New soup and sandwich shop opens inside the Grand Teton Mall
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IDAHO FALLS — If you did any Black Friday shopping in the Grand Teton Mall in Idaho Falls last week, you may have noticed a new restaurant that opened up.
Nay’s Soup Salad Sandwich opened last Wednesday without fanfare inside the old Subway location across from Pretzelmaker and Old Navy.
“Our 10-year-old named it. My wife is Natasha and I’m Ray, so she thought it should be Nay’s,” owner Ray Imbagliazzo tells EastIdahoNews.com.
The response has been great since they opened their doors, Imbagliazzo says. There was a steady stream of customers Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. Signage has not yet been posted above their entrance, and so most people who came in thought Subway had reopened. When customers discovered it was a new restaurant, they gave the menu a try.
“Everybody’s been loving it,” Imbagliazzo says.
The menu includes a variety of 12 different sandwiches served on wheat, white or sourdough bread. The menu also has four different salads and five different soup options, with a sixth one — clam chowder — served on Friday.
One of their most popular sandwiches is the Lumberjack, which comes with roast beef, pepperoncini, lettuce, tomato and onion. It’s topped off with Nay’s special sauce, which is a blend of mayo, A1 steak sauce and several different seasonings. Watch Imbagliazzo make a Lumberjack in the video player above.
Quirky Turkey is another popular sandwich. It comes with turkey, cream cheese, lettuce, cranberry sauce, and sunflower seeds.
The Idaho Falls store is the restaurant’s second location in eastern Idaho. Imbagliazzo and his family first opened a location inside the Pine Ridge Mall in Pocatello on June 8. He and his family moved here from Missoula, Montana two and a half years ago to be closer to family.
Imbagliazzo previously worked at a Lithia dealership in Missoula. Lack of time with his family prompted him to seek another line of work. In his younger years, he worked at several different restaurants and decided it would be a good fit for his work-life goals.
He and his family operate the two locations. He’s busier than ever but the opportunity to work alongside his family makes it all worth it, he says.
“I love feeding people. I have an Italian background and it’s just in my nature. We love doing it,” he says.
Imbagliazzo would like to make the restaurant a franchise and is considering opening another location in the near future, but he wants to see how things go over the next year before moving forward.
A grand opening celebration at the Idaho Falls store is in the works, but an exact date has not been determined.
Nay’s Soup Salad Sandwich is open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and Noon to 6 p.m. Sunday. Visit the restaurant’s Facebook page for more information.