Geno Goodman will own and operate Sweet T and Greens out of the old Home 231 space with his wife, Erin.
Husband and wife team Geno and Erin Goodman are moving their Hershey-based market stand Sweet T & Greens to downtown Harrisburg, where it will become a sit-down restaurant.
After three years cooking out of a stand at Fresh Market, the Lower Paxton-based couple plans to bring “upscale comfort food” to 231 North St., formerly Home 231, in mid-January.
“This feels more like home. It just feels like this is where we should be,” said Geno.
The restaurant will be open six days a week, excluding Monday, and the menu will feature steaks, burgers, ribs and crab cakes as well as options for vegetarians and vegans. It will be BYOB.
Their food stand in Hershey has been purchased by another vendor and will change hands as the couple expands to a full restaurant.
“We wanted to absolutely put our full attention into this,” Geno said. “This is definitely a different venture for us.”
A former bar manager at the now-closed Midtown Ted’s Bar & Grill, Geno is enthusiastic about returning to work in the city. He said he and his wife are looking forward to building a rapport with the Harrisburg community.
“We really want to take that serious. We want no stone unturned. We really want to pay attention to what’s going on here,” he said.
According to Geno, the southern-inspired menu at Sweet T & Greens includes foods he and his wife grew up eating.
“A lot of the recipes come from Erin’s family. Her grandparents had a diner growing up, so she really grew up in the restaurant industry,” Geno explained. “But I’m from the South, so you got to know how to cook when you from the South.”
Originally from Smithfield, Va., Geno remembers big family meals growing up with pigs’ feet, Haul Maul, chitlins, sweet potatoes and collard greens. When he was 14 years old, he entered the restaurant industry as a busboy at Smithfield Station, an upscale seafood place.
Erin, meanwhile, grew up on a 120-acre farm in Juniata County where making food from scratch was the norm. Erin’s parents and brother raise and slaughter their own pigs for food to this day, although Erin, now a pescatarian, “is not really big into the slaughtering side of it,” according to Geno.
The pair met in 2009 while working at Ruby Tuesdays—Erin as the bar manager, Geno as bartender. They were in their mid-20s, and Geno had just moved to Harrisburg to serve as running back for the professional indoor football team, the Harrisburg Stampede. He recalled working at the restaurant as a second job.
“She’s a hardcore manager, so I felt like it was good to get in her good graces, and then it just ended up blossoming to something great,” said Geno.
While the pair doesn’t have any kids together, Geno said, “we do have three children that pretty much grew up together.”
Their children—the oldest and youngest his and the middle one hers—are now 21, 19, and 15 years old.
Whether with their family or friends, Geno said the pair enjoys hosting cookouts and gatherings with plenty of “good food” and that ultimately, Sweet T & Greens is an extension of that.
“It just kind of went hand in hand,” he said.
Sweet T and Greens will be located at 231 North St. in Harrisburg.
For more information about Sweet T & Greens, visit its website.
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