New grilled cheese restaurant opens in downtown Winter Garden

Floral patterns. Comfy couches. Family photos. An 8-track player.

Did you just walk into the ’70s?

Close. But not quite.

On Oct. 29, Matthew Erickson opened a new restaurant in downtown Winter Garden: Melts on Main Street.

The restaurant at 108 S. Main St. serves classic comfort food: grilled cheese and tomato soup.

But why grilled cheese?

“Honestly, I wanted to not be in direct competition with anybody in town,” he said. “So I picked what I thought would be a nice complement to the other restaurants already here.”

The restaurant also serves chili dogs and snacks.

The ’70s theme wasn’t hard to come up with, either.

“I grew up in the ’70s, and it’s very inexpensive to buy the furniture,” he said, laughing.

He plans to fill the walls with his customers’ ’70s photos. The restaurant also has two living room areas with couches — decorated like your living room in the ’70s, of course.

And when you’re growing in the ’70s — or any decade, for that matter — your mom plays an important role. Motherly sayings cover the walls: “Don’t make me pull this car over.” “There are starving kids in China.” “If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?” “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.”

Mom fits in perfectly with the name as well.

After coming up with the name “Melts on Main Street,” Erickson realized the acronym was MOMS.

“It was very serendipitous,” said Jessica Belcher, kitchen manager and chef.

Erickson has been in the restaurant industry for more than two decades.

His new restaurant has five employees, including Erickson and Belcher.

They plan to expand the menu at some point, but for now, they are mostly concerned with doing it right.

“We’re going to get all the (food) we have on the menu right now down and make everybody dream about it,” Belcher said. “Once we have that accomplished, we might add something else.”

From 2:30 to 4:30 p.m., the restaurant serves a more limited menu, which offers snacks, such as ’70s meatballs and a pimiento cheese spread.

If you go

Melts on Main Street

Where: 108 S Main Street

Hours: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Only snacks are available from 2:30-4:30 p.m. The restaurant is closed on Sunday and Monday.

Info: Visit meltsonmain.com to see the menu.

Contact Jennifer Nesslar at [email protected].