated into Winna’s, where on Friday and Saturday nights the restaurant will host small reservation-only, set-menu five-course upscale meals for generally about $75 per person. They will seat up to 30 for the dinners.
What’s on the menu?
Items on both the breakfast and lunch menus are available from open to close, with a few exceptions such as a The Hot Fresh Garden because it takes a while to cook. It features a mix of squash, onions, spinach, tomatoes and leeks braised in red sauce.
Unique breakfast favorites include the Elbie, a savory egg custard quiche with assorted meats, vegetables and cheeses in a tender and crispy pastry; All the Queens Men is a baked croissant french toast with a bruléed vanilla custard; Get Shook is eggs braised in a spiced tomato sauce with sourdough toast; and the Silly Millie consists of lemon ricotta pancakes with house-made lemon curd and berry compote.
There are four salad options and a daily chef’s choice, and there are weekly and sometimes daily specials.
Scones, croissants and muffins are baked each morning, with possibilities including blueberry muffins, strawberry/cheese and chocolate croissants, and white chocolate/raspberry and cranberry/orange scones. Sagun and Muller decide which treats they bake each day.
A sign on the restaurant wall reads: ‘Have fun, eat well, do good.”
“That’s kind of who we are. We try to create an environment where people can have fun, we try to create food that’s well-sourced, high-quality, enjoyable food, and then we try to use this whole venue to do good in our community,” Sagun said. “I feel my whole story is kind of divine intervention from God, getting me on the path he wanted me on.”
This story was originally published September 26, 2021 at 7:00 AM.
