Paul Coate, who owns Coconuts Island Grill with his wife, Yulia, discusses opening the restaurant Tuesday afternoon in Centralia.
Paul Coate, who owns Coconuts Island Grill with his wife, Yulia, discusses opening the restaurant Tuesday afternoon in Centralia.
Paul and Yulia Coate have traveled around the world and dined in thousands of restaurants. With Coconuts Island Grill, they hope to bring some of the tropical atmosphere they love to Centralia.
“We like nice tropical kinds of places, so we have kind of incorporated a lot of those dishes into our menu,” Paul Coate said. “It’s not food from one specific area. That’s why we call it ‘Coconuts Island Grill’ — it’s not Hawaiian and it’s not Jamaican and it’s not one specific region. … We want people to feel like they are on vacation when they come in here.”
The couple owns the Foxy Lady Cafe bikini barista coffee chain and recently starred in their own reality TV show “Foxy Ladies” on Amazon. However, this is the first large restaurant the couple has opened.
“We make pretty much everything from scratch in here,” Yulia Coate said. “We have a lot of vegetarian options. We have a great menu, a lot of spicy stuff. There aren’t many places around here that do that. So we just wanted to give people more variety of food and a different atmosphere. It gets dark and gloomy here in the winter time, so it’s just a little bit of sunshine.”
Yulia Coate said she had a vision for the type of food she wanted the restaurant to serve — a menu with fresher, healthier options.
“We cook everything fresh to order,” she said.
The restaurant opened at the beginning of September and has 37 employees. Paul and Yulia Coate said they will hold the grand opening sometime in October.
“Everybody has been doing great,” said Paul Coate of the restaurant’s staff. “We have a wonderful back-of-the-house staff. We have a pastry chef that makes all of our desserts from scratch. She does wonderful. We make all of our pizzas in house. We bread all of our own fish and all of our chicken wings and things like that.”
Coconuts Island Grill offers a menu that includes numerous gluten-free options. The restaurant serves appetizers, soups and salads, tacos, pastas, burgers, pizza and entrees that range from Ahi Tuna to Jamaican Chicken. In addition, there is a strictly-vegetarian menu.
“We have a lot of friends who are vegetarian and they can’t go out with us because there are no vegetarian options anywhere,” Yulia Coate said. “I promised my friends, ‘I’m going to create a great vegetarian menu.’”
This restaurant is only the most recent enterprise the couple has taken on. The two met in 2006 and have worked in the casino industry together, opened multiple businesses, worked in real estate together and traveled the world.
“It’s all about compromise,” said Yulia Coate of working with Paul Coate. “With us, we kind of complement each other, just because I’m good at some stuff, Paul is good at other stuff. We kind of already know without talking what our role is.”
The couple said part of the reason they chose Centralia to open their first large restaurant was because of the location, just off of Interstate 5.
“When we first saw this location, we didn’t want it,” Paul Coate said. “There is absolutely no way we were going to do it. It was a mess, it was broken down, my shoes stuck to the floor when I walked in here. … After doing a lot of research, and about a year-long negotiation with the property owner — which we are going to buy the property at some point — we were able to come to an agreement and go ahead and get the building remodeled.”
Although the two expected to complete the remodel by June, the work was extensive and it delayed the completion date.
“It took us a little bit longer than we anticipated in the beginning because we had to do a complete remodel,” Yulia Coate said. “... There was so much work that had to be done in here it took us a little bit longer.”
Although the couple is based in King County, they began rehabbing the building in March and Paul Coate stayed in Centralia.
“Centralia has been a great community so far,” Paul Coate said. “I’m starting to recognize people at Walmart now. I don’t really get that where we live out in King County. … I’m starting to know checkers at Safeway now.”
Coconuts Island Grill
Owners: Paul and Yulia Coate
Contact: 360-669-5162
Address: 1232 Alder Street in Centralia
