Lemont's Wooden Paddle Announces Expansion Plans For Second Location

LEMONT, IL — Growing a locally owned wood-fired pizzeria was always in the cards for Jonathan and Brianna Cowan, but they just didn’t know when it would happen.

But nearly four years after the couple opened Wooden Paddle in downtown Lemont, offering a communal food experience offering pizza and craft cuisine and cocktails, the couple is ready to expand.

Wooden Paddle will open a second location in La Grange in the spring of 2023, Jonathan Cowan told Patch on Friday. The couple recently purchased a building at 23 Calendar Avenue in La Grange and will be completely gutting and remodeling the space, which has never been used as a restaurant before, Cowan said.

The La Grange location has been a dream destination for the couple, which opened their first restaurant in a leased space in Orland Park. But the self-described “wildly mediocre” restaurateurs fell in love with LaGrange in 2012, only to find that any open space was well out of their budget, the Cowans wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday.

In 2017, the couple moved to the “crappiest house in Lemont” where they would begin their journey in the village. Since opening in 2018, the couple found great local support from Lemont diners and more than 250 couples who have used Wooden Paddle to cater their weddings.

“The Lemont community has been so supportive of our company since the day we opened,” the couple wrote in the social media post.

Now, after continuing to grow in the restaurant business, the Cowans have taken another step in finding their way to La Grange.

“This is so exciting for us because, after many years of not being able to figure out the restaurant business, we’ve persevered, continued to learn, and are now opening in a location we’ve loved for a long time,” the couple wrote in the post.