CREATING SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING


While Lesa has had her own career, she’s perhaps best known for being half of the husband/wife duo to own and run nightclubs and restaurants. As Lesa was launching her tech


career, Andy and partners opened a nightclub uptown—at a time when there virtually were none. Cosmos Café and Mythos would be the first of several restaurants and clubs Andy would own. Lesa marketed and promoted them and helped develop a devoted following. Mythos became a destination— the kind of place people were willing to wait in line to get in. It was one of Charlotte’s hottest uptown spots until it closed in 2004. Lesa said, “My husband is


a real visionary. He saw uptown changing. He’s always been kind of an underground guy. He’s the type of guy who doesn’t want to be where everybody else is. He wants to look to what’s next. Tat’s when Soul [Gastrolounge] came about.”


HEART AND SOUL Open since 2009, Soul is the couple’s tapas restaurant/lounge in their neighborhood, Plaza Midwood. Small, shareable plates are what


Soul is all about, and they range from standards (wings, salads, pita bread and dips) to the wildly unexpected. Te Dirty South Nachos (fried chicken skins with pimento cheese fondue and jalapeno pickled okra) are positively addictive. “It’s a smorgasbord of everything


you want but doesn’t seem to naturally go together—oh does it though,” wrote Condé Nast Traveler of the perennial hot spot. “Southern-


doing and what we’re hearing,” Warford said. At the time Soul opened, Lesa


Lesa (Christmas) Kastanas ’84 and her date (now husband) Andy at a Queens New Year’s celebration in 1981.


fried oysters, saganaki, offbeat sushi rolls, spicy wings... it sounds like a hangover wish list and fully satisfies.” Soul opened at the height of the financial crisis. “It was really scary,” Lesa recalled. “But we were lucky. It was the right place, right time.” It takes more than luck to


achieve this level of success. Lesa’s friend since college, Queens University alumna Bonnie Warford, said Lesa and Andy are the keys to their success. “Tey have a real passion for


it,” said Warford, who, along with her sister, owned the beloved Carpe Diem restaurant in Charlotte. Te restaurant closed last year after 31 years. “Andy started off in clubs but has always wanted to learn. He went to culinary school, and their ventures have evolved with them. With Lesa’s marketing savvy, they have the right combination of skills.” In the early 1980s, the college


pals didn’t imagine that both of them would be in the restaurant business. But they’ve always leaned on each other.


“Many times over the years,


we’ve called each other for advice – comparing notes on what we’re


was working at UNC Charlotte. “Facebook was becoming a thing on college campuses,” she said. “I started to use it heavily at work… and for our business. [Soul] was one of the early adopters of Facebook. And that segued into Instagram. I sort of became the voice for our family.” Te family includes daughter


Alex, 30, who’s now the business operations manager for Andy and his local empire. “She’s an amazing person,” said Lesa, who became a grandmother in 2021. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” Te restaurant business is notoriously fickle, but Soul remains a critical and popular success. Even during the pandemic. “Soul is a place where people


celebrate,” Lesa said. “And COVID- weary customers at the height of the pandemic wanted to relive that experience. When we were in complete shutdown mode, people wanted to remember that experience. So, we did a lot of takeout, which we’d never done. We had our DJs online. You could listen to our music on Twitch (a livestreaming service) at home while eating your takeout.” Te couple decided to expand on that success and open another restaurant, just downstairs from Soul. “We opened Kiki Bistro right before the pandemic,” Lesa said. “And once we went into lockdown, people forgot about anything that recently opened.” Tey rode out the pandemic,


but it wasn’t easy. “Kiki hadn’t gotten traction,” Lesa said. “We made the decision to reboot it; we needed to give it some connection to Soul.”


30


Photo courtesy of Lesa Kastanas.


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