Speakeasy News
Restaurant-lounge with built-in speakeasy drops into historic Rockwall
Speak Lounge, coming to Rockwall soon.
A new restaurant-lounge with a speakeasy already built-in is coming to Rockwall's downtown square: Called the Speak Lounge, it'll open at 104 N. San Jacinto St., replacing a bakery called Sloane’s Sweet Treats.
The Lounge comes from husband-and-wife Tommy and Tamara Kolleck, who were inspired by the runaway success of Speak, a speakeasy they opened in the same space. They'll open the new lounge in mid- to late-October.
The couple first opened Sloane's Sweet Treats in that space in 2021, serving coffee, ice cream, fountain drinks, and breakfast. But meanwhile, they were building a speakeasy in the back, which they opened in June 2023.
“When we started with the bakery, the plan was for the speakeasy all along,” Tommy says.
Speak was founded as a total sensory recreaction of a Prohibition-era speakeasy: reservations and a password, live jazz, and period wear for the staff, with female servers in flapper costumes and male bartenders in bowties and suspenders.
Inspired by the milieu, customers followed suit, showing up in 1920s attire. Tommy says that at least half, sometimes 70 percent of patrons go full Gatsby, dressing in the threads of the era.
“There’s no real dining experiences in Rockwall yet and people like to dress up and go out,” he says. “It’s good to keep the element a little nice.”
Building on the speakeasy's audience and success seemed like a no-brainer, and so they'll transform the bakery into a lounge and dessert bar, where people can come and get tapas-style bites, quick dessert, and a drink.
It's a little bit upside-down since usually the speakeasy is the place you go for the drinks and bites, but Speak is the rare speakeasy that also serves a full menu of food with an emphasis on wagyu beef, in dishes such as roasted Wagyu marrow bruschetta and Wagyu deviled eggs, as well as craft cocktails and a modest wine list.
It's a speakeasy with a modern gastropub element, Tommy says. "People make it a whole night," he says.
Speak Lounge will have some of the speakeasy dishes but will really be its own thing with its own tapas-style menu.
"We see the Lounge as more relaxing, having drinks and hanging out, while the speakeasy is a full on experience," he says.
The couple aren't from the food industry; Tamara is a nurse, while Tommy previously worked in trades and tool distribution. But they have a track record of diving in and doing it their way, starting with opening a ramen restaurant Ramen Head in Rockwall in December 2019, which is four doors down from Speak.
"We moved here from California, and love Asian food - my wife is half-Russian half-Filipino - we couldn't find ramen in Rockwall and got tired of driving to Dallas or Plano," he says.
"We're entrepreneurs - I guess we're good at figuring things out," he says. "Our attitude is always, 'What’s missing here and what can we do to bring more food options to Rockwall?'"
