Zenon Watch

The restaurant space at the corner of East Broadway and Pearl sits dark and empty, lonely saltshakers and untouched sugar packets lingering on otherwise bare tables. It shouldn’t stay that way for much longer now. “God willing,” restaurateur Ibrahim Hamide says, his new restaurant in the old Café Zenon space will open on May 15. “Barring anything outside our control, that’s the day we’ll shoot for.”

The first thing Hamide mentions when asked about the changes he’ll make to the open, windowed space reflects a fairly common complaint of customers at the popular old Zenon: “We are trying to address the acoustics,” he says. “That’s a definite change.” There will be some aesthetic changes — perhaps a new color scheme — but Hamide says, “I personally — and I’ve heard it from a lot of customers — have an affinity for that place, over the years, and have good memories of it.” Much of what needs to be done before the opening is “tidying and organizing” and making things streamlined. “We really like the character that it had, and we want to retain some of that, though we’re not trying to make a replica of Zenon by any stretch,” he says

The new restaurant’s menu, like the space itself, will reflect both the previous restaurant and what Hamide and his staff bring to the new place: “We will not abandon their style and some of the stuff that they did, but we want to add our character, our style and our talents to it,” he says. He’s hiring 25 to 30 employees and says he is getting inundated with resumes — and he likes that, though he recognizes that “it’s not for the right reasons. It’s representative of a weak economy, but it’s nice to have the luxury of choosing from a pool that’s plentiful and qualified.” Hamide, whose cozy Café Soriah is a frequent award winner in EW’s Best of Eugene readers’ choice poll, says, “We want to get the best people, we really do. People are the pillars of a successful place.”

But what will the name of that place be? Now, three and a half weeks before the planned opening, Hamide says he’s “98 percent sure” it will still be called Café Zenon. “Not 100 percent, but 98 percent,” he says. “I reserve the right to freak out and do something different if I chose to, but the likelihood is still there.”