WILMINGTON — Two years ago, the announcement came that Ponysaurus, a popular brewery out of Durham, North Carolina, would be expanding into the Port City.
READ MORE: Durham’s Ponysaurus Brewing Co. eyes expansion to downtown Wilmington
The goal is to finally unveil the renovation of 214 Market St. in the coming week. A formal date hadn’t been revealed by press but will be announced on Ponysaurus’ social media.
Roughly 400 friends and family came through the restaurant during its soft opening Jan. 3 and 4. The concept has diners seat themselves, access menus via QR codes embedded at the tables or the foot of the bar, and place orders without engaging a server. The food is delivered by a rotating crew, also there to help with any kinks, and diners pay for their food via the QR code as well.
All drinks must be ordered at the bar and stations flank either side of a row of booths downstairs for diners to grab their plates, cutlery and condiments.
The soft opening gave staff, bartenders and kitchen crew an early run-through on operations.
“Now, we will see what we need to tweak before fully opening to the public,” owner and operator Nick Hawthorne-Johnson said Friday.
He is one-half of Cast Iron Group, owned along with his wife Rochelle. They also oversee other operations in the triangle, including Dashi, a Japanese ramen restaurant, the Mediterranean food truck and catering Soomsoom Pita Pockets, and event space The Rickhouse.
Their entry into the restaurant industry began with the Cookery, an incubator and commercial kitchen, which started in Durham in 2011. The Cookery is where Ponysaurus’ story began a decade ago — first launching as a startup before moving to its flagship brick and mortar in 2015.
“A friend of mine was a really avid homebrewer and made really great beer,” Hawthorne-Johnson said, speaking about Keil Jansen. “Normally when people are like, ‘Here, try my home brew,’ you kind of like brace yourself. But he made really awesome beer, which I thought we could sell. So I asked him: ‘What do you think about maybe starting a brewery?’ And then we were off to the races.”
Jansen has since exited the operation to pursue other interests, as Hawthorne-Johnson and David Baldwin bought out his shares in Ponysaurus. The Durham brewery was upfitted in a former warehouse; Hawthorne-Johnson, a former general contractor who specializes in historic preservation and restoration, has a passion for old buildings. He also has always worked in restaurants; marrying the two felt like a natural combination when he made the decision to become a restaurateur and brewery owner.
“One day I realized, ‘Oh, I could build a restaurant and I could run a restaurant, and I might be able to afford to build a restaurant if I built it myself,’” he said.
When he decided to add a Ponysaurus to the Wilmington market, he first assessed the 1940s building next door to 214 Market St., on the market for $1.9 million in 2020. Formerly the music venue Blue Eyed Muse, 208 Market St. was condemned in 2017 and again in the summer of 2023.
ALSO: Former downtown music venue demolished due to contractor mishap, apartments planned
“But then I saw the parking lot behind this building and it appeared to be abandoned,” Hawthorne-Johnson said, envisioning an outdoor beer garden. “And so I became interested in it because I really appreciate the architecture and quality of this little funny brick building, which used to be a law office.”
It happened to go on the market a short time later, so Hawthorne-Johnson moved on it. The goal was to open by September 2023 but delays were caused by supply chain issues making it difficult to secure needed materials.
“But three months late on a construction project of this scope, there are always delays, so I’m not surprised,” Hawthorne-Johnson said. “We were hopeful for September, but as a general contractor who did most of our other locations myself, they were later than this one.”
He oversaw the functional design, with his wife handling the aesthetics. There are carousel horses hanging throughout the space, with nods to its coastal location seen in porthole mirrors hanging at every booth, and blue and white tile on the floor. The Colonial Revival building — an elongated A-frame — was constructed in 1970 so preserving its integrity and cultural significance to the Second and Market streets block was important as well.
“It will continue with a new life, but not with a drastically new look from facing Market Street,” Hawthorne-Johnson said — well except for a front patio where patrons can dine al fresco.
And that parking lot in the back Hawthorne-Johnson was so taken by will eventually open — it’s dependent upon construction next door — complete with a masonry hearth, an additional bar and seating to serve around 180 patrons, in addition to the 130 indoors.
Hawthorne-Johnson has employed 40 people in Wilmington, including sous chef Jessica Cabo. Cabo has been a part of the local dining scene for more than a decade, as lead chef at CAM Café and Blockade Runner’s East.
At Ponysaurus, she is the second hand to executive chef Beth LittleJohn. LittleJohn devised the menu before bringing on Cabo a few months ago. Together, they have been revising dishes, ensuring they also showcase Wilmington flair.
For instance, seafood can be found on the menu, in a warm crab dip, as well as the mussels appetizers prepared in Ponysaurus’ wheat beer, with shallots and butter. There is even a clam pie on the pizza menu.
“I’ve been known for my chowders, so we were trying to figure out: How can we put clams on this menu?” Cabo said. “Maybe down the line it can be a linguini with white sauce, but for now we came up with a clam pie and the response has been pretty awesome with the amount of text messages I’ve been receiving from the soft opening.”
It’s created with a bechamel sauce, made with clam juice and fresh chopped clams, topped on Ponysaurus’ fresh dough and proprietary blend of low-moisture mozzarella and pecorino.
“It’s not overly seafood and you definitely get the flavor of the clams, but it’s also simple,” LittleJohn said. “We don’t want to overcomplicate anything.”
LittleJohn is also a fan of the greens pie — a pizza topped with Ponysaurus’ ricotta and herb blend, house pesto and braised local greens.
There are also build-your-own options with multiple toppings, including more traditional and unique items, such as hot honey, goat cheese or white anchovies.
Wilmington’s menu is more extensive than Durham’s, which only consists of a few pies, appetizers and sweets. Diners will find sandwiches, including a piled-high Italian on focaccia, and burgers — both a traditional and a homemade mushroom-based option.
“We use roasted mushrooms, a little bit of brown rice and a bunch of different spice blends, then ground flax seed to hold it as a binder,” LittlrJohn said.
Salads also are on the menu, priced around $10, with sandwiches and burgers averaging $15, and pies top out at $18.
“We anticipated that the pizza would be something that would be more popular off the bat,” LittleJohn said, but during the soft opening the restaurant found copious orders were coming in for other items.
The seafood items sold out quickly, as did the wings.
LittleJohn said her team will be adding bar snacks soon — “a little something for people to nosh on with their beers.” This will include items like marinated olives, various snack mix blends — spicy and cheesy — plus spiced nuts and chicharrones. There will be a pork variety, as well as a flour-based option.
“The flour one basically looks like dried pasta when it’s raw,” LittleJohn said. “And then you fry it and it puffs up and looks like pork chicharrones. It’s delicious.”
The beer menu, priced $6 to $8, consists of stouts, wheats, pilsners, goses and saisons, among others. Hawthorne-Johnson said the pilsner was most popular with Wilmington drinkers this week, but noted its Mexican lager, Inauthentico, and IPAs also sold well.
A cherry sour consists of the flavors of cherry pie, cinnamon and lemonade, while the “Don’t Be Mean to People: A Golden Rule Saison,” made with North Carolina ingredients, highlights flavors of tangerine, white pepper, and banana.
“We are incredibly serious about the liquid and incredibly silly about everything else,” Hawthorne-Johnson said.
Yet, the saison was born out of a plea for acceptance and inclusivity that has benefited marginalized communities by hundreds of thousands of dollars. The beer was a collaborative effort with 40 other breweries statewide and has become one of Ponysaurus’ best known. Staff even wear shirts donning its plea.
Don’t Be Mean to People was launched after North Carolina politicians passed House Bill 2 in 2016; the bill, sponsored by Republican Rep. Dan Bishop, running for attorney general in 2024, required transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender listed on their birth certificates. Opposers considered it a discriminatory, overreaching and unnecessary move.
“We wanted to respond in a positive way instead of just yelling at people about how weak they were,” Hawthorne-Johnson said. “It doesn’t matter what your political leanings are, you should be able to get behind the statement: ‘Don’t be mean to people.’”
Ponysaurus launched the beer with the goal to donate funds from its sale to Equality NC and QORDS, a nonprofit helping LGBTQ+ kids go to summer camp. Though the bill was fully repealed in 2020, Ponysaurus still donates money to the groups — so far equaling more than $100,000.
Ponysaurus Wilmington will have beer that is reflective of what locals respond to as well, with the 24-tap menu changing. The goal is to utilize local ingredients in new brews and even pair up with other local breweries. Ponysaurus already collaborated with Mad Mole Brewing for the wheat beer Mad Ponies last year.
“Our team is very creative — they play well with others,” Hawthorne-Johnson said. “I spoke with Jud Watkins at Wrightsville Beach Brewing during the soft opening about getting together … We want to be active in this community. We are not from here, but we are trying very hard to gracefully become a part of and supportive of the brewing community here, as well as the restaurant community.”
As far as whether Wilmington diners may see another Cast Iron Group operation locally — say, the ramen spot, Dashi — Hawthorne-Johnson was clear: not now. After the Wilmington brewery launches, Cast Iron Group will be working on opening another Ponysaurus in Raleigh.
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