After a fire took Stella Blues out in 2024, all the years since combined into the beloved bar’s comeback. The team is ready to soft launch their revival — tomorrow, Friday, May 8.
The Korean-American fusion restaurant at 3269 Morgan Ford Road still has Paul Choe at the helm. The day-to-day show is being run by executive chef Xavier Dorsey and his sous, Nicholas Schoemehl. Zoe McKelvie is the bar manager, and the quartet is a collaborative team focused on lifting up each other and the South City community.
The team used the last two years to practice their craft at pop-ups around town. “I’ve worked really hard over the past two years tinkering with Korean ingredients and working closely with Paul, just bouncing ideas off of him and working to make this an authentic Korean-American fusion, but I don’t want to limit myself to that,” Dorsey said. “I do want to keep branching out and trying new, fun things. Anything that will work with my menu I want to try it out.”
“There are certain things that we’re known for, like our chicken wings, our torpedoes, our bulgogi bowls and things like that that we had to bring back. But with X now running the show, it’s going to be insane, because it’s like the old Stella’s on turbocharge,” Choe said.
Bulgogi is the name of the game, and the kitchen has it in bowls, on sandwiches and any other way a customer could think of it. Stella’s signature torpedoes are a piece of Texas Toast, folded in half and loaded with chipotle aioli, green onion and bulgogi, perfect as an individual snack or a meal of multiples. The bulgogi bowl, complete with a fried egg, is a lighter, vegetable-forward take on bar food, perfect for anyone who wants to balance out their drinks with something a bit healthier.
Dorsey and Schoemehl have brought back the famous OGX wings, smothered in sauce and coated in Dorsey’s secret blend of flour. The result is a delightfully sticky appetizer, with the sweetness of the sauce mellowed out by the chopped green onions on top.
The menu also has vegetarian options, but the kitchen team has done so well with the tofu nuggets and soy protein potstickers that it’s almost impossible to tell they aren’t made of meat. Other menu items include burgers and quesadillas.
The bar is full, and customers can order pretty much anything they want. Bar manager Zoe McKelvie has crafted an extensive cocktail list, including bloody mary specials on Sundays. While the kitchen accepts all forms of payment, the bar is cash-only.
“You’re looking not at one person, but the collective effort,” Choe said. “It was insane. This is the first time I’ve ever built a restaurant where so many people have collectively volunteered to help. It’s almost like their mission to bring this place back no matter what.”
The 2024 fire silenced the kitchen and took out the basement and upstairs areas of the restaurant, melted into a dream. Over the past two years, everything had to be taken out, repainted or rebuilt due to the smoke and water damage. Shortly after the fire, Choe’s father, the founder of Stella Blues, died, which Schoemehl described as a “one-two punch.” A lot of the elder Choe’s memorabilia was lost in the fire.
“We did manage to salvage a lot and bring it back to the spirit that he had when he built it,” Choe said. The space is floor-to-ceiling posters and decorations, from stickers to newspaper clippings to classic bar signs.
The entire team is ready to welcome customers back starting tomorrow, May 8. The soft launch will last all weekend, from noon to 1:30 a.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The kitchen will close at 1 a.m. The official opening is tentatively scheduled for May 16. Regular restaurant hours will be from 3 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., seven days a week.
“It’s so humbling every day that people want to eat my food,” Dorsey said. “That instant gratification of that smile on their face, the joy of the customer when you give them their food. If there is a drug out there that compares to it, I haven’t done it.”