Co-owners of the new dual-concept restaurant Roy’s Crab Shack and Forged by Fire Pizza, CJ Eversole and Roy Gonzales have big plans for their tenure at the Apple Valley Golf Course.
Not only does their menu encompass a goulash of Cajun and American cuisine, but they also operate the catering for the golf course banquet hall, and have plans to transform the unused courtyard into a wedding venue.
The pair comes from Phelan as alumni of Serrano High School. Their paths did not entirely estrange upon graduation. They both entered into the food business, Eversole, 46, owning a Pizza Factory in Apple Valley for seven years, and Gonzales, 43, working as the head chef at various Cajun seafood houses around the High Desert for 17 years, before they reunited with ideas for the new dual restaurant two years ago.
They say the opportunity to operate a restaurant out of the Apple Valley Golf Course was too good to pass up, what with the previous restaurant owners’ renovations that included a brick fire pizza oven and $700,000 worth of total kitchen and dining room upgrades.
Their recipe for projected success is simple: Gonzales has complete reign over the kitchen and Eversole mans the pizza oven behind the glass case in the dining room. Each is in charge of his specialty.
Apple Valley’s newest restaurant officially opened on May 1. Gonzales says repeat customers cannot get enough of the seafood boils. Think, snow crab, peeled shrimp, lobster and mussel boils in a blended homemade garlic, lemon pepper and Cajun sauce.
For hungry customers interested in trying the made-fresh-to-order Cajun seafood, wood oven-fired pizza or desserts of the new dual-concept restaurant, visit from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and until 9 p.m. on Saturdays, located at 15200 Rancherias Road, Apple Valley. The restaurant is closed on Tuesdays.
What’s on the menu?
Even with a broad menu that includes appetizers like egg rolls and deep-fried pickles, po’ boy sandwiches, burgers, and seafood boils, the Apple Valley restaurant owners say taste is not compromised on a single menu item.
“When we do something, we do it at 100%,” Gonzales said, who wrote the menu at the last seafood restaurant he was head chef at. “There is no compromising as a chef. You make sure you turn out quality food no matter what. Especially for something like this. This is my baby.”
Gonzales is on top of it in the kitchen. He throws together an order of garlic bread a second after he hand-tosses spices for a seafood boil, fires up the grill to start a burger, and places the finishing touches on three seafood boils all within the same minute. He knows his way around a kitchen.
He says customers especially like the build-your-own seafood bags and the lobster mac and cheese. For dessert, the restaurant is one of the only places in the High Desert that offers freshly fried beignets.
Prices are comparable with the competition, Eversole says. A half-pound peeled shrimp boil runs $12.49, cheese pizzas are $16 and catfish po’boys are $17.50.
McKenna Mobley is a reporter for the Daily Press. She can be reached at mmobley@usatodayco.com or on Instagram @mckenna_dailypress.
This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: New dual-concept restaurant opens at Apple Valley Golf Course | Exclusive
Reporting by McKenna Mobley, Victorville Daily Press / Victorville Daily Press
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By McKenna Mobley, Victorville Daily Press | USA TODAY Network
