Southeast Waffle Company to get gourmet makeover

Southeast Waffle Company will soon transform into GonZo under new owners Aims and Alex Alf. (Photo by Lisa Phu/KTOO)
Southeast Waffle Company will soon transform into GonZo under new owners Aims and Alex Alf. (Photo by Lisa Phu/KTOO)

The Southeast Waffle Company in Auke Bay is closing January 26 and plans to reopen in February as GonZo, a gourmet waffle and coffee shop. New owners Aims and Alex Alf, former managers of Panhandle Provisions, took over the business early this month and will make some big changes.

Carnivores Unite, Herbivore for Equality and Spunky Monkey are just a few of the dishes you’ll likely see on the menu of GonZo.

Alex Alf, 27, assures Juneau, the waffles will remain. But they’ll be different.

“We just want to think of the waffle as like a taco shell, as a vehicle to serve food on. So we’re going to be doing braised short ribs on top of waffle with aged Wisconsin gruyère cheese and sour cream and some green onions,” Alf says.

Ingredients like sausage, bacon and ham will be made in house. Eggs will come from Swampy Acres. The couple will also offer more soup, sandwich and salad options, vegetarian and gluten-free choices.

Alf says, by day, GonZo will be a bakery, coffee and waffle shop.

“At night, we’re going to transform more into a dinner, sit down. Once a month we’re going to be offering a five to 10 course dinner, prix fixe menu. So it’ll give diners a different feel of what GonZo really is,” Alf says.

The couple both have backgrounds in fine dining and moved to Juneau from Pittsburgh in August. After a few months of managing Panhandle Provisions, the gourmet food store and deli from Rookery owner Travis Smith, Aims Alf says they were ready to take on their own business. They bought Southeast Waffle Company from Julie Thatcher.

Aims Alf says the inspiration for GonZo came from Hunter S. Thompson and his style of writing,

“Reporting about something, but being in it. Empathizing with it, but actually participating in the writing, and that’s what we’re doing with food,” Alf says.

Alf, 26, is originally from Juneau and studied at the University of Alaska Southeast. She followed her passion into the food business and hopes that translates into the cooking at Gonzo.

“Food is like the best form of love, I think, even to strangers, because they can taste how much work you put into something,” Alf says.

Despite all the changes, Alf says GonZo will still have customer favorites, like the regular, blueberry and chocolate waffles. She also plans to have nights catered to UAS students, like a nacho fest.

For now, the menu remains mostly unchanged. The new owners are giving people a preview of what’s to come with their spin on the waffle of the day.

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