Couple to open Italian restaurant on Broadway

August 28, 2008

Jamie Busen

Quincy will soon get a new Italian restaurant.

Jon and Shari Tobias plan to open Talayna’s at 4134 Broadway in about six weeks.

Jon Tobias, who has operated the Wendy’s restaurant in Quincy since 2006, said Talayna’s is a regional franchise based in the St. Louis area.

“My wife and I have been eating down there since 1990,” he said. “All of the ingredients are fresh, everything is made mostly from scratch and it’s just great food.”

The menu will feature four different types of pizza, including Chicago-style and New York, numerous pastas and appetizers. It will be a sitdown restaurant that will also offer carry-outs. Beer and wine will be available.

Tobias said the restaurant will be open 3 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday, and from 3 to midnight on Friday and Saturday.

He said it plans to open for lunch “several months down the road.”

Tobias, who lives in LaGrange, Mo., said some staff already has been hired and plans to have about 30 full and part-time employees.

The east Broadway building originally housed Schlotzsky’s Deli, which opened in 2000 and closed about a year later and became Fair Play Sports Deli. That sandwich shop closed after one month.

A Los Potros restaurant opened for a short while, then the local restaurant Sherry’s had a short run in the building just east of the Comfort Inn. Tobias is leasing the building from owner James May, and said he is “not afraid of this location.”

“If the food is right, it will sell,” he said. “This has always been a destination lot, but this is destination food.”